byoumei | Kissing Carrion by Gemma Files (4.5/5) (Reply)

So this was a pretty friggin' dark anthology series. It was a good example of erotic dark horror and when sex and death actually go together without feeling, well, forced.

This is not a movie where you get a shower scene starring a famous actress.

This is a book where necrophiles roam, your zombie brother lusts after you, and you are cursed to love someone in the darkest of ways.

It was a very experimental book at times. Some stories were written as though they were letters. Another as though it was a script. First person view? We got that too.

I think the best story found in this is definitely the titular story "Kissing Carrio"n. Some stories were forgettable, but Kissing Carrion sticks in my mind even after a few months of not reading the book. It was disgusting, dark, and yet, something in it's ending felt like I was witnessing a type of love no one, let alone me, could understand.

"Skin City" had a bit of a predictable ending, but it was very gruesome and had vivid imagery thats probably gonna pop up in one of my nightmares one day.

"Torch Song" had the best prose found in the book. My favorite paragraph in this entire book would have to be this one:

Love, my emotional brain tumor. Love, my habit , my jones. My uncontrollable urge. My will to power. Love, my unscratched itch---my addiction, with all the word entails: ecstasy, mania, withdrawal. My suicide in progress.

It's a shame this book doesn't seem to be available online anymore, because I really think it's a good read albeit a very dark one. Even though I forgot some stories, I still enjoyed reading every single one of them in the moment. Everything had something different to give me and I was totally in for the entire ride.