The title of this collection sets you up for the surprise of lyrical stories of victimizations with unexpected endings for the villains. Be ready to have your heart opened and cheer for perceived victims, human (made and unmade) and other life forms, victorious in the hands of these two award-winning poets. -Linda D. Addison, award-winning author, HWA Lifetime Achievement Award recipient and SFPA Grand Master.
Across histories and cultures and from Auschwitz to Babylon this book leaves you questioning who are the victims, and regardless of your conclusion you're likely to get throat-punched. This is horror where everyone has a knife, and is ready to deliver this message: "Remember, you are always guilty. -Herb Kauderer, author of Fragments from the Book of the After-Dead.
Simon and Turzillo have only gone and startled me again. What a collection! Brutal. Beautiful. This quiver of poems strikes with the unflinching truth of persecution and oppression as seen through the lens of feminism. Prepare to come away bruised and yet strangely bolstered by Victims, a symphony of sadness orchestrated by two masters of dark poetry. -Lee Murray, Bram Stoker and Shirley Jackson Award-winner.
This is one of the braver dark poetry collections I've seen in a while. Horror poets generally employ victims in their work, but the focus is generally on the Evil. Turning the camera the other way is unusual, unsettling, emotionally risky, and surprisingly effective. From their stark opening take on Pygmalion, to the ending poem about the wasted life of Stateira of Persia, this powerful collection teases apart an impressive number of the threads of victimhood. Some are the usual cases, but quite a few are surprises, or reversals, or cases with unexpected layers. There is nothing repetitive about this collection. -Timons Esaias, winner of the Asimov's Readers' Award and the Winter Anthology Contest
Victims is a relentlessly evocative, fearlessly imaginative examination of the emotional impact of torment. Sometimes we feel it from within the victim's tormented bodies and minds -- at others we are forced to bear cruel witness, helpless to prevent the pain as it is inflicted mercilessly by a cruel villain. It is a masterful volume of empathy, written by two veteran poets who know the full spectrum of pain upon which a victim -- usually, though not always, innocently -- suffers the wrath of a rogue, be it historical, imaginary, or spiritual. It is also written by two powerfully visionary women, collaborating to show the pain that women, especially, have often endured across history and continue to suffer through in the present (and likely future). This book is feminist, yes, but it is not simply a vehicle for warranted female rage. It is an extraordinarily gritty book of poetry, focused on feeling and empathy and stripping horror of any seductive veneer, while using the speculative lens of "what might be" to not only warn us about what inevitably happens when power is wielded against the helpless unsparingly, but also what might make it even worse than we could ever imagine. This book bends sadism toward a different angle; it seeks to change the reader and it will. -Michael Arnzen, Bram Stoker Award-winning author of Freakcidents.
