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0 comments on "“Heroes & Villains” by Harper Kingsley [superhero, science fiction, mm]"

"book cover: Heroes & Villains"Title: Heroes & Villains
Author: Harper Kingsley
Genre: superhero, science fiction, gay
Word count: 135,000+
Novel rating: M
Excerpt rating: PG-13

Summary: Starburst – loser, joke, failed superhero.
Darkstar – powerful, dark legend, supervillain.
Both Vereint Georges

Vereint has spent his entire life dreaming about being a superhero, and now he’s registered his name and set out to make his dream a reality.

Except nothing is going quite the way he planned.

No one respects him. His name – Starburst – is mocked far and wide. And Blue Ice – the hero he’s looked up to for years – thinks he’s nothing but a loser and a joke.

So what other choice does he have but to force the world to respect him?

And to that end he transforms himself into the world’s most feared supervillain. Darkstar.

Set in a world where metahumans are fairly common, Vereint has been gifted with extraordinary power. Unfortunately, with great power does not come great popularity. Not until the good boy goes bad… then the wannabes pop out of the woodwork and bring terror to the world at large in his name (“AS DARKSTAR WILLS THE DARKSTERS FOLLOW.”)

Reminiscent of the comic books of old, the world of “Heroes & Villains” is actually a pretty grim one. With one okay from the CMPF (Central Metahuman Policing Force) a metahuman found breaking the law can lose all of their basic human rights. If they’re lucky, they’re executed. If they’re not lucky… well, no metahuman wants to end up in Butcher Bay.

The good guys in “Heroes & Villains” aren’t so good, and the bad guys aren’t so bad. And Vereint is just a guy that wants to get ahead in the world.

Continue Reading “Heroes & Villains” by Harper Kingsley [superhero, science fiction, mm]
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0 comments on "Exquisite Corpse, by Poppy Z Brite [horror]"

Title: Exquisite Corpse
Author: Poppy Z. Brite
Genre: horror, serial killer
Summary: After escaping prison, serial killer Andrew Compton heads for New Orleans to pursue the art of what he calls “the art of killing boys.” He joins up with a dissolute playboy who has pushed his art to limits even Compton hadn’t imagined. Together they set their sights on a young Vietnamese-American runaway, whom they cast as the perfect victim.

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Definitely NOT for children or anyone with a weak constitution or any kind of gag reflex. Seriously, the stuff in this gets pretty heavy-handed and pushes the limits of everything that’s right in the world.

“Exquisite Corpse” is, at its base, a story about someone looking for a soul mate. Someone that is alone in the world and sees the people around him, but has no real connection to them in any emotional capacity. Oh, and he’s like Jeffrey Dahmar.

This is basically Dahmar (or a character startlingly like him!) somehow escaping from prison and going on the lam. He kills a bunch of people on the way, and somehow manages to find his way to the French Quarter in New Orleans (where the vampires and ghouls live, because that’s where I would live if I was a vampire or ghoul. Though honestly, I’d probably move to Alabama, which my nephew firmly believes is overrun by zombies and that’s why we don’t go there. Or Amsterdam.)

He meets a man that shares his morbid interests and they get together to have sex amongst the rotting corpses and plot to kill a somewhat wide-eyed street kid that was probably the most interesting character in the whole book (a male Vietnamese prostitute? Hell yeah.) From there, things get hinky.

All that said, I gave this book 4 stars because it was morbid and fascinating and sucked me into reading the whole thing. Not Brite’s best, but still a creepy “What-if” story.