Psychic Teenage Bloodbath

Undeniably influenced by the telekinetic elements of Stephen King’s Carrie and End of Watch, Psychic Teenage Bloodbath is exactly what it says on the tin. I'd actually even throw in some similarities to Stephen Graham Jones’s Night of the Mannequins and I Was a Teenage Slasher. You get a, well, psychic teenage bloodbath. Alrighty then, thanks for reading! Ok, seriously, as my first Carl John Lee (side penname for Scottish horror afficiando and writer, David Sodergren) I must say it did not blow me away. Granted, I have an incredibly high tolerance for all things violent and disturbing—actively searching for things to gross me out—but I was expecting things to get far more out of hand in its marketed extreme gore. In fact, the book opens up with a forward from fellow horror writer Judith Sonnet who goes into non-spoiler detail about things to expect, paired with a trigger warning list at the back: effectively a warning to the reader. Now don't get me wrong, very messed up things do take place within this revenge tale (including but not limited to attempted rape, necrophilia, cannibalism, castration), but it just wasn't enough to get a blip from my clearly dark soul.

I'm relatively new to the Splatterpunk scene (the best I've liked so far being Dead Inside and Brainwyrms), so take my subjective critiques with grains of salt. I did enjoy my time with Psychic Teenage Bloodbath, but in the words of the iconic Colin Farrell, “Not to sound pear-shaped, but I wanted it to be a little spicier.” The scenes of gore weren't necessarily added just for the sake of gore, as many of them fit the character motivations and mental states, but most if not all of them were also seen coming. Additional fair warning, this does get more sexual than most of the Sodergren books I've read so far.

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Film Recs:

- Carrie

- Tragedy Girls

- Freaky

- Malignant