Brainycat's 5 "B"s:
blood: 4
boobs: 5
bombs: 2
bondage: 1
blasphemy: 2
Stars: 3
Bechdel Test: PASS
Deggan's Rule: FAIL
Gay Bechdel Test: PASS

Please note: I don't review to provide synopses, I review to share a purely visceral reaction to books and perhaps answer some of the questions I ask when I'm contemplating investing time and money into a book.

This book started off with a scene of explicit depravity that would make Ed Lee proud, and I'm not ashamed to admit that I was hooked right away and that's what carried me through the rest of the book. After that, it became a romance complete with InstaLove and some steamy lesbian sex between the Older Wiser Stronger Emotionally-Unavailable longtime lesbian MC and the Younger Enthusiastic Softer Idealistic Never-Been-With-A-Woman-Before co-MC. It's a bog-standard romance, dressed up in an implausible zombie scenario - in fact, all of the worldbuilding was one big "WTF?!?!". The romance - well, if you're at all familiar with the genre there will be absolutely no surprises here for you. The last two thirds of the book featured predictable plot and character development punctuated a few times by sex. I kept hoping for more of the horrific depravity the book started off with but it never happened again. In a sense, it feels like a bit of false advertising, but OTOH I've met my annual quota for romance.

Brainycat's 5 "B"s:
blood: 5
boobs: 2
bombs: 2
bondage: 5
blasphemy: 5
Stars: 3
Bechdel Test: FAIL
Deggan's Rule: PASS (in spirit if not the letter)
Gay Bechdel Test: FAIL

Please note: I don't review to provide synopses, I review to share a purely visceral reaction to books and perhaps answer some of the questions I ask when I'm contemplating investing time and money into a book.

Natural Born Killers is one of my favorite movies. This story covers exactly the same emotional territory though not as deeply and doesn't make any greater comments about society's use of media for it's vicarious bloodsports. I also felt a strong resemblance to Kutter, but AM&NL is a much better read. This just a cute little love story about two special people fated to meet each other, fall in love, and end their lives together in a blaze of glory. It's written at what I'd consider a YA level of vocabulary and complexity, but I suppose it's probably inappropriate for younger readers (I'm not a very good judge of these things).  It's not a long story - it only took me a couple of short sittings to read it. As romance goes, this is the sort of romance I like, it's twisted, dark and gory. No explicit sex though, and that's a drawback that's worth at least a star. I was also hoping for more gore since killing is what brings these two people together, and I think opportunities to show them growing together were skipped over in a few scenes. It felt like a bit of fearfulness on the author's behalf, like she pulled back a little from truly committing herself to following the characters where they wanted to go.

It's hard to write an in-depth review of a short novella. Especially this one, as it's really all about atmosphere and mood rather than plot and character. We know the characters before the story starts, we know their arcs, and the setting really doesn't matter. To make a musical analogy, Natural Born Killers is like Psyclon 9's Parasitic and Atomic Montessa and Nuclear LuLu is like Mr. Kitty's Time. AM&NL is a good story and I see why it won the awards it has. I like what it does and where it goes, but I just wish it were more explicit. Readers with more delicate sensibilities will probably like it more than I did.

Brainycat's 5 "B"s:
blood: 4
boobs: 2
bombs: 0
bondage: 4
blasphemy: 3
Stars: 1
Bechdel Test: FAIL
Deggan's Rule: FAIL
Gay Bechdel Test: FAIL

Please note: I don't review to provide synopses, I review to share a purely visceral reaction to books and perhaps answer some of the questions I ask when I'm contemplating investing time and money into a book.

This is not going to be a long review; the time I've spent reading the first 10% is more than enough time on this book. I thought I'd give this a try since I'd already bought it; I was hoping I'd like it better than "Sick Bastards". I didn't. For this review, I'll throw out some terms and let y'all put your own sentences and paragraphs together:
Derivative
Unoriginal
Uninspired
Predictable
Boring
Unrealistic
Simplistic

Brainycat's 5 "B"s:
blood: 5
boobs: 2
bombs: 3 (the economic violence of poverty)
bondage: 3
blasphemy: 4
Stars: 5
Bechdel Test: PASS
Deggan's Rule: PASS
Gay Bechdel Test: FAIL

Please note: I don't review to provide synopses, I review to share a purely visceral reaction to books and perhaps answer some of the questions I ask when I'm contemplating investing time and money into a book.

What a fantastic find this is! Written against the backdrop of inner city poverty, this is a short story about deeply imperfect people trying to cope with extraordinarily crappy circumstances. Drugs are a major part of this story, as is the supernatural. I found myself reminded of The House by Edward Lee - a miasma from years of psychic pain builds up and takes on a life of it's own, which is the sort of Jungian inspired supernatural shenanigans I like the best.

Speaking as someone with six years of sobriety after a lifetime of chemical addiction, I found the portrayal of addiction in this story to be among the best I've ever read. According to the bios on the usual sites the author's day job is drug counseling. This experience shows through. The horror and depravity of addiction feels gut-wrenchingly visceral. I found parts of this short story difficult to read - they're that powerful. And I'm the guy that can read Edward Lee while eating dinner.

To be frank, I didn't have very high expectations for the book; Wicked Run Press is Mr. Mathew's own label. I was very pleasantly surprised at the quality of the writing - he uses an economy of words that flows very well, the characters were all developed well and voicing was especially well done. I do not recall any typos or grammatical errors. This is a well produced book gloriously free of the problems that beset too many self-published books.

I've since purchased several other books from Mark Mathews. They are not going to sit on my TBR list for years; knowing that I have some more stories that could be this good is like having a stash of the good stuff tucked away for later.

Brainycat's 5 "B"s:
blood: 4
boobs: 1
bombs: 0
bondage: 4
blasphemy: 3
Bechdel Test: FAIL
Deggan's Rule: FAIL
Gay Bechdel Test: FAIL

Please note: I don't review to provide synopses, I review to share a purely visceral reaction to books and perhaps answer some of the questions I ask when I'm contemplating investing time and money into a book.

I finished the first two stories in this collection (21% of the book) and moved on. I really like a lot of what Necro has published, so when I saw the blurb explaining this is the guy who runs the publishing house I was excited to see what he's writing. Unfortunately, the writing didn't excite me.

The first story is written from the POV of a psychopathic killer, and is in the vein of the "I'm normal but everyone else is weird" device. This works best when the author draws out sympathy from the reader, so we are left wondering if we're harboring some sort of psychopathology. While I wanted to relate to the protagonist - a nerdy kid who got picked on in school, rather like myself - I just never felt like I related to him enough, nor did I feel engaged in what he was doing. Failing to connect to this kid meant that I never had to question my own delicate sensibilities, and thus the whole story fell flat.

The second story could have been interesting except I saw the ending from a mile away. I think the explanation for the relationships between the parents and their adopted son was explained too early which completely gave away the conclusion in the first few pages of the story. Finishing the story was just an exercise in moving my eyes across the page while the inevitable concluded itself.

Overall, I found the writing felt expository with a very even cadence. I like writing that mixes it up a little (ie, of a much higher caliber than my own writing) and the vocabulary was conversational but not especially evocative. Reading these stories hasn't dampened my enthusiasm for the Necro label, but it has reinforced my opinion that writers can be good authors or good editors, but not both.