The Venus Complex is something of a small horror masterpiece on its own terms. It’s a little unfair then that every review of this book that’s going to come out, and this one is obviously not going to be any different, is going to make mention of the author’s long association with the genre.

This is just my own personal opinion, but there is an awful lot of wretched, stomach-churning (and not in a good way) horror out there that tries to splice in some erotica to make things interesting. It’s rare that I see this touch work, and I’m not sure what started the trend. 

It would be interesting to take Bud Smith’s short story collection, Or Something Like That, as a single, sprawling epic. One in which the characters never meet but just happen to inhabit the same universe. The cast of misfits, weirdos and everyday individuals, unaware that they are liabilities to their own happiness, would be an extraordinary gathering of personalities. Smith assumes an extraordinary range of voices and perspectives across his stories.

A fantastic passage in Skip Fox’s dizzying, beautiful collection of poetry, Sheer Indefinite, comes from the long, riveting poem (and there’s several of those to be found here), “The Garden of Earthly Delights.”

At its heart though, The Sky Conducting is indeed a post-apocalyptic story. There’s a phrase you might notice on the back of the book, America died while no one was looking, and that’s a perfect, grim way to get us started. 

My favorite image in Lauren Reynolds’ stark, brilliantly-shot photographic journal, Sex Work is Real Work, has to be the two-page spread that covers pages thirty and thirty-one. It is one of the pictures in the book that does not actually exhibit any of the dancers who danced at South Carolina’s now-defunct Gold Club, during the five years Reynolds worked and recorded her experiences there.