Petite Mort by S.C. Mendes and Nikki Noir

Blood Bound Books, Oct. 2022 (Halloween release date)

ASIN: BOBB87TLWY

Available: Kindle edition ( Amazon.com )

Petite Mort is a short story collection that reads like a crossbreed of the Hostel movies and a Jenna Jameson film fest, but with more originality and better storytelling.  This will appeal to readers who like healthy doses of gore and raunchiness.  If you can handle that, the stories are worth a read.

There are eight stories, six short and two longer ones. A few have been previously published in other collections.  The main selling point: none of the stories have the tired and overused “male psycho kidnaps, rapes, and tortures helpless woman” plot.  There are elements of the supernatural to the majority of the stories, and some of them are WAY off the path of normalcy.  “Santa’s Package”, the longest (and maybe best) story, has a young woman pregnant by either a) Santa Claus, b) alien abduction, or c) she’s just totally nuts.  ‘”Into the Pit” has a demon residing in one of those plastic ball pits kids play in at places like Chuck E. Cheese eateries.  “Cucumbers and Comforters” has a kappa, a somewhat reptilian water deity from Japanese folklore.  Kudos to author Nikki Noir for working the kappa into a story. It’s fun when authors use lesser-known deities from mythologies other than the familiar Greeks as a story backbone.  

The rest of the stories are a touch more “normal”, that being a relative term here, but they all are page turners and pack good doses of creativity, along with heavy doses of splat and lewdness.  Certain tumescent organs being chopped off, horror movie themed sex toys, people being literally torn apart through every possible orifice, it’s all here… for a certain reader type.  

Two other things worthy of special mention: the story “HorrorGasm”, which does a slick job of creating a wild revenge tale, while managing to poke fun at the dorks who sit around watching online porn all day.  For hilarity, “Santa’s Package” wins, running away with the writing of Santa’s bedroom scene. He’s quite the ‘jolly old elf’!  The author’s turning of Christmas clichés into witty double entendres is side-splittingly funny: you’ll laugh hard enough to turn your own belly into a bowl full of jelly.  

Bottom line: this one is good entertainment for certain readers, just don’t take any of it too seriously.  It’s all meant to be fun, over-the-top craziness, and it succeeds well on that score.  However, this is for adults only: don’t let your junior high students near this one.  Recommended for lovers of splat and sleaze.

Reviewed by Murray Samuelson