Ellen's Reviews > Fist of the Spider Woman: Tales of Fear and Queer Desire

What is this book: A short story anthology, collected around the theme of the intersection between fear and queer desire (presumably you got this from the title). Pretty kinky horror-erotica (Horrotica?) - it's pretty hot, and it's all on-page. (But of course it's horror- a lot of associated trigger warnings apply). Available on hoopla!

What I liked about it:
-All of the short stories were reasonably short! This is perhaps just a personal preference but I have found I enjoy not having to skip tie-in novellas in short story collections.
-Perhaps my actual favorite part was the essay at the beginning - a rumination on the concept of this theme, and why queer people, who know fear pretty intimately, are willing to invite it into the bedroom.
-This book contains both cis and trans queer characters!! Given the somewhat-dearth of like.. legitimate (? I mean own-experiences, not fetishised, I think here) queer trans porn even now, kudos for having it 10 years ago.
-One of the funny things is that the story I liked reading the least is the one that I think did some of the most interesting writing work and layers of thinking about -- fear in a safe place versus fear of being controlled by society (fear of self-as-other)
(view spoiler)[-The whole collection starts off with a woman being fucked by a giant slug and then transformed into a giant slug herself and it is extremely explicit and also very nice and I love that it's like "are we going there? yes." (hide spoiler)]
-Lesbian haunted house story!! Reflecting on the generations of queer feminism and gentrification and places for community!! Also she fucks the ghost!! duh. amazing.