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In the tradition of Michele Slung's I Shudder at Your Touch, the ard-winning author of Children of the Night explores the fascinating relationship between eroticism and horror in an original collection of psycho-sexual themes, some touched by the supernatural.

These five novellas mark the newest epiphany in a career that spans some dozen books, including Summer of Night ( LJ 1/91). In an unusually detailed introduction, Simmons observes that his work is almost obsessively concerned with the themes of love, death, and loss. The stories move confidently from the plea of an excessively cautious parent to a horrific drama of AIDS inflicted by a vengeful ex-G.I. A young brave's search for sexual adventure shapes a tale drawn from Native American tribal mythology, while a recreational drug that replays life in flashbacks forms the premise for a slight piece that juxtaposes a desperate fantasy with the Kennedy assassination. The final novella, an elaborate war saga, weaves the verse of Siegfried Sassoon and other real-life poets with the diary of a fictional soldier turned priest. Dipping in and out of the collection fosters better appreciation of the novellas' differences in tone, mood, and effect, but Simmons's scattershot technique guarantees at least one intense encounter for every reader.
- Barbara Conaty, Library of Congress
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

This collection of Simmons' novellas demonstrates the full range of one of the most gifted writers in the psychological horror field. His themes touch on the private fears that can erode the lives of individuals, as well as the public engines of fear that numb the humanity of entire cultures. Both categories are intermingled in the keynote piece, "The Great Lover." This intimate re-creation of the experience of a poet-soldier in the trenches of World War I, done in the form of a diary, has all the visceral impact of the best memoirs. "Entropy's Bed at Midnight" contrasts impersonal actuarial tables with the personal tragedy of the loss of a child. Of the remaining three stories, "The Man Who Slept with Teeth Women" is the most unusual in the book. Told in the voice of a Native American storyteller, this right-of-passage yarn effectively blends humor, horror, and magic. It's hard to imagine people reading this book and not learning something about themselves, although it might not be something they want to know. Simmons is one of the few authors associated with genre fiction who commands significant respect among literati. His first novel, Songs of Kali, earned the World Fantasy Award in 1986, and he has picked up 16 other major honors since then. Elliott Swanson

Five darkly erotic short novels that entwine love and death, with horror boosting the sex, by World Fantasy Award winner Simmons (Children of Night, 1992, etc.). Simmons has never been more stylish than here, with the short novel form compressing his effects and squeezing a lurid glow from each page. Best of all, each piece stands richly distinct from its companions and casually shows fearful labors of research uncommon to the horror genre, with writing of an unhackneyed freshness seldom found among the kings and queens of gore. ``Entropy's Bed at Midnight'' tells of the woes and fears of an accident-insurance investigator, his mind a library of fatalities, whose young son died in a freak driveway accident and who now watches his five- year-old daughter set forth alone on a screamer slope for sleds. ``Dying in Bangkok'' unveils a sucker-tongued female vampire in a superbly drawn Bangkok, whose Thai clients pay her to suck blood from their erections--a revenge tale whose twist would delight Poe. ``The Man Who Slept with Teeth Women'' tells of the astral initiation of an adolescent Sioux who will be the wise man of his tribe, of his need to choose a bride from lovers with teeth in their vaginas, and of his climactic penetration. ``Flashback'' is an sf story about a near-future family hooked on a drug that induces flashbacks so that one may relive high-intensity and even imaginary moments in one's life. Explosively gory, ``The Great Lover'' is a relentless tour de force that may well become a classic (along with ``Dying in Bangkok''). Drawing on poems by WW I poets and attributing them to a single poet, this works a variation of the visionary Angel of the Somme (a glowing woman whom soldiers saw walking the battlefield) and turns her into Death as a languorously sexual Pre-Raphaelite goddess whose embrace transcends life. Enduring stuff--even more memorable than Simmons's novels. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.