Well I could not resist the allure of a collection of stories from Cthulhu Sex magazine. Mainly based on the title. I mean, there had to be at least a few mythos stories in there, right? And when I got Cthulhu and the Coeds, it had a bunch of dogs, but a fine gem "The Scrimshaw Museum" that made me happy, so the same had to hold true for Horror Between the Sheets, right?

Wrooooongggggg!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !

I really should have listened to mythos fans who were more cautionary. This book was $12.95, alas another kick in the teeth when considering the worth of the collection. Page count was 163, a little less than, for example, Lost Worlds of Space and Time, but then the cost is a few dollars less. Production qualities are about the same as other trade paperbacks, meaning I am concerned that it won't hold up well compared to paperbacks of yore. I was wondering if there was some way to tell if it was POD although with this process some books are very finely wrought, like Eldritch Blue. Lost Worlds of Space and Time, however, seems a cut lower. Horror Between the Sheets may be a click lower still. If I am right, and these are POD type books. The cover art by Michael Amorel was OK, showing some tentacles reaching through some sea weedy depths, in crimson light. OK, I liked it well enough, no wow factor like Cthulhu 2000 or Horrors Beyond. The editors were Michael Amorel, Oliver Baer and Benjamin Wretlind, three persons I never heard of and won't be seeking out fiction by.

Right from the get go I have to say that I was terribly disappointed. Why the bleep do they call it Cthulhu Sex when it has nothing to do with Lovecraft except if you contort tangential associations enormously. Also the writing was generally mediocre compared to that seen in recent mythos anthologies like Dreaming in R'lyeh, Eldritch Blue, Lost Worlds of Space and Time or Horrors Beyond. The list seems to be a generous sampling of items, but just about every other work was a tedious poem, which were even less readable than the prose. Here is the contents list. A lot of the stories were made worse by the arch, too hip for words, you have to be in on the joke kind of (feeble attempt at) humor that pervaded the anthology from the introduction onward. Body orifices and gore do not horror make, and certainly don't make it mythos.

Introduction by Michael Amorel
The Noseeums by Jeremy Russell
The Titterer in the Twilight by Mark McLaughlin
Erato's Sister by David Annandale
Siren by David Galef
Go Team by Kenneth Brady
Cthulhu Sex (ahem!) -a poem- by Katherine Morel
Beyond by Brian Knight & Durant Haire
Elegy in a Graveyard by Lynne den Hartog
A Slice of Life by Arthur Cullipher
de sade begs to differ by MorrisoN
Romancing the Worm by Sue D'Nimm
Thaw by David Ethan Levit
Skin by Joi A. Brozek
19 by Father Baer
The Reaching Wall by Christine Morgan
Possession by Julie Shiel
The Masterpiece by Jenn Mann
Wandering in the Graveyard at Night by William Mordore
The Phone Company by Racheline Maltese
He by Abigail Parsley
Giant Squid! by Heather Highfield
Two Loves by Adam Falik & Robert Wheeler
The Pear by Matthew Howe

I will describe the stories that may spoil them for those of you who are still inclined to get this anthology. The poems are best left to your imagination.

Noseeums is actually pretty good conventional story, maybe the best in the book, about a man in an asylum who sees entities that eat the souls of humans when they die, and so is hiding out. His wife doesn't believe him, but he gives her a taste of what he sees. This would not have been out of place in Horrors Beyond.

Erato's Sister was by David Annandale. This is distressing because Mr. Annandale wrote what may be the finest mythos tale of the modern era, Final Draft in Dead But Dreaming. I find that story has astonishing prose and power. And now he comes up with this awful gory ghouly sex bilge fest.

Go Team had some (not mythos related) tentacles. Story wasn't very good, about demons taking over the far west and a cheerleader who saves the day, sort of.

Beyond was actually OK, a private eye and a grizzled cop investigate a cult that is occult, having a malevolent thing leader from another world/dimension. Some hard-boiled stuff. Not great, but in comparison actually was readable.

Slice of Life was a twisted retelling of Hansel and Gretel. The thing had tentacles on its face. Non-mythos tentacles.

Romancing the Worm could not decide if it was weird western fiction or humor. I think one or the other would have been better. The very modern idiom didn't help with the confusion. An Indian on the verge of manhood has to have relations with the tribe medicine woman and discovers a dark secret of the tribe. I both liked and disliked this story. Maybe if all the "poems" hadn't put me in a bad mood I would be more favorably inclined toward it.

Skin was terrible, teen slasher piercing rebellion, boring and tedious.

The Reaching Wall is where a popular teen goes off her rocker and imagines the bathroom wallpaper vines are trying to get her. Conventional horror. OK but forgettable.

The Masterpiece was short (thank goodness); a sculptor creates a statue that eats her boyfriend's essence. There have been similar mythos stories. This effort was pedestrian and predictable but readable.

The Phone Company showed some predictable plotting as some geek types discover something unpleasant about the real workings of the phone company. If this had been written as a straight up horror story it could have worked. The humor part fell flat.

He was hardly readable, nothing like the HPL story.

Two Loves was schizophrenic, with some conventional suspense in the first part and a virtually unreadable morass in the second part.

The Pear was a S&M story. Interesting slant about the
beauracratization of torture. Really quite predictable, however.

So in summary, nothing to interest the HPL reader who is looking for mythos related or inspired fiction. There are so many better ways to spend your Cthulhu bucks it isn't funny: Lost Worlds of Space and Time; Night Journeys, Night Voices; Horrors Beyond; Eldritch Blue; Lovecraft's Legacy, Cthulhu 2000; Atrocity Archive etc etc. Based on these "best of" stories from Cthulhu Sex I will not be seeking out this magazine, say, ever.

I suppose to be fair I have to say that the editors of Cthulhu sex perhaps just wanted edgy sex based dark fiction instead of mythos. That doesn't make it any more readable, alas. ( )