{"id":10399,"date":"2024-10-16T22:44:17","date_gmt":"2024-10-17T02:44:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/?p=10399"},"modified":"2024-10-17T15:17:46","modified_gmt":"2024-10-17T19:17:46","slug":"book-review-welcome-to-the-splatter-club-volume-3-by-various-authors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/book-review-welcome-to-the-splatter-club-volume-3-by-various-authors\/","title":{"rendered":"Book Review: Welcome to the Splatter Club, Volume 3 by various authors"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Welcome<\/a><\/p>\n

Welcome to the Splatter Club, Vol. 3<\/em>, by various authors<\/p>\n

Blood Bound Publishing, 2024<\/p>\n

ISBN: 9781940250632<\/p>\n

Available: Paperback, Kindle edition<\/p>\n

Buy: Amazon.com<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

If you read the other Splatter Club<\/em> books, you know what to expect: gore, raunchiness, creativity, and warped humor. The third installment continues the tradition.\u00a0 Overall, it\u2019s very good, although not quite to the level of Volume 2: but that\u2019s a pretty high bar to clear.\u00a0 It\u2019s certainly good enough to confirm the series as one that should keep running in the future.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

There are nine short stories of varying length, plus four additional stories of a couple pages each that were winners in last year’s gross-out writing contest at Authorcon II.\u00a0 The book would have been better off leaving those four out, as they really don\u2019t add anything, and just read like an excuse to be disgusting.\u00a0 Still, for readers that just want some barf-inducing material, they\u2019re here.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The other nine stories are all good \u2018uns, with Rachel Nussbaum\u2019s \u2018”You\u2019re Mine Now” being the runaway winner for the best.\u00a0 The hard-luck protagonist gets partly possessed by a somewhat nice demon, who proceeds to help him fix his life, in suitably violent and bone-crunching fashion.\u00a0 It\u2019s the interplay between the lead character and the demon that makes this roaring good fun: their conversations are priceless.\u00a0 The whole \u2018demon with a bit of heart\u2019 is an angle that doesn\u2019t get used often, it\u2019s an intriguing one.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Stephen Kozeniewski\u2019s \u2018”Self Reporting” also deserves mention, for its wickedly humorous style, and re-doing of a horror trope.\u00a0 We all know killing your family is bad, but this turns it into survival of the father, in a hilariously warped way.\u00a0 This is definitely a new way to use a pandemic for a horror story.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Setting aside the four gross-out shorties, the rest are what make the Splatter Club<\/em> series better than the rest.\u00a0 There are no bad stories to be found. The quality does vary, but the absolute worst you can say about any of them is “pretty good..” There are no misses to be found.\u00a0 I\u2019ve reviewed a LOT of short story anthologies over the past few years, and it\u2019s almost impossible to find one without at least a couple duds.\u00a0 Splatter Club<\/em> pulls off the trick of consistent quality throughout, and that\u2019s pretty rare.\u00a0 Not all the stories will blow your socks off, but there are none to skip over.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Drumroll please!\u00a0 The BOTTOM LINE is\u2026if you want creative craziness with plenty of bloody mayhem and twisted humor, you want this book.\u00a0 Read it, destroy your mind, and carry on, till hopefully Volume 4 arrives.\u00a0 Recommended.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Reviewed by Murray Samuelson<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Welcome to the Splatter Club, Vol. 3, by various authors Blood Bound Publishing, 2024 ISBN: 9781940250632 Available: Paperback, Kindle edition Buy: Amazon.com   If you read the other Splatter Club books, you know what to expect: gore, raunchiness, creativity, and warped humor. The third installment continues the tradition.\u00a0 Overall, it\u2019s very good, although not quite<\/p>\n

Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2320,750,645,749,5768,1346,4632,5765,5764],"class_list":["post-10399","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-extreme-horror","tag-horror-anthologies","tag-horror-book-reviews","tag-horror-books","tag-rachel-nussbaum","tag-splatterpunk","tag-stephen-koseniewski","tag-welcome-to-the-club","tag-welcome-to-the-splatter-club-vol-3"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10399","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10399"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10399\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10415,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10399\/revisions\/10415"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10399"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10399"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10399"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}