THE FALLEN BOYS – AARON DRIES

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The Fallen Boys by Aaron Dries
My rating: 3/5 cats

oh, god, the pressure…the very first review of this book on goodreads.com. this means i can’t just cut-and-paste someone else’s review like i usually do.* but this is like being early to a fancy wine and cheese party, and no one wants to be the first one to grab the entire wheel of brie and stuff it in their mouth. i guess that responsibility falls on me.

so, gather round, sickfucks, you know who you are.

this book is one seething pit of torture porn. and if the above scenario were real, the wheel of brie in question would have been covered in maggots and shoved down into someone, or up into someone, and there would be a lot of blood involved. and i would politely excuse myself from the party.

i do not have a problem with violent books. i have a pretty solid stomach for reading about truly disgusting things, but sometimes the descriptions in this one veered into the cartoonish.

for example:

i am spoilering it for the gentler readers.

View Spoiler » It was almost impossible to tell his age, yet the full head of hair and the sculpture of his muscles led Marshall to believe he was in his early twenties. But the naked man in the wheelchair looked far older. His skin was dead grey, punctuated by a spectrum of bruises ranging from purple to green. The right arm ended in a blackened stump, the bone burnt black from makeshift cauterization. Knives of varying size stuck out of his chest at odd angles and they moved in a syncopated fashion with every long, labored breath. The man’s lips had been cut off and two teeth ripped out, leaving behind fluttering strings of flesh. A rusted nail protruded out from his upper gum, the flat end rubbing the rim of his nostril raw. His nipples, eyelids, and foreskin were gone and looked to have been cut off in impulsive, inarticulate slashes. Strings of staples outlined jigsaw pieces across his stomach and thighs. Around his head he wore a crown of barbed wire, his face red from all the spilled blood.

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i mean, everything after “rusted nail” is kind of overkill, yeah? at that point, you’re just beating a dead horse. although this “horse” is, unfortunately, still breathing.

and i don’t think one slash of a whip, however many razor blades were attached to it, would slice both nipples off. you would need at least two lashes to do that, right?

but apart from the occasionally gratuitous nature of the torture, the story is fine, if this is your thing. and the final scene—oh god, super gross and effective. and the scene that came earlier and is a foreshadowing of the final scene. good god, that is some sickness!

if you like splatter and dismemberment and when horrible things happen to mostly good people, if you like suicide and keeping your relatives close after they have passed, if you like flensing and decapitation and saving money on pig-feed, allow me to recommend this book to you, you big sicko!

and now i am leaving the party, with a napkin over my mouth, gagging a little.

*dear goodreads.com lawyers, i have never done this.

read my book reviews on goodreads