I first came across Kris Saknussemm’s work in The Bizarro Starter Kit (Purple). His contribution was a novella called Sparklewheel, which I described in my review as a “psycho-sexual fever dream.” It’s no surprise, then, that Saknussemm bills his second novel, Private Midnight, as “a pschoerotic noir fairytale.” Sparklewheel was a sort of picaresque that moved […]
Book Review: Terra Insanus by Edward Lee
July 3, 2015 by Leave a Comment
I’ve read three of Edward Lee’s novels and enjoyed them all. They were schlocky, exploitative and fun to read. Before mass market horror collapsed, Lee’s novels pushed the boundaries of good taste and earned him a spot as as a leading name in the splatterpunk movement. Outside of the mainstream, Lee was publishing even more […]
Graphic Novel Review: The Push Man and Other Stories by Yoshihiro Tatsumi
June 24, 2015 by Leave a Comment
On March 7 of this year, Yoshihiro Tatsumi died at the age of 79. Tatsumi was a Japanese manga artist who had been writing and drawing since the ’50s. He is often considered the “godfather of alternative manga” for the way he helped push Japanese comics to more mature and complex story telling. He even […]
Book Review: what if i got down on my knees? by Tony Rauch
May 15, 2015 by Leave a Comment
I really enjoyed Tony Rauch’s previous collection of short stories, eyeballs growing all over me …again. It was a strong collection of whimsical and strange stories with a science fiction thread running through it. When I saw that Rauch had released a new collection, I asked for a review copy of what if i got […]
Book Review: Black House Rocked by Paul Bingham and Emril Krestle
April 20, 2015 by Leave a Comment
Hopeless Books bills Black House Rocked as a “literary split single.” It brings to mind pulp presses like Ace Books that published double volumes of books with similar themes, like how the first edition of William S. Burroughs’ novel Junky was part of a double volume with Maurice Helbrant’s novel Narcotic Agent. In this case, […]
Book Review: The Bizarro Starter Kit (Purple)
April 1, 2015 by 1 Comment
I’ve reviewed a couple books here that are billed under the subgenre of Bizarro, such as Dodgeball High and Technicolor Terrorists. Bizarro, however, is a relatively new subgenre of speculative fiction and many are still unfamiliar with it. To introduce people to the genre, Eraserhead Press has released three collections of various authors. The original […]
Book Review: The Elementary Particles by Michel Houellebecq
February 23, 2015 by Leave a Comment
The French author Michel Houellebecq has had an interesting year so far. On the same day of the attack on the Charlie Hebdo offices, his caricature was featured on the front cover of that magazine. This was also the day his new novel Submission was published, which takes place in the year 2022 where the […]
Book Review: Dodgeball High by Bradley Sands
November 14, 2014 by Leave a Comment
Despite the plot of Bradley Sand’s Dodgeball High being pretty straightforward, I still find myself having a difficult time describing it. The best I can come up with is that it’s like a high school sports movie parody as conceived by the writers at Adult Swim. Justin Lucas has just transferred to Lungville High. He […]
Book Review: The Spectral Link by Thomas Ligotti
November 12, 2014 by Leave a Comment
When I heard that Thomas Ligotti was coming out with a new collection, I immediately ordered it without really thinking. That was kind of a mistake. Not because the book is bad, but because it turns out the collection only had two stories in it. Paying $20 for a hardcover that turned out to only […]
Book Review: The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All by Laird Barron
July 31, 2014 by Leave a Comment
The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All by Laird Barron For me, this Stoker award winning collection has a lot of merit, but simply doesn’t capture me on an individual level. It’s hard for me to say where exactly the book doesn’t work me. In many of the stories, I simply spaced out and lost […]
