{"id":8458,"date":"2021-03-16T11:53:47","date_gmt":"2021-03-16T15:53:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/?p=8458"},"modified":"2021-03-16T11:54:07","modified_gmt":"2021-03-16T15:54:07","slug":"book-review-chew-on-this","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/book-review-chew-on-this\/","title":{"rendered":"Book Review: Chew on This! edited by Robert Essig"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

Chew on This!\u00a0<\/em>edited by Robert Essig<\/p>\n

Blood Bound Books, 2020<\/p>\n

ISBN: 9781940250465<\/p>\n

Available: Paperback, Kindle edition \u00a0(\u00a0Amazon.com<\/a> )<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Chew on This <\/em>is a themed horror anthology dealing with\u2026food.\u00a0 Can food actually be horrifying?\u00a0 Based on this book, the answer is a resounding “yes.”\u00a0 It combines creativity and gut-wrenching disgust into a brew of good stories.\u00a0 Fair warning: some of these stories are truly barf-inducing, and sicker than any “splat” style horror writing.\u00a0\u00a0 Combinations of food and body fluids (and limbs), babies roasted in ovens: it’s all on the table.\u00a0 This is a fun batch of horror stories, and also the National Restaurant Association’s worst nightmare.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

With only a few exceptions, the overall story quality varies from good to very good, and most of them aren’t disgusting, just good, smart stories.\u00a0 Some of them are “cycle” stories, where the story focuses on one event and then ends, leading into another of the same event.\u00a0 Chad Lutzke’s “Cherry Red” and Kristopher Trianna’s ‘The Feeding” fall into this category.\u00a0 One deals with a psychotic kid and his fascination with red cereal box toys, the other with a sandwich delivery service that takes much more than the customer’s money.\u00a0 Ronald Kelly’s “Grandma’s Favorite Recipe” is Kelly doing what he does best: taking a lovable southern character, in this case the “saintly granny,” and turning her into something more sinister, by way of her cooking.\u00a0 Vivian Kayley’s “Roly Poly” is notable for its entertaining look at the lengths some unfortunate women will go to for weight loss. It’s also the only story in the book with a happy ending.\u00a0 Shenoa Carroll-Bradd’s “Barrel Aged” may be the most intriguing story, although it might take a second read to understand, as the author squirrels away the most important details in only a few sentences.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

If you want to avoid (or read first) the stomach churners, here they are.\u00a0 They are solid pieces, just gruesome.\u00a0 Tonia Brown’s “A Woman’s Work” features the aforementioned cooked human baby, and John McNee’s “With a Little Salt and Vinegar” has an eating contest, with dead fetuses on the menu.\u00a0 Nikki Noir’s “Magick Brew” is a hilarious look at combining a certain reproductive body fluid with margaritas to make a drink that renders the consumer ravenous with lust\u2026to the extreme.\u00a0 The true pukefest is K. Trap Jones’s “Seeds of Filth”.\u00a0 With restaurant employees combining any and all types of bodily fluids with condiments and serving them to rude customers, this story is likely to make the average reader upchuck their last meal.\u00a0 It might be the most revolting story ever committed to paper.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Overall, Chew on This <\/em>is a well-written, creative anthology, it just takes a stomach of iron at times to read the full book. \u00a0Recommended.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Contains:\u00a0 violence, profanity, gore, body horror, cannibalism, and everything disgusting you can think of<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Reviewed by Murray Samuelson<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Chew on This!\u00a0edited by Robert Essig Blood Bound Books, 2020 ISBN: 9781940250465 Available: Paperback, Kindle edition \u00a0(\u00a0Amazon.com )   Chew on This is a themed horror anthology dealing with\u2026food.\u00a0 Can food actually be horrifying?\u00a0 Based on this book, the answer is a resounding “yes.”\u00a0 It combines creativity and gut-wrenching disgust into a brew of good<\/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":[2594,3423,2320,750,1346],"class_list":["post-8458","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-body-horror","tag-cannibalism","tag-extreme-horror","tag-horror-anthologies","tag-splatterpunk"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8458","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=8458"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8458\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8462,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8458\/revisions\/8462"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8458"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8458"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8458"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}