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Engines of Desire: Tales of Love & other Horrors

Livia Llewellyn,

Laird Barron (Goodreads Author) (Introduction)

4.24 · Rating details · 172 ratings · 30 reviews

Death and pleasure. Freud's Todestrieb, his statement that ''libido has the task of making the destroying instinct innocuous, and it fulfils the task by diverting that instinct to a great extent outwards....The instinct is then called the destructive instinct, the instinct for mastery, or the will to power.'' Few authors have spun stories of Thanatos and Eros as skillfully ...more

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Paperback, 198 pages

Published 2011 by Lethe Press

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Feb 21, 2011 Nick Cato rated it it was amazing

This 10-story collection by relative newcomer Livia Llewellyn features dark stories in several genres (and mixed genres). After a short & sweet introduction from author Laird Barron, ENGINES kicks into high gear with the apocalyptic HORSES, which tells the tale of Angela Kingston, a missile facilites technician dealing with an international nuclear exchange. This one goes from bleak to bleaker and (literally) leaves you in the void (if you don't like your fiction extra dark, now would be a g This 10-story collection by relative newcomer Livia Llewellyn features dark stories in several genres (and mixed genres). After a short & sweet introduction from author Laird Barron, ENGINES kicks into high gear with the apocalyptic HORSES, which tells the tale of Angela Kingston, a missile facilites technician dealing with an international nuclear exchange. This one goes from bleak to bleaker and (literally) leaves you in the void (if you don't like your fiction extra dark, now would be a good time to abandon ship...)

AT THE EDGE OF ELLENSBERG is the sexually-charged tale of Tesla, a smart college girl who becomes entranced with a drug-dealing womanizer named Brett who lives on campus. Despite her friends' warning that the guy's a loser, she begins to stalk him, and what a first seems like a pulpy smut story turns into anything but. This one takes a surreal twist toward the end and left me wanting more.

Llewellyn shines with her super-short pieces: THE TESLATED SALISHAN EVERGREEN is a nifty bizarro fantasy, as is BRIMSTONE ORANGE (both stories deal with trees and fate), while TAKE YOUR DAUGHTERS TO WORK is as heartbreaking as it is horrific.

The title tale, ENGINES OF DESIRE, is a very well-written coming of age/lesbian piece, told over the course of four decades (and is easily one of the best stories here). JETSAM is one of the more unique 9/11 stories I can think of, and actually left me chilled.

THE FOUR HUNDRED THOUSAND is a military scifi story told from the point of view of a young woman who understands her sole purpose in life is to bring her 400,000 eggs to fruition as soldiers to help fight an on-going war intergalactic war. Her father tries to stop her, convinced there IS no war, and struggles come from every angle. Llewellyn is gifted at getting emotions going strong, and here the reader feels them even from the side characters. If you read one story in this book, make sure it's this one.

OMPHALOS is the only non-reprint here, and it's a richly symbolic "road trip" story dealing with incest and other dark family secrets.

The novella, HER DARKNESS, ends the collection on a note (almost) as bleak as the opening tale. Gillian is an artisan, gifted with the ability to reform rocks with her bare hands. Her lover Emanauel has plans for her, but isn't revealing them until they arrive at a giant stone which he believes houses his God. With elements of fantasy, horror and an amazing steampunk-atmosphere, this is a fine taste of what Llewellyn may soon deliver in novel form (she's currently working on her first one).

ENGINES OF DESIRE showcases an author I'm sure we'll be seeing a lot more from. Llewellyn's ability to combine the erotic and the horrific has helped her to quickly carve out her own niche, and her settings (regardless of genre) always have a sense of impending doom and mystery that'll surely resonate well with fans of dark fiction.

A very impressive first collection you won't soon forget. ...more

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Oct 20, 2014 Bryan Alexander rated it really liked it

Shelves: gothic

Livia Llewellyn's Engines of Desire: Tales of Love & Other Horrors is a superb first collection. It's a dark delight to read, and introduces a major voice in horror fiction.

Engines offers a very diverse set of tales and voice. Llewellyn offers stories of post-apocalypse survival, futuristic space war, sexual longing, alien gods, hybrid machine/flesh monster machines, parallel worlds, mass murderers, mining, and trees that devour girls. No story is formally alike, either. "Engine of Desire", Livia Llewellyn's Engines of Desire: Tales of Love & Other Horrors is a superb first collection. It's a dark delight to read, and introduces a major voice in horror fiction.

Engines offers a very diverse set of tales and voice. Llewellyn offers stories of post-apocalypse survival, futuristic space war, sexual longing, alien gods, hybrid machine/flesh monster machines, parallel worlds, mass murderers, mining, and trees that devour girls. No story is formally alike, either. "Engine of Desire", for example, is told in reverse chronological order. “Her Deepness” uses long, lush paragraphs to immerse us in a weird, alternate world, while "Horses" is almost telegraphic in its supremely hard-bitten despair. "Teslated Salihan Evergreen" purports to be a botanical reference book entry.

Two themes unite these otherwise disparate tales. First, all of these stories concern female desire. Protagonists are usually girls or women, and what they need determines each narrative, especially in the face of overwhelming opposition. Often these needs are sexual. For a significant number of stories motherhood is a key theme in various forms: conception, childbirth, mother-daughter relations, filicide. Llewellyn zeroes in on women and what they want and never lets go.

Second, Engines of Desire is deeply... sad, melancholic, somewhere between resigned and despairing. All of the stories end with intense (and often extensive) human suffering. Some end in defeat for the protagonists, while others enjoy success at terrible cost. Several stories are about heroism, but even those require non-heroic destruction. The tones of these tales matches this theme of devastation: elegaic, frustrated, resigned, satisfied, dystopian. "Dark" just begins to describe things.

Spoilery summaries ahead for each story:(view spoiler)[

"Horses" is a Cold War alternative history where atomic war breaks out. Our protagonist works in a missile silo and helps launch the attack (an awesome, erotic, murderous scene), then flees for a presumed shelter. Pregnant, she finds the shelter nightmarish, and then things get much worse. This is one of the most extreme and economically told post-nuclear stories I've ever seen, and one of the best in the collection.

"The Engine of Desire" begins by describing a housewife having committed some kind of crime, then connecting with a long-lost love. But then the narratives recedes in time by a decade to reveal what set this scene in motion. And then it leaps back again, and again. A fierce, sad story of the enormous power (and costs) of desire. It's a brilliant example of how to build a story out of chronological order, and repays rereading. Probably my favorite from the book.

"Take Your Daughters to Work" A daughter accompanies her parent to their workplace... where they are sacrificed to the Lovecraftian monstrosities that maintain civilization.

"Her Deepness" takes place in an alternate world where mining is the center of life. The heroine has an extraordinary ability to communicate with and even shape certain rocks. Her lover brings her into a plot to rescue a piece of ancient... something, and things get Lovecraftian. (Full story is online)

"The Four Hundred Thousand" A nightmarish future city is at war, and chooses select young women to give birth to thousands of semi-human children soldiers. Our heroine starts the tale proud of receiving this honor, then learns that things are even worse than they appear.

"Omphalos" concerns incest, with multiple generations of sex producing a fraught nuclear family. The daughter, our point of view character, struggles to survive, engaging with myth on several levels.

"At the Edge of Ellensburg" Most of this reads as very well written erotica, and concerns a college student obsessed with a visiting drug dealer. The student starts off with a strange encounter with what might be an alien artifact, struggles to win the attention of her very promiscuous and uncaring stud, then learns at cost about his violent and non-fantastic nature.

"Jetsam" Someone described this as about a kind of September 11th attack perpetrated by cosmic horror, and that's about right, although it misses the urban bureaucracy of the finale.

"Teslated Salishan Evergreen" and "Brimstone Oranges" are short-short stories that read like excerpts from unpublished stories. They are evocative and economical.
(hide spoiler)]

If you are interested at all in horror fiction, or if you aren't, but appreciate well-crafted short fiction, go read this collection at once. Llewellyn is someone to watch, as she could well become one of the major dark fiction authors of our time. ...more

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Feb 27, 2017 Reggie Kray rated it it was amazing

I have been writing since...well, since I could hold a pen. I always that I was a decent writer. That is until I discovered Livia Llewellyn and realized I have a long fucking way to go!

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Dec 14, 2018 Rodney rated it really liked it

Traumatic and dramatic trials from the past run deep. Overcoming them often means facing something even more difficult. Livia Llewellyn’s sophisticated and adept writing hits like a whirlwind. This dark and provocative collection is my second from the author and to put it simply, I am hooked. 4.5 stars.

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Jan 06, 2019 Sheila rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: read-in-2019

4 stars--I really liked it.

I didn't love all the stories in this collection, but there were five that really stood out. Llewellyn writes dark stories. She also writes erotica, which is present in this collection--though combined with horror and violence.

The five stories I most enjoyed:

Horses: A post-apocalyptic horror that spooked me a bit.
At the Edge of Ellensburg: Violence and sex combine into a horrible nightmare.
Take Your Daughters to Work: Lovecraftian horror.
Omphalos: I've read this in two ...more

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May 20, 2011 Orrin Grey rated it liked it

This is one of those places where, for me, numerical rating scales for subjective experiences really break down. How do you rate a really great book that just wasn't for you? I dunno.

Here's the thing, Engines of Desire is pretty great, as you can tell by all the great reviews its getting, including this one over at Innsmouth Free Press, from Jesse Bullington. But it's also harsh and brutal and unremittingly bleak, which isn't exactly my thing, generally. My friend J.T. Glover described the openi ...more

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Feb 21, 2013 Nicholas Kaufmann rated it it was amazing

These ten dark phantasmagorias, ranging from short-shorts to epic novellas, form a stunning debut by an author every reader of horror and dark fantasy should become familiar with. Llewellyn seasons her stories with hidden gods, strange creatures, an indifferent universe, and dangerously obsessed characters, making her work akin to that of Lovecraft, only with much deeper characterization and emotion. Many of the stories feature a dark sexuality to them as well. Highly recommended, but not for th ...more

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Jun 16, 2012 Seregil of Rhiminee rated it it was amazing

Livia Llewellyn's Engines of Desire: Tales of Love & Other Horrors is a unique and unforgettable collection of dark fantasy and horror stories, which will linger in the reader's mind long after reading them. The stories in this collection are both disturbing and thought-provoking and they demand quite a lot of attention from the reader for they aren't easy and light stories.

As a big fan of quality horror and dark fantasy, I must confess that I fell in love with this collection. I read these ...more

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Nov 08, 2017 Michael Adams rated it it was amazing

A potent blend of sophisticated dark erotica, weird fiction, SF/F, and horror in equal doses. Excellent.

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Oct 23, 2017 Andy rated it it was amazing

These stories are best read slowly and savored. Often they are surreal to a level worthy of Lautréamont and Cisco. There's a lot of grim dystopian stories; tales of totalitarian or dysfunctional futures and toxic wastelands. Many of these stories are about girls who have been knocked around by the world and have special powers and connections with the natural world.

The sexual element is stronger in this collection than in "Furnace." Both collections are excellent, but I think I slightly prefer t ...more

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Feb 18, 2015 Adam Cesare rated it it was amazing

A fantastic collection. Boundary-pushing in both content and prose.

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Oct 03, 2012 Damien Angelica Walters rated it it was amazing

Dark, disturbing, and brilliant. If you like your short fiction to hurt, to take your breath away, to leave you hollow and shaking, read this collection. You won't be disappointed.

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Feb 22, 2012 Lincoln rated it it was amazing

Engines of Desire is comprised of ten stories, including two novellas and two novelettes. It’s stunning enough even without the knowledge that it is Livia Llewellyn’s debut book. Llewellyn, whose catalog of published work stretches back to 2005, has clearly demonstrated more dedication and patience than many of her peers, this reviewer included, and it shows through in every page of Engines.

Several pieces stand out from the pack. The collection leads off with ‘Horses,’ one of the novelettes, whi Engines of Desire is comprised of ten stories, including two novellas and two novelettes. It’s stunning enough even without the knowledge that it is Livia Llewellyn’s debut book. Llewellyn, whose catalog of published work stretches back to 2005, has clearly demonstrated more dedication and patience than many of her peers, this reviewer included, and it shows through in every page of Engines.

Several pieces stand out from the pack. The collection leads off with ‘Horses,’ one of the novelettes, which begins as an end-of-the-world tale and finishes as something else entirely. ‘At the Edge of Ellensburg,’ a novella, tells the story of a college girl wrapped up in her addiction to a mysterious, drug-dealing stranger. ‘The Engine of Desire,’ from which the book gets its title, is about a woman’s decades-spanning association with a girl named Kelly who is definitely more than a girl. ‘Take Your Daughters to Work’ can’t really be described in-depth without ruining it, but further demonstrates Llewellyn’s flair for the apocalyptic and otherworldly. ‘The Four-Hundred Thousand’ is a dystopian piece centered around sacrifice and the supposed greater good, as manipulated by the powers that be. ‘Omphalos,’ the other novelette, is an incestuous round-robin affair that’s main character is at least slightly reminiscent of Jack Sawyer from Stephen King’s Talisman.

As a whole, Engines of Desire can be characterized by two overarching themes. The first is the strong erotic overtones (and the occasional subtle undertone) woven through many of the stories. Llewellyn writes hotter and more graphic scenes than the average horror reader is likely to encounter, almost always to the benefit of whichever story such scenes occur in. The second is the sense of otherworldliness present in several pieces; some of it is outright (the chimera in ‘Her Deepness,’ the book’s other novella, for instance), while much of it is more subtle (elements of both ‘The Engine of Desire’ and ‘Omphalos,’ and Kelly in ‘Engines of Desire,’ for instance, will certainly raise some questions).

Engines of Desire is an excellent introduction to a fine, relatively new, author who is sure to develop a rabid following in years to come.

...more

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May 05, 2011 M Griffin rated it it was amazing

If not for a recommendation on Laird Barron's blog, I might never have picked up this excellent collection (to which Barron provided a foreword). Prior to the release of this collection, all I'd seen from Livia Llewellyn was "Brimstone Orange," too short a piece to give much of a sense of this writer's capabilities. I'm very glad I didn't miss what turned out to be one of the best single author short story collections I've come across in recent years.

Llewellyn's prose style is strongly visual a If not for a recommendation on Laird Barron's blog, I might never have picked up this excellent collection (to which Barron provided a foreword). Prior to the release of this collection, all I'd seen from Livia Llewellyn was "Brimstone Orange," too short a piece to give much of a sense of this writer's capabilities. I'm very glad I didn't miss what turned out to be one of the best single author short story collections I've come across in recent years.

Llewellyn's prose style is strongly visual and evocative. Readers who prefer their prose simple and declarative may find this a too rich, but those enjoy a writer with a vibrant, poetic approach to putting words together will love it. Especially as a debut collection, Engines of Desire is noteworthy for the strength and richness of its language.

That's not to say these stories are for everyone. The mood is uniformly dark, at times bitterly so. These stories cover a wide ground from post-apocalyptic science fiction to erotica, from psychological horror to dark fantasy. At first I thought the book might be too scattered genre-wise, but further along I realized the stories here were held together not by genre conventions, but by thematic commonalities and a consistency to the personal concerns of the characters, apart from place, time or the existence of monsters or magic. Whatever the trappings of one story or another, all clearly arise out of a strong, unified creative impetus. In terms of cumulative effect, these stories hold together quite well, both individually and as a collection.

The collection opens with "Horses," a bleak and psychologically extreme piece of post-apocalyptic SF. It effectively lets the reader know what they're in for. This is followed by a dramatic shift to what is effectively (despite the insertion of a few elements that feel vaguely "fantastic" but which are not really part of the story's core) a realistic story of a sexually obsessed and self-destructive college student. Llewellyn depicts the college girl obsessed with the wrong guy with the same raw desperation with which she draws characters beset by a disintegrating world.

Among the rest of the collection, the best include "The Four-Hundred," the title story "The Engines of Desire," and "Her Deepness." This last, an ambitious novella, is a really impressive example of fantasy world building. Truly dark, deeply weird and at times surreal.

While a few of these stories were less effective on the level of compelling plot or characters than they were in terms of language and mood, I found none of them less than satisfying overall. If we can extrapolate from an author's debut collection to guess what they may be capable of, I really can't wait to see what Livia Llewellyn does next. ...more

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Feb 26, 2016 Paige Ellen Stone rated it it was amazing

I was very impressed with the reviews of Ms Llewellyn's second collection of short works, "Furnace", and wanted to read it. But as is my wont, I ordered both books and began with this, the first. No doubt, with blurbs from the likes of Laird Barron, this is weird fiction. Ms Llewellyn moves from very short pieces, to what could almost be considered novellas. Her influences are clear, Lovecraft, Barron, Kiernan, Fort, Chambers, Poe and others. She writes beautifully, even when describing the most ...more

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Dec 04, 2011 t'Sade rated it really liked it

This was a set of dark, horrific tales that traverse the entire length from insensitive cruelty to hard-edged lust. I couldn't stop reading it because it was a train accident, the type you slow down with morbid fascination in hopes of seeing a body twisted and managed. In this case, the accidents are the crippled emotions, callous evil, and unthinking cruelty. And I loved it.

This is not a story for Fluffy. It has rape in it. It has blood. And beatings and anguish. And they tie beautifully togeth ...more

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May 11, 2014 Allison rated it liked it

Shelves: hard-to-classify, ereader, fantasy, horror, short-stories

I bought this collection because I had read a story in an anthology that I liked, but I think the stories probably benefit from some time between reading one and the next; the Lovecraftian influence and transgressive sexual elements are effective in small doses, but I have a tendency to say I'm just going to read one story and then devour them all in a great gulping rush, and the cumulative sense was one of oversatiation on vaguely icky sex and tentacled sea monsters. I still find her to be a ta ...more

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Aug 30, 2012 A.C. Wise rated it it was amazing

Beautiful and brutal and wrenching and poetic and... I could go on. These are the kind of stories that leave you simultaneously hollowed out, and filled with ghosts. They linger and haunt, both for their incredible use of language, and their painful subject matter. This isn't a collection that will appeal to everyone, but for those who can stomach the dark, this is well worth the read.

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Feb 26, 2017 Elizabeth rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: lgbtq

2.5, rounded up.

This book is filled with stories of sex and violence. Sometimes both at once. It's very unflinching in the way it discusses these things. And sometimes, that can be a good thing. Here, it just doesn't work for me.

I like to read "dark" books, or "weird" books, or whatever you'd like to call books like this. I like them a lot. But this book, much like American Psycho just feels like it tries too hard and has nothing to say. There's a lot of sex (consensual, rape, incest) and vio ...more

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Dec 28, 2015 Ian Casey rated it liked it

Livia Llewellyn's first collection of stories, Engines of Desire, features works originally published from 2005 to 2011. Within the confines of the horror short, they're a diverse bunch. They range in length from novella to flash fiction. Some are erotic and, in one case, outright pornographic. Some are explicitly weird or supernatural though others merely allow for the possibility while functioning without that element.

There's a bit of Lovecraft in it, a fair bit of Barker, some King and a hint ...more

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Aug 14, 2017 Shall I Download A Black Hole And Offer It To You rated it really liked it

well then... the introduction by Laird Barron seems like a massively overhyped piece, and then when you get to read the stories you realize he is dead fucking right... these tales are visceral and sensual and dark and tainted and erotic and just off, somehow, but lovely all the same... a couple were a bit long in the telling, but the best of them made up for this minor shortcoming... whew, reading this grabs you, squeezes, slides up and down and in and out, lets go for a second, then comes back ...more

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Mar 07, 2016 Andrew Wallace rated it it was amazing

I bought this collection originally because it contains ‘Her Deepness’, which was included in the British Science Fiction Association’s list of top ten novellas. I was so impressed that I read all the stories here and recommend them to anyone who likes their fiction deep, dark, strange and compelling. Be warned though, one of these stories, ‘Horses’, makes Cormac McCarthy’s ‘The Road’ read like chick lit. Yes, that upsetting, but no matter.
The language is rich and resonant, wringing beauty from I bought this collection originally because it contains ‘Her Deepness’, which was included in the British Science Fiction Association’s list of top ten novellas. I was so impressed that I read all the stories here and recommend them to anyone who likes their fiction deep, dark, strange and compelling. Be warned though, one of these stories, ‘Horses’, makes Cormac McCarthy’s ‘The Road’ read like chick lit. Yes, that upsetting, but no matter.
The language is rich and resonant, wringing beauty from geological terms and unearthly viscera alike as the author explores themes of transmutation and rebirth amid threatening landscapes haunted by ancient gods. That the intent of these beings is unknowable is conveyed by the sheer sense of dread, but such is the author’s skill that this threat becomes intriguing, even sexy. Cities are huge, over-populated and polluted; environments of near-apocalyptic gloom and oppression but don’t go thinking the countryside is any better. Trees are a particular source of menace, whether preying on adolescent girls (‘The Teslated Salishan Evergreen’, ‘Brimstone Orange’) or forming the picturesque backdrop of an incestuous family camping trip (‘Omphalos’). There seems no escape from predators of one kind or another, although many of the pursued (‘At the Edge of Ellensberg’, ‘Take Your Daughters to Work’) seem at best complicit, if not outright willing. Their acquiescence makes the internal landscapes as ambiguous and disturbing as the outer, although both appear interchangeable.
The collection is a robust challenge to genre pigeonholers. A story like ‘The Four Hundred Thousand’ has such a great science-fiction premise that I’m surprised it hasn’t been done before; however, it’s also a love story that throws the true identity of the monstrous into question. ‘Engines of Desire’ sounds like it will be about a combination of appetite and technology and indeed it is but the titular engine is a thing from the Stephen King end of the horror spectrum, while the central relationship is so beguiling you completely understand why the heroine does what she does, however crazy.
Obsession doesn’t just drive the stories; their narratives seem to take it apart with a kind of medical precision that is in no way dry or academic. Rather, there’s a sense of ‘er… did she really just do that?’ before you’re swept into the next luscious outrage. All of this might seem gratuitous, nasty even but for an overwhelming sense of honesty, both emotional and thematic, that makes the author worthy of our trust.
As our everyday world becomes increasingly sanitised and constrained, it seems to me that writers like Livia Llewellyn will become ever more relevant.
...more

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Oct 07, 2014 Joe Gola rated it really liked it

Shelves: own

A good collection of short stories, the genres ranging between weird fiction, science fiction, steampunk and erotica. All of it is very dark and dystopian. My favorite was the playfully Lovecraftian "Take Your Daughters to Work", with other standouts being "Omphalos" and the intensely sexy "The Edge of Ellensburg".

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Mar 04, 2016 Bill added it

Midway through the second story and all good so far. First story was fine postapocalyptica. Second story is erotica. Author either has a very healthy sex life or watches a lot of porn. (I wish I had met her in college.) Nice work. Still looking for the sickness in the second one. Brings to mind "Wetlands." I once knew a furnace of a girl from Alaska. Her father was a preacher.

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Oct 18, 2012 Christopher rated it it was amazing

The book's subtitle is "Tales of Love & Other Horrors" which nicely encapsulates the stories lurking within... sensual, disturbing goodness. These often erotic, always twisted, beautifully written tales will mess with your mind.

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Dec 26, 2014 Aaron D. Williams rated it really liked it · review of another edition

A new voice in weirdness

I tried Llewellyn on because Laird Barron recommended her. I'm glad I did. Her work has a different tone and texture than many of her contemporaries. If you're into Barron or Langan or their ilk I highly recommend her. You won't be disappointed.

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Apr 21, 2015 Timothy Jarvis rated it really liked it

Harrowing short fiction written in often luminous prose. For me the weirder tales worked better than the science fictional, but a great collection. I hesitate to say enjoyable, because it often isn't, but it's always gripping.

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Jan 17, 2011 Jesse Bullington rated it it was amazing

Full review here, at Innsmouth Free Press.

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About Livia Llewellyn

Livia Llewellyn

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I was born in Anchorage, Alaska, and spent my childhood in Tacoma, Washington. And now I live on the East Coast. I’m not quite sure how that happened….

By day I’m a secretary. I file papers, create spreadsheets, update calendars, sort papers — the usual secretarial things.

At night, I write about lonely young girls who can speak to engines, Nikola Tesla’s secret journals, long-horned demons lost in ...more