| Title | : | Night Sweats |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 1626395721 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9781626395725 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 192 |
| Publication | : | First published January 18, 2016 |
Night Sweats Reviews
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These are stories of the wildest, most intriguing and just plain outrageous imagination. Cardamone is brilliant and can alchemically turn any idea into a wonderful story that you'll be thinking about for months afterward...I even dreamed of a giant purple octopus while reading this collection because Cardamone is always working at that mythic, subconscious depth and he will reach parts of you that you weren't sure were even there. So, yeah, what about growing up as a cyclops or being a winged-faerie with a meth problem? In Cardamone's capable hands, he'll take any situation right to a beautiful universal truth, and he'll do it with humor, pathos and just plain beautiful writing. Some of these stories just blew my mind: The Love of the Emperor Is Divine could not have been written better by a Roman emperor himself. Cardamone's sensitive and nuanced handling of gay coming of age (Owl Aerie, the Ice King, Blue Seaweed) is superlative and fresh; MS Found in Bookstore is every reader's dream, and Halloween Parade is a tour de force of deconstruction vis a vis pop horror films. I'm really more impressed each time I read Cardamone's work. One of the greats of gay lit and working at the top of his form.
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Wow. Tom Cardamone is one of those literary magicians you want to introduce all your friends to with the exhortation of: “Read this! It will change your life!”
A master of the fey, the macabre and the wicked, this delightfully oddball collection of short stories is testament to Cardamone’s roving imagination and incredible felicity with language as a force to seduce and to instruct.
From the devil masturbating on a train to a down-on-his-luck fairy peddling his hallucinogenic snot in order to survive to a mysterious box of chocolates left behind for his lover after a break-up, the range and tone here is quite staggering.
Each story is a gem to behold and savour. If you have never read Cardamone before, you are in for a real treat. This is definitely his best collection to date. -
I did a Q&A with Tom Cardamone you can read
here. -
A very enjoyable set of stories, perfect if you like sci-fi, urban fantasy or stories with a surreal flavour to them.
I don't read many anthologies because short stories can sometimes leave me with too many questions but most of these stories felt very complete and the few that were open ended were written so well they inspired my imagination to think about possible conclusions for myself.
So I generally enjoyed all the stories and felt they were all at least four star reads.
My thoughts on some of the stories:
Owl Aerie
A lovely story. Owls bring luck and good fortune to a small town and shower people with luck if they happen to nest in the aerie of a house. A young man on the brink of adulthood hopes that one of these magical owls will come and roost in the aerie of his home so that his family can have some luck. It hasn't happened since he was born and it casts a kind of light shadow in his family. The owls do arrive but not in the way he expected and both he and his family are surprised by the events that follow and the esteem that was so hard to grasp is suddenly there.
- 5 stars for such a lovely short story.
MS Found in a Bookstore
A strange bookshop with a magical attic in which people find the rare books they have been searching for and sometimes something more. Of course I loved this story being a book worm myself and I immediately wanted to work there and search through those books myself, but maybe not because there is more to this bookshop than meets the eye and a bright enchanting story has a darker and unseen edge.
- 5 stars for a brilliantly, weird but enchanting story.
The Cloud Dragon ate Red Balloons
I don't think I really understood this story so I don't have too much to say other than the story was quite picturesque.
- 2 stars
Blue Seaweed
A lovely story which felt like a Greek legend with a hero who meets mythical being in his childhood and is saved by the love of this being in adulthood.
- 5 stars
Ice King
A superhero story with good guys and bad guys, which shows that the love of a good guy can always redeem a bad guy. The story from this world is continued in:
Kid Cyclops
Which was kind of open ended but beautiful in the way it tells the story about a set of people who are cyclops with special powers. They are used by the Govt to fight wars and defend the country but they also fall in love. Sometimes love can be real and deep but life can place a strain on relationships and take it's toll. This was actually a sad story but the main character was intriguing. The story is open ended so I was left hoping that the hero would eventually get his man or maybe not. Love does not always end happily. Even though the ending was open it is still an engaging and imaginative story, great if you enjoy superheroes.
5 stars for both stories
My only criticism of the anthology is the cover which makes it look like some kind of deep sci-fi and the stories are more light urban fantasy than sci-fi. I don't think the cover conveys this. This is the first time I have read anything by this author and I must say I really enjoyed his writing and I would definitely like to read a full length story by him.
A great set of highly imaginative, engaging and creative stories which drew me in. I thoroughly enjoyed this volume!
Copy provided by Bold Stroke Books via NetGalley. -
Tom Cadamone's latest book, Night Sweats, offers you a cover-to-cover rollercoaster ride. Myth and mirth, mystery and mayhem come in a sampler of nice and naughty offerings. Tom is a master wordsmith, drawing you into the the story and letting you ride comfortably with his characters, only to turn the corner, either down an open "manhole" or right into a wall. Either way, you just brace yourself and follow along. It's a thrill to read this new collection.
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Reviewed by Christina for QUEERcentric Books
4.5 stars
Night Sweats by Tom Cardamone is a series of 13 short stories. Each story takes place in a different time and place. The only thing in common? All main characters are gay.
I found the stories in Night Sweats to be quite unique. If you’re looking for raw and raunchy, well, there’s some of that but not within every story, every page, around every corner.
THE STORIES IN NIGHT SWEATS TO BE QUITE UNIQUE
Tom Cardamone does an exquisite job of putting words together to form elegantly beautiful sentences; to the point where the characters aren’t your only main focus, the words are too. In a couple of the stories, the main characters didn’t even have names, but the words…
I found myself mesmerized, even felt courted by Tom’s writing. Like I was being lured into his grasp with the questions I’ve yet to ask; yet to discover.
Tom even made a break-up feel treacherous, yet exciting, all at once.
IF ONE COULD BE ALLURED AND SEDUCED BY WORDS ALONE THEN TOM HAS THE CAPABILITY TO DO JUST THAT.
Am I romanticizing this up a bit? Maybe, but I don’t think so. If one could be allured and seduced by words alone then Tom has the capability to do just that. And we haven’t even met!!!
I’m not going to summarize each individual story as a couple are really short, but just know there’s some fantasy, geek-dom, mythology, a little bit of everything for everyone.
Night Sweats is one of those collections of stories I think everyone should own. Keep a copy on your nightstand and read on cold bitter nights, or when your life needs that extra boost of beauty and charm. -
This is a great anthology. Cardamone’s brilliant and sometimes twisted imagination transports the reader to places you’ve never been. An outbreak of baby Cyclops births which mature to giants and use above-ground swimming pools for bathing. A subway traveling, public masturbating Satan. Giant owls that migrate to New England towns each year, bestowing higher social status on the residents whose roofs and silos they decide to nest atop.
It is said there are no new stories to tell, just different ways of telling them. Stripped down to core subject, perhaps that’s true. Cardamone tells stories of alienation, loneliness, lust, jealousy, and obsession, and he touches upon horror and urban fantasy conventions to do so in some cases. But the remarkable achievement is the originality of the lonesome worlds his embattled characters inhabit. Some are nightmarish and grotesque, but they are each memorable. -
The short story is a challenging art form, but Tom Cardamone is up to the challenge. Every "drop of sweat" in this, his latest collection, Night Sweats (Bold Strokes Books), shows Cardamone’s mastery of not only the short story, but of the written word. Cardamone offers quirky, haunting, terrifying, and at times, erotic twists to classically told short stories. Readers will delight in the discovery that awaits them in each of these Tales of Homosexual Wonder and Woe. If you love not knowing what's waiting for you around the corner, Night Sweats will not disappoint.
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Thirteen provocative, sensational, and occasionally erotic stories from the twisted mind of Tom Cardamone. I loved some of the stories more than others (particularly "Owl Aerie," "Mutinous Chocolate," and "Halloween Parade"), but all of them are written in Cardamone's crystalline prose, whose pleasures are bountiful.
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4.5/5
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Once again Cardamone provides odd and fantastical gay horror. I love his writing, and these stories will haunt you. And I mean that in the best of senses.
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Queer fictional horror, magical, mysterious short stories. These stories are pretty weird and entertanting! ;)
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3.75 stars
Night Sweats was a hard book to review. It was hard to read at times, as well. The stories here are not for the faint of heart. These are not sweet and romantic tales, but they are unique and that’s one reason I enjoyed the book.
The tales run the gamut of genres; paranormal, urban fantasy, sci-fi, contemporary and more. Some stories I didn’t really understand others blew me away. Cardamone is talented, that much is sure.
The Cloud Dragon Ate Red Balloons is one of the stories that left me thinking Huh? It’s not that the writing is bad, but the story was more than a little surreal.
The tale entitled Diabolical has one of the best opening lines in any book: The Devil was masturbating on my train.
The sex scene in this story was as equally disturbing and intriguing as that first line.
Kid Cyclops concerns the birth of a cyclops and the journey his life takes. It’s an interesting tale for sure but could’ve used more physical descriptions. For instance, he is described as tall and bigger than other humans but not how much bigger. This left me unable to picture many things including the sex scene.
If you’re in the mood for dark and moody stories this is the collection for you.
http://www.prismbookalliance.com/2016... -
I wanted to rate this collection higher. The author has an imagination that is corrupt, furious, gorgeous, and fertile. The best of the stories reflect this talent in droves: unexpected images and sudden madness; tropes far from literary fiction (superheroes); very tight almost painful depictions of adolescent desire. I am no fan of superhero fiction or other near-fan-fiction, but cardamom pulls these tropes off with aplomb. What u
It ate
Y sunk it for me was a lack of control over the fertile imagination; as a result, several (even many) of the later stories fell flat. Lots of invention but not so much storytelling technique. Cardamoms has a huge amount of talent and imagination. No doubt he's got a bright writing future.
