Lisa Dabrowski, the pensmith behind the dominatrix, sexual terrorist and demi Goddess that is Mistress Rosie, takes her celebrated kinkiness a step further with this collection. Be warned: it’s a bold work, and while half the world’s still frigging itself silly over EL James’ ‘literary’ creations Dabrowski shows us she knows what real Sadomasochism is all about. It’s not hard to see why it found a home at Oneiros Books, because 50 Shades style mummy porn it most certainly isn’t.
There’s a distinctly ‘vintage’ feel to the whole publication: the narratives are executed in a way that feels like it belongs to a former time in history. This is certainly no criticism: in eschewing the trappings of the contemporary and instead feeding from more historical stylistic tropes, ‘Dr Sadistic’s House of Whorrors’ is imbued with a ‘classic’ and ‘timeless’ quality absent from the majority of contemporary texts. This ‘old school’ feel feeds through into the presentation, far beyond the pen-and-ink cover art an into the very fabric of the text, laid out in a heavy and ornate script that stentoriously announces itself as ‘17th Century’. These are only a few of the book’s many strengths, and Dabrowski builds things well across the series of pieces contained here.
The blurb promises ‘Poignant accounts of male correction that are both arousing and politically subversive’ and ‘Dr Sadistic’s House of Whorrors’ doesn’t disappoint. This is pretty dark stuff. Our first meeting with Dr Sadistic reveals that he’s a character worthy of his name. ‘He opened the door to the lab; I notice on the shelves were what appeared to be canning jars, full of discarded fetuses. I should have run, but curiosity on what his explanation would be got the best of me.’ A such, we’re escorted – with a firm grip on the arm and the unspoken threat of unimaginable pain – into a world of classic psychological horror. I say psychological, because the horrors depicted are those that instead fear and dread. It’s not nearly as much about the fear of physical pain as the torment the images elicit.
‘Dr Sadistic and the Zombie Slaves’ draws on classic tropes and combines it with elements of contemporary horror while also incorporating some sharp twists on genre trappings coupled with some great storytelling.
It isn’t easy to cover this book without giving away many of the essential features which means I should probably halt at this juncture with the admonition that if you’re after something darkly perverse, look no further.
Dr Sadistic’s House of Whorrors is available on line.
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