Wintry Monsters Press

The Night Mother

by John Everson

Releasing June 1, 2023

I’m calling The Night Mother extreme erotic-horror. There is a lot of sex in this book, as well as a lot of kinks. I’m not someone who generally (or ever) reads erotica, so the levels of graphic content throughout The Night Mother continued to surprise me again and again. I expected the sex–the author, John Everson, let me know that upfront–but I didn’t realize how far it would go time and time again. This goes beyond whips and chains; once our cast enters The Red–the primary level of NightWhere, I suppose you could say–you are bombarded with fetishes that are detailed and come one after another. And during the Rabbit Race nearer to the finale, again there were many moments that made me blush or made me uncomfortable. In fact, there were parts of the Rabbit Race that I had to start skimming because the graphic nature was too much for me. But I think you get the point–I’m telling you to expect gratuitous sex when picking up this novel. As for the other elements, there’s a hunt taking place for at least half the novel, and the tension present is thoroughly exciting and intriguing, especially because we are given a lot of background information during this period; there’s a forbidden love story taking place between multiple characters, including Selena and Mark, and Paul and Cassie, so there’s an element of romance and drama that keeps prevalent throughout; during the Rabbit Race and within the Red, there’s a lot of torture and gruesome violence for those looking for the heaviest sequences of horror; and there’s a platform for fantasy, seeing as this is a story of fallen angels and demons struggling with one another while also running a secret kingdom of violent sex. I’m down for all that. And Everson is a fantastic writer, so he brings the world to life with ease. As such, I really enjoyed this novel from start to finish, enough so that I’ll have to check out The NightWhere sometime. (No, I did not read that beforehand, nor is it necessarily–as Everson told me ahead of time, this story stands on its own and can be read without prior knowledge of the book that came a decade before it.)

The Bottom Line: “This is a darkly perverse novel of extremes–extreme love, extreme betrayal, extreme violence… The Night Mother is all about upping the brutality of life and its most difficult to come by desires.”

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