Edward Lorn

Review: 5/5 I'm Thinking of Ending Things - Iain Reid book

Dig it:This book is a perfect example of negative reviews selling a book. Specifically Shelbs's and Kells's reviews. I had to see what all the fuss was about. So, yeah, the negative reviews of this book sold me. I paid money for this book based solely on negative reviews. Some authors need to hear that. They need to let that shit sink in. Are Shelbs and Kells stupid for not getting this book? Nope. And I'll explain why.Iain Reid's I'm Thinking of Ending Things is 224 pages in hardcover. The audiobook (which I suggest you listen to instead of reading the actual book) is five hours and twenty-two minutes long (5:22). If you read it at x2 speed, you can listen to it in the time it takes to watch one of The Hobbitmovies. There's a reason this book is as short as it is. Reid wants you to read his book twice, and not necessarily in the same order in which you first read it. He's a tricksy hobbitses, and we shall discuss more in the Spoiler Discussion.This book is utterly fascinating, and I believe that's why so many people are torn over it. All too often we're lulled into a sense of normality. We think things should happen one way and we get locked into that mindset. So much so that we cannot see the forest for the trees. The frustrating part about this book is that is seems to have been written for audio. In the audiobook, when you come to the twist, there's an obvious change and everything becomes clear as day. I relistened to the book right after listening to it the first time and I read an entirely different book. Simply put, this is kinda (but not really) like The Sixth Sense. Second time around, you will see **. Do I think you're going to read this twice? No. Do I think you're going to reread this to see if I'm right? No. But I did, and my experience was vastly improved the second time around.In summation: Some of you like long(er) books. If you can dedicate yourself to 500 pages, there's no reason you can't reread this (maybe in a different order?) right after you finish it. You'll likely see what Reid did in the first readthrough, but there's so many goodies in the reread. Simple stuff you would never have paid attention to, like, say, a red door knob. **Final Judgment: Two experiences in one bookSpoiler Discussion: Wherein I spoil I'm Thinking of Ending Things, by Iain Reid.

[spoiler]

Reid gives clear instructions in the very last chapter of this book. The unnamed duo who've been talking between the chapters are discussing the book found next to Jake's body, and the guy tells the woman that he thinks she should read it once and then read it again, only backward. This is a pain in the ass to do in audio, but I did it. I suggest you do the same. You know, if you wanna. Yes, Jake killed himself because he was struggling with schizophrenia, as most super-intelligent folks do. No, there never was any girlfriend. It was always him. He made up, in his mind, everything that happened after the night he met her in the bar. This book is a very sick man playing in his own head. It's sad and disturbing and even a bit beautiful. Madness usually is.Jake did work in a lab. He left that job to take a job as a janitor. Somewhere he could just blend in and do his own thing and, even though he was around people, he kinda wasn't. How many of you remember your high school janitors? Did you hang out with that person or did they just kinda exist on the edge? I understand why people didn't like this book, but I fucking loved it. Reid made the book just short enough that you can reread it with ease right after reading it the first time. Bravo. Good on him for trying something unique with his fiction. Lastly, in the audiobook, right at the repetitious part at the end, when he says that one line over and over again, the narrator switches from female to male. I don't know how they pulled this off in the book, but in the audiobook it is chilling and makes the twist clear. That's my favorite part of the book, really, but don't get me wrong, I enjoyed the entire experience. Thanks for joining me.

[/spoiler]

Starting @ 2pm Eastern Standard Time today, July 17, 2016, I'll be speaking with Gregor Xane, who will be with us live for the first time ever.

  Please join us here: http://youtu.be/nhlw8TY_p1w

Review: 1/5 A Head Full of Ghosts: A Novel - Paul Tremblay book

Green vomit, violent masturbating, naughty language... Doesn't schizophrenia Satan have any new tricks up his sleeves? Because, you know, a woman masturbating and cursing is definitely a sign of evil. How unladylike unholy!First, I must say, I might just raise my rating of Josh Malerman's Bird Box after reading this book. At least Malerman tried something new. On to the review...There's this fad going around where reboots change the endings of the source material to be the exact opposite of the source material. If the source material (in this case The Exorcist) is supernatural, the reboot will make it non-supernatural, or perhaps it will imply supernatural along with the plausible real-life scenario. And because I'm bound to get people who say I'm hating on someone who's been successful, let me prove my points. I give you...Exhibit A:Tremblay took the easy way out and rebooted The Exorcist for a modern, blogger-friendly, internet age. He does nothing new. To cover this up, he plays the meta card. Oh, look! I reference all the shit I steal from, so it's okay that I stole from them. Right? I'm so cute and self aware!Exhibit B.In my opinion, the blogs ruined the book. Every time I started to enjoy the subtle horror, or even the overt scares, he jumped into this hipster-speak blogging bullshit that murdered all forward momentum. Then, in the end, he uses the blogger bullshit to effectively reveal that he believes all his readers are morons without any reader comprehension skills. Peep this:You're a grown adult with life experiences and an above average IQ (a.k.a. your average adult reader) and someone gives you a rudimentary puzzle to solve. The puzzle pieces are perfectly square and number eight. The picture is of, say, the Pokemon logo, the title image of POKEMON in that garish yellow-and-blue font. As long as you can read, you're good. This puzzle will take an adult of average intelligence (anyone literate) about ten seconds to complete. If that. Then you notice the pieces are numbered. Top row: one through four. Bottom row: five through eight. Now you don't even have to be able to read. All you have to do is be able to count. THAT is THIS book. It insults your intelligence. Tremblay explains everything that happens in the final exorcism scene and then switches to these blog posts to SPELL EVERYTHING OUT FOR YOU BECAUSE HE THINKS YOU'RE:A) DumbB) IlliterateC) At the VERY least, not as clever as him.D) All of the above.If you picked D, you win and lose at the same time because you're likely right.He tries to make up for this assumption that you're somewhere between dinosaur and caveman on the IQ scale by leaving one last hint in the final chapter. Wink, wink, nudge, nudge, talk amongst yourselves. But the implied ending makes zero sense. None. It is the literary equivalent to the ending of Paranormal Activity, when the possessed chick jumps at the camera. Or perhaps the hand reaching from the grave at the end of Carrie. Makes no sense, but it sure is spoooooooooky!In summation: The tragedy is, had Tremblay left out the blogger sections, I would have given this three stars or above. It does have some creepy shit going on. Nothing you haven't seen before, but it might raise the hair on your bush. Problem is, it's not enough; nowhere near enough to excuse his attitude toward his readers, the implication that he's writing for morons. The best piece of writing advice I ever got was this: Always assume your readers are smarter than you, because they probably are.Final Judgment: Robocop (2014)Spoiler discussion: Wherein I spoil Paul Tremblay's A Head Full of Ghosts:

[spoiler]

There will be some that say I missed the whole point of the unreliable narrator here. I fully accept that you think Merry could have made up this entire thing because she was the one that was possessed instead of Marjorie. But she couldn't have, because of the reality show. Unless we assume that the reality show wasn't real, and the entire book is a lie. If that's the case, it still doesn't work, because it takes away the horror of the novel because nothing actually happened. It was all the product of some possessed writer with nothing better to do that to write a book. No matter how you look at it, one-star. But I'm not giving up on Tremblay and here's why:I did like the poisoning scene at the end. Really dug how Tremblay described everyone dying. Dude is capable of great description. He simply needs to trust his readers more. Thanks for joining me.

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How do I get my ebooks in your libraries? I can only donate so many real books due to costs, but I give you as many ebooks as you want. 

  Comment below, email me at [email protected], or message me on social media. I'm some of everywhere. :)

Thanks to brand new Pokémon GO technology, I've captured the elusive Gregor Xane. For the first time ever, the weirdness among us will be breaking his silence and allowing himself to be interviewed live on air. 

  Mark your calendars. Sunday, July 17, 2016, on YouTube, we find out what's up with his new book, TABOOGASM, and other important questions. 

  If you have anything you want me to ask of him, drop your question in the comments section.

Review: 4/5 The Wolf Road: A Novel - Beth Lewis book

Novel is pert-near perfect. One slight complaint I got is that some parts is a mite hard to read. Made my head spun, they done did. Cruise willin' and the creek don't rise, I might give 'er another read one day. See what alls I might of misunderstood cuz it's writ all broke-like. Writing that first paragraph hurt my heart and soul. I cannot fathom writing an entire novel like Beth Lewis wrote The Wolf Road. I once wrote a story called Smitten in this style, and to this day, I want to go back and rewrite it. In both my story and Lewis's novel, the first-person hick-speak is warranted, but Tom Cruise wept, it's hard to read at times. I honestly would've given this five stars if I hadn't needed to reread entire paragraphs to figure out what the silly-fuck Elka was saying. Halfway through this novel it changes from The Road meets True Gritto The Revenant meets Calamity Jane. I liked the first mash up better. Now, now, brown cow, I dig the fuck outta Doris Day and her goofy little western, but I wasn't expecting the shift. It was a wee bit jarring. For 40% of the book I was left waiting for the story to switch back to the awesomesauce that was the first 50%. Lewis finally brought everything home in terrific fashion, but that doesn't change the fact that she had me worried for almost half the run time. I actually look forward to rereading the novel just because I know what's coming now and I can sit back and enjoy the book for what it is instead of what I expected it to be.The ending is both emotionally powerful and fantastically written. I was hovering around three stars until the final pages. The novel paid off and left me wanting flip back to page one and start all over again the minute I flipped the final page. Can't say that about many books. In summation: While the narrative style can be difficult to read at times and forced me to slow down or to reread certain sections, I loved the characters and the chances the author took. Elka was far from perfect, and the Country Mouse/City Mouse interactions in the middle were fun, if a little unexpected and jarring. But that's kinda my fault. I expected one tone throughout, and I got about three different tones. Not necessarily a bad thing. Just unexpected.Final Judgment: Finger lickin' good.

Review: 4/5 The Shining Girls - Lauren Beukes book

First, we'll address the 800-pound gorilla in the room.How you doin', Mr. Bananas?Doing fine, E. How's the family?They're well. Autumn's growing up too quick and Chris... well, Chris is a dude. You know how dudes are.I do, I do. So what is it that I can help you with, E.?Oh, nothing. Just wanted to address you.Oh. Well you should know that this is a terrible joke and, if people laugh, they'll be laughing at you, not with you.I know.Good. Just wanted to make that clear. Say, do you have any bananas?I'm sorry, I do not.Then what fucking good are you to me? Piss off.Now that Mr. Bananas is gone, I should probably address the problems you might have with Lauren Beukes's The Shining Girls. If you do not read chapter titles, you will soon Amelia Earhart your way into history. I do not like chapter titles. All too often, authors ruin their own books by putting spoilers in their chapter headings. It's a huge pet peeve of mine, so when I come across a book with chapter titles, I skip them. I feel this way: the important information should be worked into the actual chapters and not lazily dropped into the chapter headings. Lauren Beukes not only uses chapter titles in lazy ways, but if you miss whose head and the time you're in, the book becomes a mess very quickly. More than twice I had to flip backward to make sure I knew who I was with and where in time we were. I shouldn't have to do that, Lauren. Shame on you.Other than that, this book is great. The plot isn't the most original (serial killer bouncing through time ala Sherlock Holmes vs Jack the Ripper in that one old movie), but Beukes does manage to make what happens interesting. I think where Beukes shines (get it? DID YOU GET MY PUN????) is character development. She goes into deep detail concerning the smallest character. Most importantly, she made me care, or at the very least understand, the red shirts in this book. Every corpse had a pulse at one point in time, and I dig that she paid so much attention to their history. Once I managed to get a feel for the flow of the story, I enjoyed myself. Are their problems? Sure. Several of them. But I didn't notice until after I finished reading. But the best part of this book is Beukes writing. It's smooth and seemingly effortless. I blew through 50-100 pages a sitting because, once I started reading, I couldn't put the book down. In summation: Not everyone will like Beukes because she forces you to pay attention. If you skip chapter headings, you will be super fucking confused. If you don't like a huge cast of characters, you'll likely not like this, because every third chapter or so is from a brand new person's POV. She gets into the heads of every victim, so expect to learn some of everything about everybody. I didn't mind. In fact, the big cast was one of my favorite parts.Final Judgment: Pay attention for full payoff.

First, we'll address the 800-pound gorilla in the room.How you doin', Mr. Bananas?Doing fine, E. How's the family?They're well. Autumn's growing up too quick and Chris... well, Chris is a dude. You know how dudes are.I do, I do. So what is it that I can help you with, E.?Oh, nothing. Just wanted to address you.Oh. Well you should know that this is a terrible joke and, if people laugh, they'll be laughing at you, not with you.I know.Good. Just wanted to make that clear. Say, do you have any bananas?I'm sorry, I do not.Then what fucking good are you to me? Piss off.Now that Mr. Bananas is gone, I should probably address the problems you might have with Lauren Beukes's The Shining Girls. If you do not read chapter titles, you will soon Amelia Earhart your way into history. I do not like chapter titles. All too often, authors ruin their own books by putting spoilers in their chapter headings. It's a huge pet peeve of mine, so when I come across a book with chapter titles, I skip them. I feel this way: the important information should be worked into the actual chapters and not lazily dropped into the chapter headings. Lauren Beukes not only uses chapter titles in lazy ways, but if you miss whose head and the time you're in, the book becomes a mess very quickly. More than twice I had to flip backward to make sure I knew who I was with and where in time we were. I shouldn't have to do that, Lauren. Shame on you.Other than that, this book is great. The plot isn't the most original (serial killer bouncing through time ala Sherlock Holmes vs Jack the Ripper in that one old movie), but Beukes does manage to make what happens interesting. I think where Beukes shines (get it? DID YOU GET MY PUN????) is character development. She goes into deep detail concerning the smallest character. Most importantly, she made me care, or at the very least understand, the red shirts in this book. Every corpse had a pulse at one point in time, and I dig that she paid so much attention to their history. Once I managed to get a feel for the flow of the story, I enjoyed myself. Are their problems? Sure. Several of them. But I didn't notice until after I finished reading. But the best part of this book is Beukes writing. It's smooth and seemingly effortless. I blew through 50-100 pages a sitting because, once I started reading, I couldn't put the book down. In summation: Not everyone will like Beukes because she forces you to pay attention. If you skip chapter headings, you will be super fucking confused. If you don't like a huge cast of characters, you'll likely not like this, because every third chapter or so is from a brand new person's POV. She gets into the heads of every victim, so expect to learn some of everything about everybody. I didn't mind. In fact, the big cast was one of my favorite parts.Final Judgment: Pay attention for full payoff.

Review: 3/5 Whispers - Dean Koontz book

Koontz-Alert Checklist (Every Dean Koontz book has at least one of the following ten eleven things.)1. Blond lead/love interest - Yes2. Dog(s) - Nope 3. Government conspiracy - Nope4. Aliens - Nope5. Serial Killer - Yup (Koontz's staple super-handsome, well-built egomaniacal maniac) 6. Bougainvillea plant - Nope7. Sodium-vapor streetlight - Kinda (Mercury-vapor this time)8. Precocious child - Nope9. Town gone crazy - Nope10. Psychic(s) - Nope (But there was a mention of second sight)and introducing the newest Koontz Alert...11. Incest - Yup.I'd forgotten how prevalent incest is in Koontz books. Whether it be rape or consensual, incestual sex is a theme throughout Koontz's career. I know he had a traumatic childhood (horribly violent mother), but I am unsure if he was molested. It's none of my business either. I wouldn't be surprised if he was an incest survivor, though.As for the book itself, I did not hate it. It's not one of my favorites, though, due to all the sex. This one is quite porny, with our MCs clocking in at two and a half sex scenes. And the murders are boring in the sense that I've seen it all before. But it's not a bad book. Classic silly-ass Koontz dialogue made for a cringeworthy conversation or two. But the plot kept me guessing all the way to the end, which contained some truly flesh-crawling scenes. Yuck. Ew. I need fourteen showers.Of course, this is a Black/Neon era Koontz book, so it was bound to be, at the very least, readable. But I enjoyed it more than I thought possible, considering the concept. In summation: One of the better early Koontz novels, but you can't really go wrong with the Koontz books with Black/Neon covers, so I don't know why I expected to dislike it. I'll blame Delee, who I buddy read this one with. She said she remembered it being bad, so yeah, I'll blame her. :)Final Judgment: Quaking with disgust.

Dastardly Bastard - Edward Lorn book Life After Dane - Edward Lorn book Hope for the Wicked (Larry Laughlin, 1) - Edward Lorn book Pennies for the Damned - Edward Lorn book

The following books desperately need reviews. If you're interested in horror or graphically-violent thrillers (seriously graphic, not just saying that to be edgy) comment on this post, message me, or email me at [email protected]. I refuse to spam or use other shady means to get reviews. Other than occasional specials from the publisher, I only use word of mouth and reviews to promote my work. If you're not interested in the books, maybe a reblog or share? Anything you can do would be appreciated. Thank you in advance for your support. 

  Dastardly Bastard is a supernatural thriller that has surreal scenes and a dreamlike feel. 

  Life After Dane takes a considered look at the life of a serial killer through the eyes of his mother, and is probably my most commercial (easily digestible) book to date. It's also my personal favorite. 

  Hope for the Wicked and Pennies for the Damned are books about Larry Laughlin, a man who kills pedophiles for a living. Hope for the Wicked is especially disturbing due to an ugly and savage rape scene. The scene is brief and stark, but it is nonetheless deeply unsettling.

Word: A Collection - E. Lorn, Edward Lorn book

SURPRISE!THIS IS NOT A REVIEW. IT IS A NOTICE OF RELEASE AND SALE PRICESo this is a thing that exists now. My newest collection,WORD, (this one is literary and not horror) is available this week only for $0.99 on Amazon.com:https://www.amazon.com/Word-Collectio...If you're interested in a signed copy of the paperback, they're $25 with free shipping to the US. You can pre-order one here: https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr...Pre-orders will only be available until July 1,2016. Paperback ships on August 18, 2016.Thank you for your support. E.

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The proof of WORD came in today and I am thrilled with the final product. For those of you who ordered a copy, here's a glimpse at what you're getting.

    Signed copies are still available for preorder HERE. $25 w/free shipping to the US.

Preview of Cruelty