Home » Posts tagged "Nikki Noir"

Book Review: Suck-U-Bus (New Adult Occult) by S.C. Mendes and Nikki Noir

cover art for Suck-U-Bus by S.C. Mendes and Nikki Noir

Suck-U-Bus (New Adult Occult) by S.C. Mendes and Nikki Noir

Blood Bound Books, 2023

ISBN: 9781940250588

Available::Paperback, KIndle edition

Buy: Amazon.com

 

 

This dark and crazy heavy metal horror is the first book co-written by two very good authors, S.C. Mendes and Nikki “Spleaze Queen” Noir.  The plot line is excellent:  a nice tweaking of the classic “we sold our souls for rock n’ roll’  trope.  How does it fare?  Well…make no mistake, it’s good, it just never feels like the overdrive gear kicks in and blows you away, which is what both authors do.

 

The band Suck-U-Bus (succubus), led by three women called the Mothers, promote their legend online and at shows.  After each show, three lucky winners get a meet-and -greet on the tour bus…with a demon, and they must have, um, carnal relations with it.  That’s the price for the band’s success.  The demon makes them famous, but needs to indulge in his devilish desires after each show.  Lisa Hummer and her brother Danny go to the show, and Danny gets chosen. Next thing, he is following the band everywhere, but NOT doing well.  Alarmed, Lisa goes after him, learning as she goes about the misfortunes of prior backstage winners.  In the process, she gets pulled into the dark legend-or-reality-that is Suck-U-Bus.

 

Those are the basics.  As far as writing, the two authors work well together.  It’s a good blend of the darkness Mendes usually brings to his writing, with the over-the-top insanity of Noir..  The pacing is decent, the story just never quite explodes all over the pages.  There is some real cleverness to it, though.  Lisa’s doubts about the reality of what is happening demonstrate this: is all the demon stuff true, or is this one of the best metal hoaxes ever, a gimmick to get money by using fake exorcisms and possessions? It’s over too soon, but the book does put together a nice final section and a banger of an ending: the final demon confrontation felt like classic Nikki Noir all the way.

 

Bottom line: it’s a decent collaboration, but I suspect the authors can pull a better one out of their trick bag. Let’s hope they do another.  Fun error: the song in the book should have been ‘Necropedophile,’ not ‘Necropedilia.’   Like the authors, I also happen to be quite familiar with the Cannibal Corpse discography.  Recommended. (The book. Well, the music too!)

 

Reviewed by Murray Samuelson

 

Posted on January 24, 2024 by , Reply

Book Review: Black Planet, Vols. 1-4 by Nikki Noir

Black Planet Books 1-4 by Nikki Noir

Black Planet, Books 1-4, by Nikki Noir

Blood Bound Books, 2020

ISBN: 9798675368907

Available: paperback, Kindle edition ( Amazon.com )

 

With her short stories, author Nikki Noir has carved out a place for herself in the world of spleaze (that’s ‘splat and sleaze’) writing.  Black Planet was previously released electronically as four separate sections, now all combined into one paperback book.  It’s a decent effort, with the first two ‘setup’ sections being the best parts.  The third section, which carries the bulk of the story’s motion, is a bit of a letdown, with too many of the essential plot details held back.  Still, the first two sections help make up for the third.  The fourth section is basically just a lead-in to whatever comes next, as according to the author, there will be more.

 

The first section sets up the story beautifully, replete with the author’s usual trashy intensity.  Two teens eking out a living by doing sleazy online fetish films have the good fortune of a relative dying, thus giving them a dead body to use in their videos.  They hook up with a girl who is into the occult and crazier than they are. That concludes the excellent first section, and no question, it’s the best one.  Section 2 is a different thread but still setting the story up, and it’s almost as good as the first section.  This time it involves teen girl Haley, her younger brother, and weird mechanical owls in the woods.  There’s also a shade of what’s to come, with the introduction of the shadowy organization Stillwater.  

 

Where the first two parts ran at high speed, you’d expect the overdrive gear to kick in for the third section, where the plot threads start to tie together.  But, this section feels more like it’s stuck in neutral.  The author’s trademark freaky sex and messy murders are there, the writing is fine… it just doesn’t have the same sense of urgency as the first two sections.  Part of the problem is almost none of the “why” part is given in this section, and it would have been the perfect time to do it.  The organization called Stillwater keeps lurking in the background, but its presence is given very little time, or explanation.  To keep readers interested, an author have to give them something in the book for a bit of the ‘why’ things are happening.  Otherwise, it seems more like a linear sequence of events that happen for no real purpose, and it’s frustrating.  It’s playing the plot cards too close to the vest for a bit too long, you gotta throw a few cards on the table to keep the game going.  The storyline is good, it just needs to be less of a mystery.   

 

There’s some definite fun to be had with reading Black Planet, it just could have used a few tweaks to help keep reader interest higher.  Hopefully, the next sections will reveal more to the readers in terms of the overall plot.   

 

Reviewed by Murray Samuelson.

Posted on April 25, 2023 by , Reply

Book Review: Petite Mort by S.C. Mendes and Nikki Noir

 

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

Posted on October 18, 2022 by , Reply