Title: The Night Mother
Author: John Everson
Publication Date: May 29, 2023
Genres: Erotic Horror
Protagonist Gender: Male/Female
Fetishes: Femdom, BDSM
The first NightWhere novel is one of my favorite works of erotic horror, right up there with Clive Barker's The Hellbound Heart and The House of Blood by Wayne C. Rogers. It was graphic, disturbing, arousing, disgusting, and utterly fascinating, all at the same time. Field of Flesh, the sequel novella, provided an entertaining new perspective on the otherworldly BDSM club, but there's no question it left me wanting more.
Fortunately, 5 years later, we have The Night Mother, a full-length novel, to tie it all together. This is a direct sequel to the first book, which means Selena, Mark, and Rae once again take center stage (alongside favorites like Sin-D and Damia), but it also follows along from the novella, so expect to see our noir detective appear in a surprising role.
Although he beautifully outdoes himself here with some of the S&M-themed depravities, what John Everson has done that's even more important is delve deeper into the mythology of NightWhere - angels, demons, creation myths, immortality, and all. We're led to understand who the players are and who they were, why the club has Guardians and Watchers, and what happens when mere mortals are elevated above their station. There are consequences - deadly serious, apocalyptic consequences - to this third story that go far beyond relationship dramas or the fate of individual souls. There's a battle for the very heart of NightWhere, and if it all goes astray . . . well, let's just say it would be bad news for us all.
As for those relationship dramas, Everson gives us layers of intertwined love stories, some dark and some light, but all damaged in some way. While it's the pursuit of pleasure and pain that drive the club, it's something more than drives lovers. We're privy to the best and worst of their motivations, but even the romance and vengeance must sometimes take a back seat to those consequences I mentioned.
It should go without saying, but I'll say it anyway - The Night Mother is not for the squeamish or the prudish. There's dark, violent, sadistic, necrophiliac sex on display here . . . the insertion of toys, blades, fists, and snakes . . . showers of blood . . . and the spilling of ungodly amounts of cum. It's brutal and messy, but also beautiful in its own way. There's more than one scene over which I lingered, needing to read it again in order to digest the visuals along with the narrative.
Finally, whereas so many works of fiction are ruined by exposing the monster too much or too soon, we see exactly as much of The Night Mother as the story demands, enough to make us fear her (and fear the consequences of her obsession), but never so much as to risk making her familiar or commonplace. In fact, before I risk spoiling things best left to your own discovery, I leave you with a taste of how we're led to know her.
There was something of heaven and hell in every taste of the eternal woman's orgasms...The Night Mother's secretions were sour as frozen-scream corpses dangled from rusted hooks, and intoxicating as a chorus line of oiled men ejaculating on women flaunting fishnets to their thighs but otherwise bare and glossed with sweat and the shine of piercings on the floor beneath them.
Bitter and beautiful.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Rating: ♀ ♀ ♀ ♀ ♀
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