Content warning: unless you have a strong stomach you may want to skip over this review.

The Virgin by Wol-vriey  ( Amazon.com)

Burning Bulb Publishing, 2020

ISBN: 9781948278232

Availability: paperback, Kindle

Wol-vriey’s latest effort, The Virgin, is unquestionably his best to date, and also the most likely to offend people; this isn’t the kind of book you want your mother seeing you read.  It’s highly creative and original, but fair warning: it revolves around a reality show where rape is expected of the contestants, although the contestants willingly signed up for the show knowing this.  This is true hardcore, if you can handle that, read on.  If not, don’t bother.

“The Virgin” is a reality TV show broadcast on the “dark web” to whatever sleazy individuals are willing to pay the exorbitant fees to watch it.  It involves five ladies (virgins, obviously) who are placed in a Hollywood style mock-up town somewhere in America.  (if you’ve read Wol-vriey before, you can make a pretty good guess where he put the town)  The ladies have to survive and avoid getting raped for three hours, as there are ten “suitors” in the town trying to track them down for forced sex.  The ladies are not defenseless: each of them is given a choice of one weapon to carry with them, and there are plenty of weapons scattered throughout the town.  That’s one advantage to the ladies: they have some defense in the beginning, while the suitors have none.  Once everyone is in the town, anything goes, and it’s a question of survival.

The plotline itself is quite original. Authors have used reality shows before, but this is truly a new concept, although a sick and twisted one.  If this was just a standard hack and slash, it would have been good, not great.  The other elements Wol-vriey thought of and added in are what push this to the next level, and make for great storytelling.  For example, the money pot for the ladies is $10 million, but the catch is, it has to be split among the ladies that survive and avoid sex.  One person survives intact, she gets the ten million.  Two survive, they each get five.  Three survive…you get the idea.  Not only do the ladies have to contend with the suitors, they have excellent incentive to kill each other off.  There are “safe spaces” built into the show, a few churches where you can take a 15 minute break and not be touched.  To counter that, there are also traps built into many of the buildings, to prevent the contestants from hiding for the duration.  Rats, spiders, rattlesnakes, acid vats…they all make an appearance, keeping the story from becoming a standard kill-fest.

The book contains everything you’ve come to expect from Wol-vriey: gore, graphic sex, and his trademark dark humor that shows up at times.  Example: why is the show three hours long?  If you’ve ever heard a Viagra ad, you know the answer.  The writing is fine and pushes the story along at a brisk clip, but it’s the creativity that sets this one apart from his other efforts, and from most horror stories in general.  Highly recommended, but only for hardcore horror readers who want the limits pushed.  Other readers who prefer tamer material would do best to take a pass on this one.

Contains: violence, extreme gore, graphic sex, profanity, rape.

Reviewed by Murray Samuelson