If you’ve ever read anything by Edward Lee or Wrath James White, you know what to expect. You know you’re going to get gore-a-plenty, depraved acts, sexual violence and outlandish scenes. With this book, Lee, along with co-author White, really pushes the envelope and tries to raise (lower?) the bar of his own standards of gross-out horror. Reclusive billionaire John Farrington is trying to enrage God by offending him so much that he will have to show himself. I can’t think of a better scenario for Lee and White to unleash their most vile thoughts onto the page. Unleash they do.
To create this offense to God, Farrington uses a banned drug created by his pharmaceutical company, which has the effect of whipping partakers into an uncontrollable sexual frenzy. He uses this drug on the “guests” collected and brought to his secure facility. They are genetic mishaps, severely disabled and horrendously disfigured by abnormalities in physiological development. He then kidnaps priests, nuns and notable spiritual leaders to perform degrading acts with these poor souls, with the drug overriding their conscious will. The billionaire then posts videos on the internet to crush the faith of their followers. It’s left for a reporter and a photographer working on a story about Farrington to try to save the day, with a hint of divine intervention.
None of the protagonists are particularly novel or sympathetic, but the craziness of John Farrington comes over as clear as day. His love for, and desire to be accepted by the “angels”, a particularly aggressive pair of conjoined twins, gives him depth and makes him a more interesting antagonist. The majority of the book follows a pattern of meeting a member of Farrington’s menagerie, followed by a very detailed description of their deformities and their vile sexual acts, and then onto the next character.
With Lee and White, you pretty much love them or you hate them. Full disclosure, I fall into the former category. This book is fairly quick, 124 pages for the eBook, and is absolutely crammed full of abhorrent scenes. Most readers probably couldn’t take much more. It is a quick read and very entertaining. If you want to be shocked, appalled, disgusted, possibly sick and have a good time doing it, this is the book for you.
Reviewed by Andrew Tadman @thebooksofblood
