Book: Deep Inside

Last Updated on July 27, 2021

I love horror AND erotica in almost all of their varied forms, so when The Arrow tasked me with a review of DEEP INSIDE it felt right up my alley. The book is a collection of horrotic short stories from Gotham based erotic fiction author Polly Frost. One look at the cover and a quick glance at the book’s glowing blurbs had me wagging my, uh, tail like an excited puppy.

Horror and sex go together like kibbles and bits, and a big reason for this is they succeed based on the merits of the same three things. Skill, anticipation, and surprise. Physiologically fear and orgasm follow very similar paths, so when you combine the two it can be a heady mixture.

Clive Barker is probably the best ever at weaving the two in ways that have you thinking WTF?! while also ending up strangely aroused. But there’s still a lot of room for excellence even if the grandest heights aren’t reached.

Unfortunately, DEEP INSIDE never manages to lift a foot off the ground. The horror, which is not as strongly present as I’d like, simply presents variations on themes that have been done before – virgin sacrifice, alien sex, and voodoo artifacts are all present along with seven other fairly obvious concepts. It’s fine to reuse well worn subjects. Hell we all still love a good zombie movie. But the author’s take has to be unique, or the overall skill with which it’s done must be superb. Preferably both. Neither is the case here.

As to the sexual content, I’m afraid that overuse of the word c*nt does not a steamy tale make. In the internet age when fantastic free erotica is yours for the taking at sites like EroticStories and Literotica, where authors sporting pseudonyms like Blue Dragon, Cum Girl, Kristen S, JustAskMe, Erlikkhan and JenniferO are all pushing the boundaries of how close to literature erotica can get, there’s no excuse for sex scenes that fall as flat as the ones in DEEP INSIDE.

The main reason for the lack of spice is a complete absence of build up. Take the following passage:

“You killed more people than stupid ol’ Aileen did. It’s unfair that Aileen gets acclaimed as America’s finest female serial killer!
(let’s skip to a half page later)
Karen silently watches as I bring Tyler to climax.

I like quickies as much as the next dude, but jeez, don’t give me whiplash. The whole book reads like that in regards to both the horror and the sex. It all happens far too fast, with little to no description or set-up. Thus instead of giving us lots of wet stuff, red stuff, hard stuff and rough stuff, more often than not the book leaves you wondering, how the hell did I get here?

Or as my wife said after reading one of the chapters so I could get a woman’s perspective, “The hottest thing about that story was when you put your hand on my butt while I was reading it.”

As a result of the thinly developed stories and characters, when we reach the end of each tale, usually featuring a twist of some sort, it inevitably either feels forced or expected. The few unique ideas aren’t earned, while most of the endings simply fail to excite any reaction.

Another troubling aspect of the book is that every character seems to speak with the author’s voice. Whether it’s hot-to-trot high school girls in The Threshold, an author with violent rape fantasies in Imagine It, or a sex psychic in Visions of Ecstasy, they all speak with a distressingly similar voice and tone. At the same time shifts of person and perspective careen about the page with no apparent consideration for convention or reader comprehension.

I suppose I should drop some examples of what reads false and flat to me so that you can make up your own mind. If any of the following quotes work for you then you might enjoy this book a great deal:

“Can’t you see?” he said. “Can’t you hear it? The sound quality. It’s different. It’s like a pussy.”

– Someone will have to explain to me what the sound quality of a pussy is

As Sarah daintily unscrewed the gilded top, I stared entranced at the exquisite, bejeweled little jar, with its latticework and tiny symbol-like curlicues

– If the jar is little then any thing on it would by definition be tiny, and btw, symbol-like? Wouldn’t that make it a, uh what’s the word – symbol!

The voice saying these words is bruised and sullen – and very, very familiar. Whose voice is it? Well, let’s just say that you’d recognize the name. Let’s even say that you’ve seen his muscled, bad-boy good looks splashed over many magazine covers. Let’s also say that he’s starring in one of the summer’s biggest blockbusters. A professional macho movie stud, in other words.

– It’s hard to be this generic while using so many words

If it seems like I’m being harsh it’s because DEEP INSIDE shows either a fundamental misunderstanding, or a lack of respect, for the two genres it attempts to mix. And they just happen to be my two favortie genres so I take that a little personally. On top of that the writing is choppy, poorly developed and just damn hard to get through.

Whenever I get a chance to review a relatively unknown work I naturally want to like it, but in this case that’s simply not possible. DEEP INSIDE fails on just about every conceivable level.

BUT

Author Polly Frost has a lot of irons in the fire, and one of them is a web series called THE FOLD. I got a chance to check out the first three episodes and thought it was silly, sexy, Sci-Fi fun. I definitely recommend you check it out.