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mxsallybend's review against another edition
3.0
Although I've found myself souring a bit on science fiction lately, with my reading tastes driving me firmly back into the realms of epic fantasy, horror has always been my first love. It's what I remember reading first, and what has driven most of my own writing endeavors. So, while I hardly need an excuse to celebrate the genre, events like Women in Horror Month certainly do provide a convenient prompt for me to look beyond the towering review pile and into well-stocked TBR shelves that fill my e-reader and (quite literally) cover the house.
First up this month is Mercedes M. Yardley, and author with whom I was already familiar, but who I got to know a little better during a Ragnarok Publications Facebook party last month. We connected over fiction and music, and she was kind enough to send a copy of Apocalyptic Montessa and Nuclear Lulu: A Tale of Atomic Love my way.
Let me just say that this is some of the darkest stuff I've read in a long while. It's daring, original, and manages to accomplish what so many other authors and filmmakers have failed to do. It makes an antagonist of a victim and keeps her at the forefront of the entire novel, with nary a protagonist in sight. It's a risky move, and one that most stories cannot sustain, but Yardley weaves in enough backstory and character development to make her serial killers sympathetic leads. That's not to say they're necessarily likable or characters to whom we can relate, but she forces us to understand them and their motives.
This is a crime drama, a love story, and a tale of supernatural myth and magic. It's a book that operates on multiple levels, but which has no patience for easing the reader through unnecessary transitions. There's no one point at which it shifts from crime drama to love story, just as there's no single instance where Montessa shifts from victim to killer. As for the myth and the magic, it's there throughout, but so subtle and fantastic that you're never quite sure when you stopped questioning just much is supernatural and how much is allegory or illusion.
It's a seriously messed up world where a victim's love for her killer is more beautiful and pure than a father's love for his child, but that's precisely the world in which we live. When abuse and neglect are found where love should be, how inconceivable is it that love is found where it shouldn't? Yardley really plays with that idea, and uses it to explore who Montessa and Lulu really are, and how they came to be. It's a brutal, bloody, violent tale, full of sorrow and pain, but it's also one redeemed by the presence of love. A lot of people die, in a lot of brutal ways, and the fondness for the act of murder may be too much for some readers to take, but it's all connected.
I will admit, I kept seeing flashes from Natural Born Killers in my head as I read this, but Apocalyptic Montessa and Nuclear Lulu: A Tale of Atomic Love trades the satire and the sensationalism for sentiment and sincerity. This is a story not of spectacle, but of spirit, and that intimacy (along with Yardley's almost-poetic narrative) is what makes it work.
Originally reviewed at Beauty in Ruins
First up this month is Mercedes M. Yardley, and author with whom I was already familiar, but who I got to know a little better during a Ragnarok Publications Facebook party last month. We connected over fiction and music, and she was kind enough to send a copy of Apocalyptic Montessa and Nuclear Lulu: A Tale of Atomic Love my way.
Let me just say that this is some of the darkest stuff I've read in a long while. It's daring, original, and manages to accomplish what so many other authors and filmmakers have failed to do. It makes an antagonist of a victim and keeps her at the forefront of the entire novel, with nary a protagonist in sight. It's a risky move, and one that most stories cannot sustain, but Yardley weaves in enough backstory and character development to make her serial killers sympathetic leads. That's not to say they're necessarily likable or characters to whom we can relate, but she forces us to understand them and their motives.
This is a crime drama, a love story, and a tale of supernatural myth and magic. It's a book that operates on multiple levels, but which has no patience for easing the reader through unnecessary transitions. There's no one point at which it shifts from crime drama to love story, just as there's no single instance where Montessa shifts from victim to killer. As for the myth and the magic, it's there throughout, but so subtle and fantastic that you're never quite sure when you stopped questioning just much is supernatural and how much is allegory or illusion.
It's a seriously messed up world where a victim's love for her killer is more beautiful and pure than a father's love for his child, but that's precisely the world in which we live. When abuse and neglect are found where love should be, how inconceivable is it that love is found where it shouldn't? Yardley really plays with that idea, and uses it to explore who Montessa and Lulu really are, and how they came to be. It's a brutal, bloody, violent tale, full of sorrow and pain, but it's also one redeemed by the presence of love. A lot of people die, in a lot of brutal ways, and the fondness for the act of murder may be too much for some readers to take, but it's all connected.
I will admit, I kept seeing flashes from Natural Born Killers in my head as I read this, but Apocalyptic Montessa and Nuclear Lulu: A Tale of Atomic Love trades the satire and the sensationalism for sentiment and sincerity. This is a story not of spectacle, but of spirit, and that intimacy (along with Yardley's almost-poetic narrative) is what makes it work.
Originally reviewed at Beauty in Ruins
taysbookshelf's review against another edition
5.0
Gruesome. Very gruesome. The story was wonderful, but it's definitely something not for the faint of heart. Sick and twisted (in the best possible way). I'm really looking forward to seeing more of Mercedes M. Yardley's stuff.
barb4ry1's review
4.0
I won’t lie. I’ve read the book because of the title. It showed on the Goodreads Readers also enjoyed feed of Seth Skorkowsky Hounacier and once I saw it, I just had to try it just to see what kind of story is hidden behind such an amazing title.
It turns out it’s a love story.
But instead of chocolate and roses, our lovers share eviscerating others. It’s a short story of a blossoming romance between an Asian-American serial killer and a stripper he kidnapped. Nuclear Lulu and Apocalyptic Montessa do horrible things together but they also love in a very real and fierce way. Their romance is self-consuming and baptized in tears and blood. As melodramatic as it may sound, it’s very well written book that’s not afraid to go to very dark places.
Both characters are deeply damaged and went through childhood trauma. Montessa’s relationships were empty and hurtful. She admits that
Lu is a serial killer who loves to make people suffer. It’s his true calling. It’s something he does well. Their relationship evolves quickly and they end up meaning the world to one another. Despite their flaws and craziness Lu and Montessa are endearing.
Apocalyptic Montessa and Nuclear Lulu doesn't idealize love. Neither does it try to sell it to you. Love is presented as a violent thing rooted in imperfection. There’s a little world outside a pair. Other people appear but they’re barely sketched. The focus of the story lies elsewhere: in picturing impossible and yet relatable romance with words and sentences.
While Mercedes M. Yardley prose is economic, it’s poetic in places, melodramatic in others:
Not everyone will like this style. I loved it. It’s strong. It delivers feelings pretty well and, in places, sets a bit surreal ambiance.
Overall, it was something else. The book is very short and strong. It’s dark and twisted take on the topic of soulmates. Obviously, some moral questions may arise as we start to cheer for a pair of psychotic killers and it’s good to think them through.
It turns out it’s a love story.
But instead of chocolate and roses, our lovers share eviscerating others. It’s a short story of a blossoming romance between an Asian-American serial killer and a stripper he kidnapped. Nuclear Lulu and Apocalyptic Montessa do horrible things together but they also love in a very real and fierce way. Their romance is self-consuming and baptized in tears and blood. As melodramatic as it may sound, it’s very well written book that’s not afraid to go to very dark places.
Both characters are deeply damaged and went through childhood trauma. Montessa’s relationships were empty and hurtful. She admits that
it was easier to be with a man who wanted to murder her, and would appreciate it than be with a man who would only beat her to death.
Lu is a serial killer who loves to make people suffer. It’s his true calling. It’s something he does well. Their relationship evolves quickly and they end up meaning the world to one another. Despite their flaws and craziness Lu and Montessa are endearing.
Apocalyptic Montessa and Nuclear Lulu doesn't idealize love. Neither does it try to sell it to you. Love is presented as a violent thing rooted in imperfection. There’s a little world outside a pair. Other people appear but they’re barely sketched. The focus of the story lies elsewhere: in picturing impossible and yet relatable romance with words and sentences.
While Mercedes M. Yardley prose is economic, it’s poetic in places, melodramatic in others:
He held out his hand. She walked over and took it. Sparks flew. Magic happened. Nuclear reactors melted in joy. The world combusted.
Not everyone will like this style. I loved it. It’s strong. It delivers feelings pretty well and, in places, sets a bit surreal ambiance.
Overall, it was something else. The book is very short and strong. It’s dark and twisted take on the topic of soulmates. Obviously, some moral questions may arise as we start to cheer for a pair of psychotic killers and it’s good to think them through.
tomunro's review
5.0
Well... what can I say. I started this book (a Novella it is true) last night and finished it 21 hours later in two sittings separated by the necessity of 5 hours sleep and the irritation of an 11 hour working day - a day incidentally when my thoughts strayed several times to Montessa Tovar and Lu and what must still lie ahead of them.
The book naturally falls into two parts - two acts in an electrifying drama, well suited to my bifurcated reading schedule. It is difficult to write about either half without littering this review with spoilers, but then a book is far more than its plot. Characters drive a story's beating heart and quality writing is the lifeblood that courses through its veins. It is this which transforms the bare bones of a story, the nuts and bolts of plot and scene, into a haunting reading experience to send ripples of shivers down your spine.
Mercedes M Yardley has deftly drawn a mesmerising pair of deeply damaged people in Montessa and Lulu. Montessa is a young woman doing exotic dances in a seedy bar so that an ungrateful boyfriend can be kept supplied with the means to abuse her.
Lu? Well Lu is a truck driver. To be honest it took a little while for me to work that out - the "semi" being an idiom that does not cross the Atlantic well. I mean I could tell it was a vehicle but in the UK a semi is a house, a semi-detached house - one of conjoined pair that populate housing estates and suburban streets across the land.
In essence Lu and Montessa meet and what follows is a road trip of sorts - but Thelma and Louise it most definitely isn't.
Yardley writes dark stories, stories that delve into bleak corners of human existence. Like the spot beams of those deepwater submersibles probing ancient wrecks, her writing shines unaccustomed light on dark creatures slumbering within the human psyche. It can make for an uncomfortably convincing read - desperate people, desperate circumstances rendered with such vivid credibility. And even in horror something beautiful can flower - like the poppies in the Flanders fields.
Yardley's stories always challenge the reader, flirting with violence but never indulging in it. For Yardley it is always about what the mind thinks more than what the body feels - it is about the experience of being human while perched on the brink between life and death. And that evocative theme is always well served by Yardley's elegant economical prose while the reassuringly surreal touches that augment her characters remind us it is only a story.
I dare not say more, it is too short a book to risk spoiling with the merest hint of what might happen. I will just quote one short early passage which struck me with the powerfully simple insight into the Montessa's working life as she packs up at 3.a.m.
"She put her six inch stilettos in her purse, along with her dancing costume. It didn't take much room."
When I read Yardley's work I am put in mind of the opening verse of Don Maclean's soft lyrical tribute to Van Gogh
Starry, starry night
Paint your palette blue and gray
Look out on a summer's day
With eyes that know the darkness in my soul
Though maybe it is the darkness in everyone's soul which she captures in those quick short sentences as she paints a page in red and black.
The book naturally falls into two parts - two acts in an electrifying drama, well suited to my bifurcated reading schedule. It is difficult to write about either half without littering this review with spoilers, but then a book is far more than its plot. Characters drive a story's beating heart and quality writing is the lifeblood that courses through its veins. It is this which transforms the bare bones of a story, the nuts and bolts of plot and scene, into a haunting reading experience to send ripples of shivers down your spine.
Mercedes M Yardley has deftly drawn a mesmerising pair of deeply damaged people in Montessa and Lulu. Montessa is a young woman doing exotic dances in a seedy bar so that an ungrateful boyfriend can be kept supplied with the means to abuse her.
Lu? Well Lu is a truck driver. To be honest it took a little while for me to work that out - the "semi" being an idiom that does not cross the Atlantic well. I mean I could tell it was a vehicle but in the UK a semi is a house, a semi-detached house - one of conjoined pair that populate housing estates and suburban streets across the land.
In essence Lu and Montessa meet and what follows is a road trip of sorts - but Thelma and Louise it most definitely isn't.
Yardley writes dark stories, stories that delve into bleak corners of human existence. Like the spot beams of those deepwater submersibles probing ancient wrecks, her writing shines unaccustomed light on dark creatures slumbering within the human psyche. It can make for an uncomfortably convincing read - desperate people, desperate circumstances rendered with such vivid credibility. And even in horror something beautiful can flower - like the poppies in the Flanders fields.
Yardley's stories always challenge the reader, flirting with violence but never indulging in it. For Yardley it is always about what the mind thinks more than what the body feels - it is about the experience of being human while perched on the brink between life and death. And that evocative theme is always well served by Yardley's elegant economical prose while the reassuringly surreal touches that augment her characters remind us it is only a story.
I dare not say more, it is too short a book to risk spoiling with the merest hint of what might happen. I will just quote one short early passage which struck me with the powerfully simple insight into the Montessa's working life as she packs up at 3.a.m.
"She put her six inch stilettos in her purse, along with her dancing costume. It didn't take much room."
When I read Yardley's work I am put in mind of the opening verse of Don Maclean's soft lyrical tribute to Van Gogh
Starry, starry night
Paint your palette blue and gray
Look out on a summer's day
With eyes that know the darkness in my soul
Though maybe it is the darkness in everyone's soul which she captures in those quick short sentences as she paints a page in red and black.
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