Danika reviews Fist of the Spider Woman edited by Amber Dawn

This book freaked me out. Again, it was one I meant to read in October for my Halloween-y reads, but my inter-library loan didn’t come in until late November. It’s a bit of a shame, because it would have made for a fantastic Halloween read. It’s a short story collection (with a few poems) that mixes erotica and horror. The stories will go from a sexy place into a kinky place into an outright horror place. This kind of slipping between genres was especially unsettling. The standard of writing was high for the entire collection, with authors like Amber Dawn, Michelle Tea, and Kristyn Dunnion contributing. The subjects varied. Some were very much in the horror genre, and some were more light.

Fist of the Spider Woman doesn’t ease you into it: the first story, “Slug”, has the main character having vicious fantasies (again, they start out as kinky… and then often end in slow death), and that’s before the “slug” element takes place. If you read the first story and enjoy it, you’ll definitely like the collection. It is horror, however, so pretty much all the trigger warning apply, including gore, rape, and gaslighting.

This may be my favourite queer Halloween/horror book that I’ve read. I especially enjoyed Amber Dawn’s “The Last Lesbian Rental In East Vancouver” and Kestrel Barnes’s “Shark”. I also personally liked that many of the authors included are local British Columbia authors. For next Halloween, or any time you want to be creeped out and unsettled, I definitely comment this collection.