Reviews of The Night Mother

The Night Mother by John Everson

“The perfect storm of supernatural mayhem, celestial sex, and gore galore! Here you’ll find a new meaning for the word “clubbing” once you step into NightWhere, an abominable sex club for angels and devils and where S&M knows no bounds. This is hardcore stuff, folks, and don’t be surprised if you have a few whip-lashes when you’re done. Everson’s story bulldozes the reader through macabre edge-of-your-seat terror, diabolical chases, and occult designs, and in vivid scalpel-sharp prose he delivers the most exciting and original novel I’ve read so far this year.”
– Edward Lee, author of The Television and City Infernal

“A novel of forbidden pleasures and violent depravity, where the line between pleasure and pain is razor thin. Enter a secret club where members indulge their darkest desires, and the demons lurking in the shadows are all too real. Another wickedly entertaining novel from a master of erotic horror!”
– Tim Waggoner, author of A Hunter Called Night

“In John Everson’s NightWhere universe, angels (even the fallen) are gods who play with humans’ souls and bodies like toys to be coveted—and broken—at will. With The Night Mother, Everson expands the mythology of his mysteriously elusive NightWhere sex-and-bondage club, inside which the level of pain and pleasure you seek is up to you—until it isn’t. This is Edward Lee territory, filled with vivid characters and enough gore to satisfy most extreme horror fans, delivered by Everson with raw, poetic panache. As razor-sharp a slice of supernatural BDSM-noir as you’re likely to find anywhere, and one not at all likely to leave your nightmares anytime soon. Ten lashes out of ten!”
–W.D. Gagliani, author of the Nick Lupo Series and The Judas Hit

“Blown away. 100% completely blown away… It’s horrifying, twisted, provocative, thrilling, perverse, frightening, jaw-droppingly exquisite, erotic, and impossible to put down… If you threw all of Clive Barker, Jack Ketchum, and Edward Lee into a blender with a dash (but not too much) of Richard Laymon, you might pour out something like The Night Mother, but only with a lot of luck because this book goes beyond anything produced by even that stellar list. Come prepared. You will be scared. And shaken. And entranced. Perhaps even shocked. But I promise you will be entertained and find yourself both eager and hesitant to turn that page.”
– Don Gillette, author of Pandemonium

Horror Bookworm Reviews wrote “John Everson returns with his sequel to NightWhere [and] brings back the blood and lust that made the first installment an “extreme” success
 With pain comes pleasure but human flesh can only stretch so far…If there is one extreme reading experience that I strongly recommend, this is it my fetish friends. A sadomasochist five-star ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ rating from Horror Bookworm Reviews. The invitation has been offered. Will you accept?”
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GhostvilleHero wrote: “If you have read NightWhere and loved it: You will love The Night Mother even more. This is a direct sequel to NightWhere. The first novel is Mark trying to save Rae from the club. This novel is about Mark trying to save the club from Rae. (Isn’t there a song, “Heaven Doesn’t Want Me and Hell is Afraid I’ll Take Over”?) This sequel has all of the characters that we connected with from the first novel, with a few new ones to help with the readers journey through NightWhere. …Like one of the characters mentions in The Night Mother, NightWhere is a place for pain but also for pleasure. When you lose sight of the pleasure, all you have left is pain. Everson’s best job in these novels is balancing the horrors of NightWhere with the humanity that is fighting the entire time to stay alive.”
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Betwixt The Sheets said: “Come on in and sin. Yes, please!
The Night Mother, from Bram Stoker Award-Winning Author John Everson, is a welcome trip down the erotic horror genre lane. This standalone follow-up to Everson’s NightWhere, is not for the squeamish
.I had a blast reading this book and I applaud Everson for being able to keep up the rather aggressive pacing he set throughout the entire story.”
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Bibliophilia Templum said: “The Night Mother by John Everson puts the horror in urban fantasy horror. This story is sexy, violent, gory, and graphic, but the storyline is solid and engrossing, and the writing is fantastic. It’s titillating extreme horror for the truly daring.”
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WMP Dark Fiction Magazine wrote: “This is a darkly perverse novel of extremes–extreme love, extreme betrayal, extreme violence
 The Night Mother is all about upping the brutality of life and its most difficult to come by desires.”
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Sally Bend Reviews wrote: “The first NightWhere novel is one of my favorite works of erotic horror, right up there with Clive Barker’s The Hellbound Heart and The House of Blood by Wayne C. Rogers. It was graphic, disturbing, arousing, disgusting, and utterly fascinating, all at the same time. Field of Flesh, the sequel novella, provided an entertaining new perspective on the otherworldly BDSM club, but there’s no question it left me wanting more. Fortunately, 5 years later, we have The Night Mother, a full-length novel, to tie it all together. This is a direct sequel to the first book, which means Selena, Mark, and Rae once again take center stage (alongside favorites like Sin-D and Damia), but it also follows along from the novella, so expect to see our noir detective appear in a surprising role.

Although he beautifully outdoes himself here with some of the S&M-themed depravities, what John Everson has done that’s even more important is delve deeper into the mythology of NightWhere – angels, demons, creation myths, immortality, and all. We’re led to understand who the players are and who they were, why the club has Guardians and Watchers, and what happens when mere mortals are elevated above their station. There are consequences – deadly serious, apocalyptic consequences – to this third story that go far beyond relationship dramas or the fate of individual souls. There’s a battle for the very heart of NightWhere, and if it all goes astray . . . well, let’s just say it would be bad news for us all.”
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Third Coast Review published an interview with John Everson on October 30, 2023 focusing on the release of The Night Mother and his career in horror.
» read the interview


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