What do you think?
Rate this book
The Need
Clea must find a way to save the Androgyne, an alluring, androgynous superrace who can pass as humans of incredible beauty, from the clutches of a primal evil.
271 pages, Hardcover
First published March 30, 1992
14 people are currently reading
163 people want to read
About the author
Andrew Neiderman
74 books394 followersAndrew Neiderman is the author of over 44 thrillers, including six of which have been translated onto film, including the big hit, 'The Devil's Advocate', a story in which he also wrote a libretto for the music-stage adaptation. One of his novels, Tender Loving Care, has been adapted into a CD-Rom interactive movie.
Andrew Neiderman became the ghostwriter for V.C. Andrews following her death in 1986. He was the screenwriter for Rain, a film based on a series of books under Andrews name. Between the novels written under her name and his own, he has published over 100 novels.
Andrew Neiderman became the ghostwriter for V.C. Andrews following her death in 1986. He was the screenwriter for Rain, a film based on a series of books under Andrews name. Between the novels written under her name and his own, he has published over 100 novels.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
December 4, 2011
The Need was almost terrible in every way. The book is pretty short but I was forcing myself through it for about 90% of the time. "Why then," you may ask "did you not just give up on it instead of wasting your time on something you only liked 10% of the time?" Well, I continued reading because I don't give up easy and some very bad books have redeemed themselves in the end. The Need did not redeem itself. Nope, it just stayed the same the entire time. The book was a sort of take on succubi/incubi or vampire-like creatures called Androgyny who suck sex instead of blood. They can apparently change between both sexes and each sex has his or her own personality. As if that weren't enough to make me roll my eyes, the book is told in first person in Dolores Claiborne style. This would not have bothered me but our main character continuously switches from telling a detective her story in the past, to telling us as readers her story of telling the detective her story. This type of storytelling may be enjoyable to some but I found it sloppy and just annoying as hell. Also, Neiderman proves himself to be a more vulgar horror author than I thought from reading some of his other books. Some sex scenes in this made me cringe from their Edward Lee-style grossness (like the one involving a man pretending his partner is his mother) and they just keep on comin'. I really haven't read much like this book yet and I understand that it tries and in many ways succedes at being original, but it just had too many problems. If you look down and see a dog turd, you are going to avoid it and feel varying measures of disgust even if there may be a precious jewel hidden inside it. It appears to be a turd, and who wants to dig through it to be sure that that is all it is? I dug through this one and left with dirty hands and feeling rather stupid. In the world of fiction, there are many jewels that are much easier to seek out so I would recommend that approach.
November 17, 2020
A pointless mass of silliness and sex attempting to be a deep and mysterious odyssey of myth. The most intriguing line throughout the novel is suddenly and vapidly snipped in three pages, leaving one feeling as if they've wasted their time wading through the rest of the ridiculousness that calls itself a novel.
March 17, 2015
I have owned this paperback for many years and attempted to read it several times. I always bogged down within the first few pages because they seemed so confusing and then set it aside. The other day I decided to make myself finish it because it's been in my book case and has moved across the country with me since 1992.
Once I got past those first blockading pages, I was drawn into the story, especially when I learned it wasn't a vampire tale as I'd originally thought from the cover and the blurb. The concept of an androgynous creature whose separate entities are aware, protective, and sometimes jealous of each other was intriguing. The female half is the stronger, the male sector only appearing at puberty, being allowed to "live" only at intervals, and reverting to the female if death occurs. In the main character's case, her other half, Richard, has become so strong he manages occasionally to actually take over. This is another reason she wants to subdue him because she feels herself disappearing.
Clea, a famous actress, awakens to discover her lover murdered by her other half, Richard, who was not only jealous of Clea's love for Michael but had also been Michael's lover himself. In revenge, Clea goes to the police, intending to confess and somehow get Richard put away. Since this will involve destroying herself if she appears as Richard and he's arrested, she's literally committing suicide. Detective Mayer, who interviews her, at first believes her unbalanced but as she tells him of the Androgyne, their origin...according to Clea, God created the Androgyne first (in His image, both male and female together in one body), then sent them into the world to punish Man for his disobedience...and reads to him from Richard's diary, he begins to believe...he and Clea also fall in love... As Clea begins to wonder if Mayer is all he appears to be, the pathway for another tragedy, either Clea's or Richard's, is opened.
This is an unusual and intriguing story. Told from both Clea and Richard's point of view, it builds to an unexpected and shocking conclusion...or perhaps, considering the closeness of the two, it isn't so shocking after all. There's plenty of sex--both male and female--since that's the way the Androgyne subdue their victims and Mayer's retorts to some of Clea's statements are sharp and snarky on occasion. (For some reason, I envisioned him as looking like Donal Logue, the actor portraying Harvey Bullock in the TV series Gotham, not necessarily knock-out handsome but sarcastic and yet dependable when necessary.) It's a very original story, not exactly a Jekyll and Hyde tale but with tinge of that tale, as well as a bit of the vampire as well. It leaves the reader with a bit of uneasiness as well as sorrow.
I'm glad I finally got around to reading it after owning it for 23 years!
This novel is owned by the reviewer and no remuneration was involved in the writing of this review.
Once I got past those first blockading pages, I was drawn into the story, especially when I learned it wasn't a vampire tale as I'd originally thought from the cover and the blurb. The concept of an androgynous creature whose separate entities are aware, protective, and sometimes jealous of each other was intriguing. The female half is the stronger, the male sector only appearing at puberty, being allowed to "live" only at intervals, and reverting to the female if death occurs. In the main character's case, her other half, Richard, has become so strong he manages occasionally to actually take over. This is another reason she wants to subdue him because she feels herself disappearing.
Clea, a famous actress, awakens to discover her lover murdered by her other half, Richard, who was not only jealous of Clea's love for Michael but had also been Michael's lover himself. In revenge, Clea goes to the police, intending to confess and somehow get Richard put away. Since this will involve destroying herself if she appears as Richard and he's arrested, she's literally committing suicide. Detective Mayer, who interviews her, at first believes her unbalanced but as she tells him of the Androgyne, their origin...according to Clea, God created the Androgyne first (in His image, both male and female together in one body), then sent them into the world to punish Man for his disobedience...and reads to him from Richard's diary, he begins to believe...he and Clea also fall in love... As Clea begins to wonder if Mayer is all he appears to be, the pathway for another tragedy, either Clea's or Richard's, is opened.
This is an unusual and intriguing story. Told from both Clea and Richard's point of view, it builds to an unexpected and shocking conclusion...or perhaps, considering the closeness of the two, it isn't so shocking after all. There's plenty of sex--both male and female--since that's the way the Androgyne subdue their victims and Mayer's retorts to some of Clea's statements are sharp and snarky on occasion. (For some reason, I envisioned him as looking like Donal Logue, the actor portraying Harvey Bullock in the TV series Gotham, not necessarily knock-out handsome but sarcastic and yet dependable when necessary.) It's a very original story, not exactly a Jekyll and Hyde tale but with tinge of that tale, as well as a bit of the vampire as well. It leaves the reader with a bit of uneasiness as well as sorrow.
I'm glad I finally got around to reading it after owning it for 23 years!
This novel is owned by the reviewer and no remuneration was involved in the writing of this review.
August 11, 2017
I can't really call this a book since it is more of a concept piece. Almost nothing significant happens in the present tense and 90% of the book is exposition and flashbacks, but the innovative idea behind it is so intriguing that I had trouble putting it down. Basically it explores what would happen if it was possible to morph into a male or female version of yourself at will and the complications and upsides of such an existence. The incubus supernatural aspect is hardly in it, but it was never the draw anyway.
With such a gender bender, potentially sexy plot I expected a lot more eroticism, but aside from a handful of brief, vanilla sex scenes, the story is oddly restrained. In addition, despite the bold idea of a shared gender species, the author seemed reluctant to delve into any explicit homosexual/lesbian relationships or sexuality outside of a couple of nondescript references and a diary entry. The horror and science fiction aspects are much more dramatic and with all the psychology and spirituality thrown in the gore, I was reminded of Christopher Pike's work, which is a high compliment.
The storytelling never reaches its full potential, but it is such a unique vision that you can't help but thoroughly enjoy the ride and think about it for a long time afterward.
With such a gender bender, potentially sexy plot I expected a lot more eroticism, but aside from a handful of brief, vanilla sex scenes, the story is oddly restrained. In addition, despite the bold idea of a shared gender species, the author seemed reluctant to delve into any explicit homosexual/lesbian relationships or sexuality outside of a couple of nondescript references and a diary entry. The horror and science fiction aspects are much more dramatic and with all the psychology and spirituality thrown in the gore, I was reminded of Christopher Pike's work, which is a high compliment.
The storytelling never reaches its full potential, but it is such a unique vision that you can't help but thoroughly enjoy the ride and think about it for a long time afterward.
July 21, 2011
I'm embarrassed to admit that I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It's a horror story, and in general I can't stand those, even well written ones. And this book is NOT well written. The dialog is stilted and unnatural and even the grammar is awful -- "I decided I'd lay down for a while and rest," etc.)
But Andrew Neiderman can tell a story. He comes up with bizaar and very original plots, and his pacing is excellent. You keep flipping pages because you want to see what happens next.
But Andrew Neiderman can tell a story. He comes up with bizaar and very original plots, and his pacing is excellent. You keep flipping pages because you want to see what happens next.
August 10, 2008
By far one of the best books I've EVER read!
December 1, 2014
I have been looking for this book for years but couldn't remember the name lol. Read it like over 15 years ago. Will be reading ot again :)
November 25, 2017
There are about a million horror books for sale currently, and I would guess that about half of them involve vampires. Having read more than my share of these stories, good and bad, I thought I had come across every possible vampire scenario or spinoff. I was wrong. In The Need, Andrew Neiderman takes traditional vampire lore and spins it off into something completely different. The result is a sizzling erotic horror story.
The lead characters in The Need are Androgynes, a species whose members are both male and female at various times. They actually physically change from one sex to the other, and the two occupants of the same body have completely different personalities and sets of memories. Like the traditional vampire, however, the male Androgyne from time to time feeds off normal females by draining their life force during the midst of an erotic encounter, an experience that gives the Androgyne renewed energy but has a rather fatal effect on the human female. As usually happens in books of this sort, readers have to go with the flow and accept this premise, something that’s not tough to do considering author Neiderman’s quite steamy writing style.
The narrator of The Need is Clea Cave, a highly successful Androgyne actress who, as the book begins, discovers the murdered body of her human lover. She suspects her alter ego Richard of being the killer, but, when she goes to the police with her suspicions, not surprisingly, she has a tough time getting anyone to believe her.
Although the plot of The Need revolves around the mystery of who actually killed Clea’s lover, that storyline is secondary to Neiderman’s description of the world of the Androgynes. He manages to explore this world from both male and female perspectives, as Clea narrates and describes her own growing up and, from time to time, reads excerpts of a journal Richard has kept in which he describes his exploits. Although The Need doesn’t contain very graphic descriptions of sexual (or violent) encounters, the book is highly erotic. Neiderman manages to get some of his characters’ innermost emotions on paper, and the description of the various encounters they have along the way is a gripping page turner.
Although The Need is a novel, much of it reads as a series of shorter stories about episodes in the characters’ lives. One of them in particular, in which Clea describes her rivalry with a particularly vindictive human woman who was a fellow college student of hers, is as good a tale of cruelty and revenge as you’ll find. It’s only when the author tries to connect all the dots and get back to the central mystery that the book lags. Simply put, neither Clea’s dead human lover or the mystery surrounding his death are all that compelling. To make matters worse, the author introduces a new supernatural being late in the book that feels as if it was rather crudely inserted in the text from a far more juvenile fantasy.
For fans of erotic horror, about 75% of The Need is as well-written and hypnotically compelling a work as you’re going to find. The Androgynes are quite well thought out, and both Clea and her male counterpart Richard are fascinatingly complex personalities. It’s the more realistic and mundane aspects of The Need that are the weakest, so much so that the author has to introduce a new being in the last couple of chapters to wrap up his story. I would rather Neiderman stayed with his strength and given readers more about his main characters. But, even with a couple of clunky chapters, The Need should fill anyone’s need for this type of horror.
The lead characters in The Need are Androgynes, a species whose members are both male and female at various times. They actually physically change from one sex to the other, and the two occupants of the same body have completely different personalities and sets of memories. Like the traditional vampire, however, the male Androgyne from time to time feeds off normal females by draining their life force during the midst of an erotic encounter, an experience that gives the Androgyne renewed energy but has a rather fatal effect on the human female. As usually happens in books of this sort, readers have to go with the flow and accept this premise, something that’s not tough to do considering author Neiderman’s quite steamy writing style.
The narrator of The Need is Clea Cave, a highly successful Androgyne actress who, as the book begins, discovers the murdered body of her human lover. She suspects her alter ego Richard of being the killer, but, when she goes to the police with her suspicions, not surprisingly, she has a tough time getting anyone to believe her.
Although the plot of The Need revolves around the mystery of who actually killed Clea’s lover, that storyline is secondary to Neiderman’s description of the world of the Androgynes. He manages to explore this world from both male and female perspectives, as Clea narrates and describes her own growing up and, from time to time, reads excerpts of a journal Richard has kept in which he describes his exploits. Although The Need doesn’t contain very graphic descriptions of sexual (or violent) encounters, the book is highly erotic. Neiderman manages to get some of his characters’ innermost emotions on paper, and the description of the various encounters they have along the way is a gripping page turner.
Although The Need is a novel, much of it reads as a series of shorter stories about episodes in the characters’ lives. One of them in particular, in which Clea describes her rivalry with a particularly vindictive human woman who was a fellow college student of hers, is as good a tale of cruelty and revenge as you’ll find. It’s only when the author tries to connect all the dots and get back to the central mystery that the book lags. Simply put, neither Clea’s dead human lover or the mystery surrounding his death are all that compelling. To make matters worse, the author introduces a new supernatural being late in the book that feels as if it was rather crudely inserted in the text from a far more juvenile fantasy.
For fans of erotic horror, about 75% of The Need is as well-written and hypnotically compelling a work as you’re going to find. The Androgynes are quite well thought out, and both Clea and her male counterpart Richard are fascinatingly complex personalities. It’s the more realistic and mundane aspects of The Need that are the weakest, so much so that the author has to introduce a new being in the last couple of chapters to wrap up his story. I would rather Neiderman stayed with his strength and given readers more about his main characters. But, even with a couple of clunky chapters, The Need should fill anyone’s need for this type of horror.
March 11, 2023
“You’ve gone too far this time,” I said. “You had no right and I will not forgive you.”
When faced with horrific tragedy, do you turn away and flee or bury something deep inside yourself and confess? Clea Caves, a successful actress living in Hollywood is faced with this reality when she woke up beside her lover, Michael Barrington covered in his blood with his body a mere foot away. Knowing deep inside Richard was behind that senseless killing, she would do anything to escape his old and keep him locked inside. She was born different, something mere mortals could never begin to come to understand. Enhanced with beauty far beyond human nature, she was an Androgyne. Someone who had a male counterpart of equal beauty who could metamorph when needed, she and Richard would become one person when her first menstruation occured. Scattered around the world these beings were selected by God as his one perfect creation and used sex as a way to maintain themselves. When they morph to their male counterparts, they would hunt their prey and use sex to drain their life forces away. Practically suffocating them, death by asphyxiation was most commonly noted when those beautiful woman were discovered deceased. When Clea found herself turning away from her true self and finding a love in an Inferior, Richard couldn't stand to let it go on. Driven by intensive jealousy, he ripped Clea from herself and orchestrated the horrific slaughter and castration of her lover. Disgusted by his actions, she turned to Detective Mayor to aid in a confession that stretched hundred of years into the making. Confessing of all the Victims he wrote about in his Diary, she tried to get a mortal to understand the complicated ness which was the life of an Androgyne. All blessed with supernatural beauty and charisma, they had the ability to seduce anyone they wanted, but only for the need to Feed.
Our dreams, our hopes were really our particular curses. Pain came only from what we longed for and could not have. If we longed for nothing, we would suffer nothing.
As Clea continues to drive deeper into the secrets of her own mind to the Detective, he's left seemingly speechless as well as amazed by the tales she weaved. With stories of craved passion and heartless, ruthless jealousy, it seems nobody is safe when the Androgyne males come out to play and hunt. The more attractive and beautiful you are, the more fulfilling your life force is for their consumption. Using that to aid the beauty and appearance of their female counterparts, the exact times the Hunts are required are anybody's guess. As she ecoints the times spent with Allison and her male side Nicholas, she unravels how jealousy became a blistering topic because Richard and Nicholas. Sparking an ongoing war of sorts between the two, it left Allison and Clea beginning to drift aside. Naturally blessed never to feel the insecurities or jealousy of Inferior woman, that's exactly what the two found themselves experiencing while living together in New York. With every hunt one of the males deciding who got the prettier kill, the girls'appearances began to differ.
When faced with horrific tragedy, do you turn away and flee or bury something deep inside yourself and confess? Clea Caves, a successful actress living in Hollywood is faced with this reality when she woke up beside her lover, Michael Barrington covered in his blood with his body a mere foot away. Knowing deep inside Richard was behind that senseless killing, she would do anything to escape his old and keep him locked inside. She was born different, something mere mortals could never begin to come to understand. Enhanced with beauty far beyond human nature, she was an Androgyne. Someone who had a male counterpart of equal beauty who could metamorph when needed, she and Richard would become one person when her first menstruation occured. Scattered around the world these beings were selected by God as his one perfect creation and used sex as a way to maintain themselves. When they morph to their male counterparts, they would hunt their prey and use sex to drain their life forces away. Practically suffocating them, death by asphyxiation was most commonly noted when those beautiful woman were discovered deceased. When Clea found herself turning away from her true self and finding a love in an Inferior, Richard couldn't stand to let it go on. Driven by intensive jealousy, he ripped Clea from herself and orchestrated the horrific slaughter and castration of her lover. Disgusted by his actions, she turned to Detective Mayor to aid in a confession that stretched hundred of years into the making. Confessing of all the Victims he wrote about in his Diary, she tried to get a mortal to understand the complicated ness which was the life of an Androgyne. All blessed with supernatural beauty and charisma, they had the ability to seduce anyone they wanted, but only for the need to Feed.
Our dreams, our hopes were really our particular curses. Pain came only from what we longed for and could not have. If we longed for nothing, we would suffer nothing.
As Clea continues to drive deeper into the secrets of her own mind to the Detective, he's left seemingly speechless as well as amazed by the tales she weaved. With stories of craved passion and heartless, ruthless jealousy, it seems nobody is safe when the Androgyne males come out to play and hunt. The more attractive and beautiful you are, the more fulfilling your life force is for their consumption. Using that to aid the beauty and appearance of their female counterparts, the exact times the Hunts are required are anybody's guess. As she ecoints the times spent with Allison and her male side Nicholas, she unravels how jealousy became a blistering topic because Richard and Nicholas. Sparking an ongoing war of sorts between the two, it left Allison and Clea beginning to drift aside. Naturally blessed never to feel the insecurities or jealousy of Inferior woman, that's exactly what the two found themselves experiencing while living together in New York. With every hunt one of the males deciding who got the prettier kill, the girls'appearances began to differ.
June 8, 2019
4.3 stars
Read
May 28, 2024I didn’t make it past the first few chapters. The young girl felt more sexualized than an experience of her awakening and exploring her own sexuality which kind of gave me the ick.
December 13, 2014
The Need
by Andrew Neiderman
Horror? Psychological Thriller? It is hard to categorize this book. It is an interesting idea, a race of being both male and female in the same body. The male sucking the life out of humans to feed the females youth and beauty.
All the tension building elements are presented in the prologue and first chapter. Told in first person past tense, the story starts with a murder (Clea’s human lover Michael) and a confession. The rest is flash back as Clea confesses that she and her brother Richard are one and the same. He has killed her lover and she intends to never let him surface again.
She tells the skeptical detective everything - starting with the fact that she is of a ‘race’ called Androgyne. The detective is willing to listen skeptically because he is pursuing her brother for several murders.
She tells her story by going all the way to the beginning - her childhood in this case, insisting on the fact it is relevant. She describes her first transformation in great detail and reveal that Androgyne males feed on human women - draining their life directly like an incubus.
She tells her half of the story and conveniently, Richard’s part is recorded as a diary he kept. After reading about Richard’s first kill described in his own hand, Clea realizes the detective isn’t believing a word and Richard is trying to escape.
She leaves but the detective comes to her home and thy continue the story over dinner then back to back home. She spins a sordid tale that involves her brother’s jealousy and distain for all ‘inferiors’ as the Androgyne refer to human. It is also revealed that Michael was lovers with both Clea and Richard. The detective though skeptical just can’t help being drawn in to the salacious tale. To the point of the obligatory seduction of the detective (ostensibly to ward off Richard, but seriously just to get them in bed). There are minor points of action interspersed throughout her story telling but they don’t really add much.
The story is short and easy to read, but it suffers from a lack of sympathetic character. He poor dead Michael is sleeping with both brother and sister. The detective is sleeping with a woman he thinks is crazy. And Clea while guilty some time over her brother’s kills, actively participate in the murder of a rival. And worse than that by the end of the book literally nothing has changed except that Clea loses all remorse and embraces her life with her brother. The detective thread is just plot devise to describe details of the Androgyne.
by Andrew Neiderman
Horror? Psychological Thriller? It is hard to categorize this book. It is an interesting idea, a race of being both male and female in the same body. The male sucking the life out of humans to feed the females youth and beauty.
All the tension building elements are presented in the prologue and first chapter. Told in first person past tense, the story starts with a murder (Clea’s human lover Michael) and a confession. The rest is flash back as Clea confesses that she and her brother Richard are one and the same. He has killed her lover and she intends to never let him surface again.
She tells the skeptical detective everything - starting with the fact that she is of a ‘race’ called Androgyne. The detective is willing to listen skeptically because he is pursuing her brother for several murders.
She tells her story by going all the way to the beginning - her childhood in this case, insisting on the fact it is relevant. She describes her first transformation in great detail and reveal that Androgyne males feed on human women - draining their life directly like an incubus.
She tells her half of the story and conveniently, Richard’s part is recorded as a diary he kept. After reading about Richard’s first kill described in his own hand, Clea realizes the detective isn’t believing a word and Richard is trying to escape.
She leaves but the detective comes to her home and thy continue the story over dinner then back to back home. She spins a sordid tale that involves her brother’s jealousy and distain for all ‘inferiors’ as the Androgyne refer to human. It is also revealed that Michael was lovers with both Clea and Richard. The detective though skeptical just can’t help being drawn in to the salacious tale. To the point of the obligatory seduction of the detective (ostensibly to ward off Richard, but seriously just to get them in bed). There are minor points of action interspersed throughout her story telling but they don’t really add much.
The story is short and easy to read, but it suffers from a lack of sympathetic character. He poor dead Michael is sleeping with both brother and sister. The detective is sleeping with a woman he thinks is crazy. And Clea while guilty some time over her brother’s kills, actively participate in the murder of a rival. And worse than that by the end of the book literally nothing has changed except that Clea loses all remorse and embraces her life with her brother. The detective thread is just plot devise to describe details of the Androgyne.
March 3, 2010
Interesting new take on vampires.
May 13, 2017
Ohh Neiderman....such a let down. I usually give his books 4 stars, but this....how it was written, I just wasnt in the mood for and I usually arent for this style. Its different to his other books and I just didnt like it. I got about half way and just....couldnt. I dont like to not finish a book but I have over 800 in my place to get through so I have no time for this. Sorry Neiderman, im not a fan of this book.
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews