This collection reminds me why I read horror: I want to be freaked out, even squeaked out, to explore the kinds of violence that I can't contemplate.  I can't deal with it in real life, so it's something I deal with through fiction. 

Still, I can't remember reading anything quite this disturbing.   I probably have in the past, but not lately.   It hit upon visceral fears and runs with them. 

It's bloody and gory, or quiet and chilling, but all these stories are horrific.   The more I looked at the art versus the stories, the more conflicted I felt: the art was sketchy, raw, and didn't feel quite up to the stories in quality.   But there was something almost, sickeningly charming about the art that paired up to each story: they held a ragged, uneven quality that mimicked the violence lurking in the stories themselves.   

I still don't know how I feel.   Flipping through the book at first look, I was more pleased with the art than I was reading the stories.   However, this wouldn't have even made me drop half a star: the art was decent, and as I said, I felt it fit the stories in many ways.   I did knock half a star off in conjunction with the slight unevenness of the stories.   The majority were merely brilliant, leaving me shocked at the content and in awe at the audacity of the authors combined with their skills. 

Horrible things happen, sometimes in graphic detail, sometimes to children.   Sometimes things are about to happen but don't quite in the timeline of the story, but these could be the most chilling.   Some had loud, flashy endings, and some were left with a sense of quiet disturbance. 

All were excellent - or nearly so.   I found one story near the end to be a bit bloated, the purple prose at times convoluted enough that I found it distracting.    The last story started out with what I felt were too many details that could have easily be edited out, but ended up being my favorite because of the character interactions and the ending, which I found interesting even though I suspected it might come to that ending.  There were enough small surprises to leave me satisfied, and to tell the truth, it was the way the characters worked together and the main characters determination that got to me.   I really liked the secondary character as well, despite not knowing him quite as well. 

I haven't read horror, much less splatterpunk in a while.   This was an excellent reintroduction: it was a kick in the pants.  I will be reading  more soon.  But if I read it right now, I'll need brain bleach, for real.   And I've never met a book that made me want brain bleach (that wasn't full of typos and grammatical errors.)   Impressive on multiple levels!

Despite the shudders, and yeah, I'm still shuddering a little, I loved this.  I need some comics to keep me grounded, though.    Comics, now, please.   

Thank you to my bookish box buddy who picked out this perfect book for me!

Housesitting by Ray Garton.

Garton does a lot with so little: a simple housesitting job gone wrong.  I suspected this would be a 'woman gets attacked' scenario and I was so, so wrong.  Until the moment he started setting things up and even then I didn't see the surprise coming. 

There's no real violence in a lot of ways: even the violence that does happen is in the past and isn't really what I usually think of when I think of this kind of horror.   It's still creepy as all get out, though.  I may need a break from these stories.   They are incredibly intense!

Amputations in the Key of D. 

This one is a meditation on fame and talent - and whether the two are the same - with a metaphysical twist.   Thoroughly creepy.   And somehow less gory than the other stories, but no less effective for all that. 

1. Violence for Fun and Profit by Gregory L. Norris. 

    

   An extremely violent tale about justice after the mortgage crises.   Deals with homelessness and American greed, and is an unusual splatterpunk tale - although if I tell you why, it'll spoil the end.  I had to go back and fact check: the author did everything perfectly, but made me think he hadn't.   Tricky!

    

   I love this collection so far.   I'd forgotten how uncomfortable these stories could get, but in the best of ways.  I have to track down my old collection - called Splatterpunk - down now :D 

"I may be the first person outside of the Ukraine or the Yucatan to have turned murder into a profitable business."

I'm pretty sure there are contract killers in the US and have been for a while.   So I'm like almost 100% sure this isn't true. 

It does, however, fit into the megalomaniacal sense of this character: he loses everything and then becomes super special and talented at killing and is great because he does it for a noble cause.  (Which never stopped the heroes from going after the Punisher.)

I don't like the main character, but this story is fun because it plays with the social conventions of justice here.   Basically, the same reasons I like the Punisher, except I genuinely feel badly for Frank Castle because he doesn't think of women the way this guy does.   ('Cunt' was used to describe one that he's nicknamed 'Trash' instead of 'Trish.')   And this guy didn't have his kids killed, so I feel less sympathetic towards him as well.