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Bob @ Beauty in Ruins

PLEASE NOTE: I'm rarely active here anymore, but please feel free to follow me on Goodreads, where I post regularly.

 

These are the chronicles of a book addict, a photo junkie, and an aspiring author, rewriting the very fabric of reality one page (and one snapshot) at a time. From the strange to the unusual; the abandoned to the abnormal; the haunted to the historic; the supernatural to the surreal; the forests of dark fantasy, the cemeteries of gothic horror, and the post-apocalyptic ruins of science fiction are the landscapes of my imagination.

Currently reading

Deathstalker Rebellion: Being the Second Part of the Life and Times of Owen Deathstalker
Simon R. Green
Progress: 298/508 pages

Horror Review: One, Two, Three Kiss by E.J. Kimelman

One, Two, Three Kiss Box Set: An Apocalyptic Urban Fantasy (Transmissions from the International Council for the Exploration of the Universe) - Emily Kimelman, E.J. Kimelman

Part urban fantasy and part apocalyptic horror, with a healthy dose of dark eroticism mixed in, One, Two, Three Kiss is a unique sort of serialized novel. It starts out oddly, with the submission of a research report toInternational Dimension Investigations, and intersperses the narrative chapters with a follow-up interrogation, but it all works. It lends the story a ring of found-footage truth, and as much as I've tired of that genre on the screen, on the page it can still work very well - as E.J. Kimelman demonstrates here.

As a dangerous new drug consumes the city, turning junkies into a monstrous mash of vampire and zombie, Darling Price continues to search for her best friend. It's not just the need to find a friend or even to solve a mystery - there's something deeper and darker to her obsession. She hungers for her best friend, and that's just the beginning. As the three stories go on, and Darline learns more about who she is and what's happening to the world, the story gets both weirder and more compelling.

It's a hard story to talk about without spoiling things, since Darlene's evolution is really at the core of the story, but there's a lot here to like. We've got vampires and zombies, shapeshifters, immortals, and even witches and warlocks. I've gotten rather tired of the whole zombie craze, and sick of the romantic vampire movement, but Kimelman injects new blood (and other bodily fluids) into both. This is a story about becoming "the most powerful being in the universe, stronger than any God, more magical than any witch or warlock, more eternal than any vampire" and stopping "the zombies not just in their domination of the universe but in time and space." It sounds epic and trippy, but she really pulls it off.

As for the erotic element, I was curious how it play into it all, and really worried it'd just be another sexy vampire tale, but she balances it well, using the sexuality to both contrast the violence and illustrate the more seductive extremes of power. It must be noted that One, Two, Three Kiss is waiting for a fourth kiss, and ends on a cliffhanger, but that's what serialized novels do - make you desperate for the next chapter.

Source: http://beauty-in-ruins.blogspot.ca/2015/07/horror-review-one-two-three-kiss-by-ej.html