Bad Dreams
by Kim Newman
"First you dream, then you die…"
In Bad Dreams the modernist horrors of Clive
Barker and Freddy Krueger fuse with fairytale fears that last into adulthood to
form a nightmare from which there is no waking up.
Anne Nielson, an American journalist, comes to London to
investigate the strange death of her sister, Judi. She soon becomes trapped in a
netherworld of sado-masochist clubs, suburban swingers, and drug-dealing
would-be master criminals. Here she meets the Monster, an immoral life-taker who
lives at the center of his own twisted dream and feeds on the living memories
and fantasies of other people. Sucked into the world of the newly damned, Anne
is hurtled toward a final confrontation where she has only the dead as
allies.
***
From Publishers Weekly
This sporadically gruesome and nearly always frightening
horror tale is not for the squeamish or faint of heart, but readers enthralled
by things that go bump in the night are in for a treat. When journalist Anne
Nielson goes to London to investigate the death of her sister Judi, a
drug-addicted prostitute, she finds herself enmeshed with the denizens of Judi's
nightmarish world: dealers, pimps, sadomasochists and, most horribly, the
Monster, a member of the Kind-a ghoulish race kept eternally alive by eating
humans and ingesting their dreams. Newman (The Night Mayor) pits his
spirited heroine against this fiend in several brutal, shocking and tense
encounters. One might expect that the immortal Monster would have the upper
hand, but Anne, certain that he killed her sister, proves a formidable foe. Will
her dreams be won by the Kind? Fans of the genre should enjoy finding out.
***
From Kirkus Reviews
Riotously inventive horror fantasy, the second novel by
the author of the wildly original The Night Mayor (1990). Newman trumps
up some superbly clever devices here, and at last creates a heroine we can care
about, or almost care about, before she fades into the Dreamscape. The American
sisters Anne and Judi Nielson and their half-brother Cameron Nielson III (a
famous minimalist composer), children of Nobel Prize playwright Cameron Nielson,
live in London, where Anne writes and Judi, a junkie S&M prostitute, hires
herself out to be beaten. In the first chapter, Judi is eaten alive while
turning a trick, or has the blood and most of her flesh sucked out of her, as
well as her mind and memory, by Mr. Skinner, a vampire known as the King of the
Cats, or leader of the Kind, who was once a master of the now-vanished Immortal
Empire. Very few vampires still walk about, and Mr. Skinner himself has only one
rival, Ariadne, a sexy vamp much older, smarter, and more powerful than he. Anne
tries to trace Judi's path through the whoreworld to find out just how her
sister's corpse had aged into a very old woman's. Judi's prostitute friend Nina
leads Anne to the mansion of Amelia Dorf ("It was the kind of quietly well-off
residential street where mass murderers live…''-a kind of Karloffian
understatement) where an S&M party is in full swing, ruled by the Game
Master, Mr. Skinner. We'll say no more, only that Mr. Skinner's vampirism is a
boldly invented passionate state that can barely be contained by human form;
that the Old Dark House becomes a dream house in which rooms lead into mindrooms
into dreamrooms; that at one point Mr. Skinner falls into a feeding frenzy and
eats up the whole party, then licks his lizard-long tongue at Anne and begins
chasing her through the walls… When you meet Mr. Skinner, remember that he bears
the memories of all his victims, and that when you join him you join all of them
as well. Comforting.
***
From Library Journal
When her sister is found dead in London's Soho district,
journalist Anne Nielson begins a private investigation that leads her to a
sordid underworld of prostitution, drugs, and kinky sex before plunging her into
a terrifying nightmare world inhabited by an immortal killer who feeds off the
lives and dreams of his victims. Graphic descriptions of sex and violence place
this novel by the author of The Night Mayor (Carroll & Graf, 1990)
firmly inside the boundaries of splatter fiction. Newman's heady surrealism and
knife-edge prose, however, give the story a sophistication that is unusual to
the genre. Recommended, with qualifications, for libraries with strong horror
collections.
In Bad Dreams the modernist horrors of Clive
Barker and Freddy Krueger fuse with fairytale fears that last into adulthood to
form a nightmare from which there is no waking up.
Anne Nielson, an American journalist, comes to London to
investigate the strange death of her sister, Judi. She soon becomes trapped in a
netherworld of sado-masochist clubs, suburban swingers, and drug-dealing
would-be master criminals. Here she meets the Monster, an immoral life-taker who
lives at the center of his own twisted dream and feeds on the living memories
and fantasies of other people. Sucked into the world of the newly damned, Anne
is hurtled toward a final confrontation where she has only the dead as
allies.
***
From Publishers Weekly
This sporadically gruesome and nearly always frightening
horror tale is not for the squeamish or faint of heart, but readers enthralled
by things that go bump in the night are in for a treat. When journalist Anne
Nielson goes to London to investigate the death of her sister Judi, a
drug-addicted prostitute, she finds herself enmeshed with the denizens of Judi's
nightmarish world: dealers, pimps, sadomasochists and, most horribly, the
Monster, a member of the Kind-a ghoulish race kept eternally alive by eating
humans and ingesting their dreams. Newman (The Night Mayor) pits his
spirited heroine against this fiend in several brutal, shocking and tense
encounters. One might expect that the immortal Monster would have the upper
hand, but Anne, certain that he killed her sister, proves a formidable foe. Will
her dreams be won by the Kind? Fans of the genre should enjoy finding out.
***
From Kirkus Reviews
Riotously inventive horror fantasy, the second novel by
the author of the wildly original The Night Mayor (1990). Newman trumps
up some superbly clever devices here, and at last creates a heroine we can care
about, or almost care about, before she fades into the Dreamscape. The American
sisters Anne and Judi Nielson and their half-brother Cameron Nielson III (a
famous minimalist composer), children of Nobel Prize playwright Cameron Nielson,
live in London, where Anne writes and Judi, a junkie S&M prostitute, hires
herself out to be beaten. In the first chapter, Judi is eaten alive while
turning a trick, or has the blood and most of her flesh sucked out of her, as
well as her mind and memory, by Mr. Skinner, a vampire known as the King of the
Cats, or leader of the Kind, who was once a master of the now-vanished Immortal
Empire. Very few vampires still walk about, and Mr. Skinner himself has only one
rival, Ariadne, a sexy vamp much older, smarter, and more powerful than he. Anne
tries to trace Judi's path through the whoreworld to find out just how her
sister's corpse had aged into a very old woman's. Judi's prostitute friend Nina
leads Anne to the mansion of Amelia Dorf ("It was the kind of quietly well-off
residential street where mass murderers live…''-a kind of Karloffian
understatement) where an S&M party is in full swing, ruled by the Game
Master, Mr. Skinner. We'll say no more, only that Mr. Skinner's vampirism is a
boldly invented passionate state that can barely be contained by human form;
that the Old Dark House becomes a dream house in which rooms lead into mindrooms
into dreamrooms; that at one point Mr. Skinner falls into a feeding frenzy and
eats up the whole party, then licks his lizard-long tongue at Anne and begins
chasing her through the walls… When you meet Mr. Skinner, remember that he bears
the memories of all his victims, and that when you join him you join all of them
as well. Comforting.
***
From Library Journal
When her sister is found dead in London's Soho district,
journalist Anne Nielson begins a private investigation that leads her to a
sordid underworld of prostitution, drugs, and kinky sex before plunging her into
a terrifying nightmare world inhabited by an immortal killer who feeds off the
lives and dreams of his victims. Graphic descriptions of sex and violence place
this novel by the author of The Night Mayor (Carroll & Graf, 1990)
firmly inside the boundaries of splatter fiction. Newman's heady surrealism and
knife-edge prose, however, give the story a sophistication that is unusual to
the genre. Recommended, with qualifications, for libraries with strong horror
collections.