The Night Stockers

My review is for the eBook on (Kindle Unlimited)
I have already some of Kristopher Trianas work, I really like his short story “Hammer Time” in the Bludgeoning Tools Splatterpunk Anthology (a short story anthology by various writers)
I liked the introduction and knowing the theme for the book, both the authors Kristopher Triana & Ryan Harding have a dark sense of humour which I apreciate.
I also like that they are both a Death Metal fan and they like fictional brutality, i'm a Death Metal, Extreme horror/Splatterpunk fan so I can relate to the authors, so this eBook is perfect for me

Another one that I'm finding hard to rate.

I almost DNF'd this one a few times in the first half before it started to work for me. I found the jokes didn't land, the action boring, and the edgelord-y offensiveness tryhard and rote (misogyny, homophobia, sexual violence, and racism are like, the lowest hanging fruit of offensiveness. Try harder. That kind of shit just makes me roll my eyes.)

But I pushed through. I had to. This book seemed almost tailor-made for me. I've worked in basically nothing but supermarkets my entire adult life. I'm into horror, slashers, extreme horror, comedy horror, I loved extreme metal in the 90s/00s, I love cults, I love ridiculous kills and camp and the pure outlandish fun that only the most goofy of 80s splattery exploitation movies can elicit.

I think the first ~130 pages of this 240 page book are just straight up not very good. Pushing 2/5 at my most generous. But then something happened and this book took the most insane uptick in quality I have ever seen a book take in my life. It's like the authors suddenly realized what this book was, and what it needed to be, and what worked and what didn't, because the last 25% of this book is absolutely incredible.

It's like the first 75% of this book was a rough draft written by an ambitious highschooler, and the last 25% was the literal platonic ideal of this concept. You know at the end of Bill & Ted 2, when B&T are playing at the battle of the bands and they realize that they don't know how to actually play their instruments so they hop in their time machine to grow out their ZZ Top beards, pop out some babies, and spend a few years learning how to play and write music before coming back and absolutely crushing it? I am not convinced that this isn't what Triana and Harding did before finishing this book.

The jokes started landing HARD, the creativity on the kills and set pieces went through the fucking roof, the gross bits made me actually queasy, every single piece fell perfectly into place and it ended on such a glorious high note I almost want to give the entire book 5/5 in retrospect.

I think I'm landing on a 4, but it's a 4 with huge caveats.