Review of "The Dark Mother Gold Collection" by Jamilette Cintron

​Score: 94/100 (9.4 out of 10)

Oh, the horror!

The Dark Mother Gold Collection is the new and improved version of one of the darkest, goriest, most brutal, and hyperviolent story collections we've ever read!

Do you like horror and slasher movies?
Do you like Grimm fairy tales? No, not the Disney-fied versions, the actual Grimm fairy tales full of mutilation, death, and brutal retribution.
Do you like watching documentaries about the worst of the worst serial killers and genocidal dictators?
Do you have a dark itch in your soul that just needs to be scratched?

Well, this book may be the one for you!

It's certainly not for the faint at heart or those with a weak stomach.

The Dark Mother Gold Collection is a dark twist on the Mother Goose formula. Imagine if Mother Goose—rather than telling sweet, hearwarming, virtue/lesson-filled morality stories and nursery rhymes—told the sickest, most immoral (or even amoral), and nihilistic of tales!

It is a unique collection of dark, twisted tales.

"When Monsters Meet" concerns a wicked, perverse, and sadistic male warlock named Sir Donnel who, like Ser Meryn Trant from Game of Thrones, has a disgusting urge to brutalize women and girls. He targets a pregnant woman named Ebi.

Sir Donnel is a monster in every sense of the word. However, what happens when a monster faces the retribution of another monster—one of a divine or supernatural nature?

"The Beauty of Sin" follows a Sin Eater, a powerful witch named Celine who absorbs sins from innocents. The concept of Sin Eaters actually stems from superstitions and religous traditions tracing back to Wales, Ireland, and England. A Sin Eater was traditionally someone who took on the sins of a dead person so the deceased could be purified and pass through the afterlife. It's interesting that Cintron drew on this history in order to craft this story.

"To the Depths of Despair" is arguably the most brutal, horrific, and a macabre of the short stories. Do you like the idea of preserving old corpses or body parts, then wearing and parading them around?

This story follows a girl, Margarita, who is sexually exploited at a young age, impregnanted, then rejected by the impregnator, referred to as the "Gringo." She then brutally murders him and does all sorts of horrific things with his skin and other body parts. But it doesn't end there. Her stillborn baby, Stella, is preserved by being hollowed out and filled with stuffing like some plush doll. She is provided new skin, creating new bodies with parts of other babies. It doesn't get more depraved than that!

It's for that reason that this is probably the most memorable and haunting of the stories in this book.

There are numerous stories in this book of women losing their minds, hallucinating, and murdering themselves. Some resort to suicide. Trigger warnings galore!

One woman, Gem, murders her husband in a particularly chilling way, yet she remains in complete denial of the act, deluding herself into believing that someone else entirely was responsible for the murder.

There are a few other stories in here that are either brand new to this "Gold" edition or we hadn't really noticed in the previous contest. For example, there are a whole bunch of spooky, paranormal, and supernatural stories in here!

There's even some mythology.

For example, Fate is character/player in multiple stories. We actually get a full background story for her and her sisters in "History of the Fates." We also get the background story for the titular "Dark Mother" as well as her counterpart and sister, "True Mother."

We love the lore!

Speaking of lore, we get a twist of two twins, Malcom and Miles, being born to be protectors of nature only to be transformed into dark disruptive forces of it. It kinda reminded us of Jacob and the Man in Black in Lost, two twins on a beautiful, mysterious, magical island who—despite being trained to be its protector—lead many to death, destruction, and disaster.

By the way, that story also prominently features a Dryad, a powerful forest spirit. It reminded us of the Dryad from Crown Prince by W.D. Wilpack III. It's interesting to see almost the same characters existing in separate books by separate authors. It's intertextual, in a sense.

There's another story that skirts the line between dark fantasy and sci-fi, discussing and featuring time-travel. It reminded us of the episode of Doctor Who in which some "ghosts" were revealed to actually be time travelers stuck between timelines.

There's a great deal of imagination and intrigue in this book. It's a little rough around the edges in terms of formatting and editing, but it's barely noticeable.

Check it out on Amazon!