S.B. (Beauty in Ruins)'s Reviews > NightWhere

It was Clive Barker's The Hellbound Heart that first opened my eyes to the erotic potential of true, blood-curdling horror. The House of Blood by Wayne C. Rogers (sadly out of print) came next, upping factors both fetish and fear, and making me wonder how much further an author could take it. While it's taken me far too long to enjoy the answer, it comes in the form of John Everson's NightWhere, the glorious finale in an unholy thematic trinity of blood, bondage, and blasphemy.

While there is no such thing as a perfect book (Mark's too-easy final assault upon The Red irks me a bit), this is about as close as they come. I wanted a work of erotic horror that delivered on both fronts. I was looking for a book that's as drenched in blood as it is in semen and tears. I craved a story that could turn me off and turn me on, often in the same paragraph. Most of all, I wanted to experience an author who isn't afraid to push the limits, to cross the line, and to risk offending just about every sensibility.

To put it bluntly, this is fucking it.

This is the most graphically obscene mainstream novel that I have ever read. It starts off edgy and kinky, with some BDSM play that gets a little rough and bloody, and then it bleeds right into torture porn, snuff, blasphemy, and necrophilia. It's graphic, it's disturbing, and it's also utterly fascinating. Everson plays with a lot of concepts and themes here, with love and marriage at the heart of it all, but he twists things in such a way that we're forced to confront our fears and our fantasies at the same time. He simultaneously conveys the dark passions that Rae chases so deeply, and the pure love that drives Mark onward. In our hearts (and perhaps our souls) we know that Mark is in the right, we know he's the hero, and we want him to save his wife . . . but it is so hard to deny the guilty pleasures that Rae invites us to share. There comes a point where, even though we may be hoping for redemption, we're willing to sacrifice her to see what The Black holds.

As much as this is a novel of pain and pleasure, torture and titillation, all of that would eventually become tiresome and repetitive were it not for the characters. Mark and Rae are a fantastic couple, a husband and wife with whom it's all too easy to relate at the beginning, and whom we become invested in as their lives fall apart. Sin-D is a fascinating sort-of guide to NightWhere, a promiscuous, all-knowing bartender whose pained humanity intrigues us from the start. Kharon is far too cold and inhuman to really engage us, serving more as a plot device than a character, but he does have his moments. Damia, on the other hand, is the kind of scene-chewing, over-the-top villainess who made me smile every time she popped up at Mark's side. Finally, we have Selena, a character who takes a while to really step out of the shadows, but whose back-story could be a novel all on its own.

While the supernatural plays a huge role in NightWhere, making possible so much desecration and defilement night-after-night, it is the human aspects that are often the most chilling. Amidst all the intricate mechanisms of torture, designed as unholy trials and rites of passage, it is not the bizarre cornfield of crucifixions that sticks with me most, but the simplicity of a booby-trapped dildo - a mortal invention, borne of spite and jealousy. When we can intend such unforgivable things for one another, simply so that we can 'win' the right to proceed deeper into darkness, it really drives home the idea that Hell (spiritual, psychological, or physical) is what we make of it. Unlike so many stories where the 'fallen' character is seduced into sin, pushed into perversion, John Everson does not allow us that out. We're not here because anybody got dragged kicking and screaming into it, we're here because it's precisely where they want to be. And where, even if you won't admit it publicly, you're inclined to linger perhaps a little too long, wondering if you could ever be more than a literary voyeur.