Review: Erotic Whispers by M.S. Tarot

To start with, I'll say that this book is worth getting for "The Bag Snatchers" and "A Grim Tribute" all by themselves. The latter horrified me as much as any story I've read in years, and the former showcases author M.S. Tarot's fiendish imagination at its peak.

The six tales herein span the gamut from brutal tales of vengeance to erotic hauntings to tumbling descents into madness and monsters. Tarot stays within the broad category of erotic horror, but won't otherwise sit still or be shut into any one box -- delving now into history for source material and next into fairy tales, juggling cyber-horror with seductive hauntings, sympathetic protagonists and narrators consumed with narcissism.

This is not experimental, avant garde fiction, but the author likes to take chances and defy convention. It didn't always work for me -- one tale featured a shifting narrative framework that jarred my immersion in the story and forced me to repeatedly regain my inertia. When it pays off, though, it pays off phenomenally.

Running through the entire collection is a sometimes-subtle, sometimes overt dance with ambiguity. The main thrust of each plot almost always flows clearly and coherently. But little questions of interpretation peek out here and there, because this is an author who wants his readers involved in the storytelling, so that their imaginations have room to explore along with his. One story in particular (I won't say which one) is either a Lovecraftian tale of body horror or a cunning villain's fully real-world psychological manipulation of unwitting victims. The stories often grow more complex the more you think about them, like puzzle boxes with a treasure of terror hidden away at the center once opened.

If you've an evening to spare this Halloween season, you could do much worse than to spend it reading Erotic Shivers.