EXcessica Publishing, e-book  £ 3.27

Reviewed by Mario Guslandi

Dark erotica and erotic horror constitute an established subgenre with a definite, faithful readership, and a noble literary  tradition dating back to such stories as Theophile Gautier’s “Clarimonde”, just to mention an example. The present volume assembles a bunch of tales, some of them interconnected to form a novelette, featuring a quite vicious  type of femme fatale, the horrific  yet enticing succubus, endowed with wings, tail and, most of all, an insatiable appétit for sex, thanks to a hungry, inhuman, sucking  vagina apt to capture body and soul of her unfortunate bedfellows.

Thus, let’s make this clear: here we have, rather than titillating eroticism, plain, explicit sex where intercourse has  paranormal ( or should I say, “supernormal”) duration, and elicits unspeakable, paramount pleasure, inevitably with dire, lethal consequences for the male partner. If you’re a prudish type of reader this book is definitely not for you.

On the other hand, If you don’t mind embarking upon an overwhelming , endless journey into the very pleasurable   but extremely dangerous   sex with a ravenous female monster,  and you’re not offended by explicit, graphic  language, then you will  probably enjoy this collection.

Therein you’ll learn how summoning an insatiable, nymphomanic succubus brings about extreme but deadly pleasures, and will  make acquaintance with another  succubus  kept prisoner in a cage who manages to seduce one of her guardians by projecting  ectoplasmic appendices beyond the bars.

In another story an alien flower resembling the female genitalia irresistibly attracts a horny astronaut only to make him reach the ultimate orgasm. An old king dies, leaving his crown and his harem  to a barbarian warrior who becomes the toy of a cunning succubus. A  warlock and a succubus start a carnage in a pub full of hooligans, in a hurricane of violence and lethal sex.

A massage parlour reviewer has a fatal encounter with a  sexually voracious, inhuman masseuse while a man trying to forget his former lover celebrates unholy rites before a magic candle and becomes devastated by a sexual tornado.

The novelette “Locked in with a Succubus”, divided in 13 parts (a prologue, eleven chapters and an epilogue), nicely portraits a  powerful , lusty succubus disguised as a mere prostitute revealing her true, playful, but nasty nature to a still virgin man bound to experience an unbelievable sexual apprenticeship.

Hydra is certainly a fine writer, exhibiting good storytelling ability, appropriate and resourceful wording and a good command of his prose, qualities extremely useful when you have to keep describing over and over again the same situation and the same events. Indeed this is the pitfall of the present book: sex is certainly quite interesting and attractive, but, after all ,inevitably repetitive and, being just  humans and not succubi, there’s a limit to how much we can take. Therefore you’d better  little morsels , one at the time, from this juicy fictional meal or you’ll end up with a bad indigestion.