BOOK REVIEW: Voices Of The Damned

- By David Dubrow

There’s a temptation to treat Barbie Wilde’s anthology Voices of the Damned in one of two ways: the first as a horror fan looking to curry favor, or the second as someone looking to prove that he’s not impressed by Wilde’s iconic status in the horror genre.

Cover art by the great Clive Barker

I won’t do either, because Voices of the Damned deserves better. This is an extraordinary collection that doesn’t just break taboos, but shatters them and dances with stiletto heels upon the mewling, agonized pieces. Wilde explores a breadth of themes that go beyond the standard tropes of sex and death, of torment and delight, of holiness and profanity, taking us to new, disturbing realms of imagination that we haven’t seen since Clive Barker’s visionary Books of Blood. Her unique blend of dry humor and graphic description will have you smiling in one sentence and holding down your gorge in the next.

In her Sister Cilice stories, Sister Cilice, The Cilicium Pandoric, and The Cilicium Rebellion, Wilde takes control of the character she portrayed in Hellraiser, making the female Cenobite her own person with a past, present, and terrible future. When does devotion become masochism, agony transform to orgasm? And what happens after, when desires are sated?

The zombie theme gets a disgusting workout in Zulu Zombies, with an introductory scene that very few writers would have the courage to relate. It’s fun, a bit campy, and just different enough to make you realize that there’s (un)life in the zombie genre yet.

American Mutant tackles evangelist Christianity, America’s deep south, and family. It relies on cliché for laughs, and as a send-up of religious yokels below the Mason-Dixon line, we’ve seen it before.

The Alpdrucke and Gaia are the workhorses of the collection, serving up non-standard horrors that keep you turning the pages without making you work too hard.

Zulu Zombies (Nick Percival)

Valeska made up for that with a bizarre conceit that Wilde cleverly manages to keep from descending into pornography through deft characterization and the shattering of expectations. Some vampires are Sanguines, and they drink blood. Others are Seminals, and they drink…well, you’ll figure it out.

Polyp was hysterically funny, with a deep core of horror that doesn’t leave you alone when the story’s over. Botophobia takes you first one way, then another, then kidnaps you and hauls you to a disquieting place you didn’t see coming.

The life of a horror writer with the attendant social media BS, personal marketing, and convention attendance gets a hilarious treatment in Writer’s Block. If you’ve ever wanted to know what the writer’s life is really like (sort of), including encounters with crazed fans in hotels, this is your story.

The praise for this collection from horror luminaries like Doug Bradley, The Soska Sisters, and Jonathan Maberry isn’t overstated. Inside, you’ll find things to bite you, kiss you, and…and do other things. Whatever happens to our beloved horror genre in the coming years, Barbie Wilde’s already put her mark upon it, and the news is both enticing and terrifying.

@davedauthor