Deadweight

Rating:
Summary: A dead, weightless book
Review: Deadweight doesn't offer much in the way of suspense... It has no character development whatsoever, opting instead to concentrate on endless sequences of sex, torture and gore and in all, is a distasteful study of degradation towards women... Not to mention the absurdity of the subplot about the lead "heroine" who has the ability to revive wilted flowers, hence the explanation for the resurrection of her long buried husband and his equally blood-thirsty dog. It's definitely not for the squeamish but if your stomach can handle it, then more than likely, it's your interest that won't be able to.

Rating:
Summary: A dead, weightless book
Review: Every day Karin visits her husband Danny's grave, the husband she killed when his abuse finally became too much. But her mourning has awakened a spark in Danny, and now he's coming back, fueled by a penchant for explosive violence and a thirst for revenge.
It may not sound like much, but it's pretty well done - for the first half or so. The descriptions of Danny's return to the land of the living are particularly, er, realistic (that is to say, it is shown convincingly, how you might expect it to happen.) But once he's freed from his earthly prison, the book goes downhill. The author seems mainly concerned with having Danny continually one-up himself in his rampage of murder and torture, and everything else falls by the wayside. As graphic and over the top as these scenes are, they are really kind of dull. The characters have no depth: the only hint we are given as to why Karin is the way she is comes in a brief prologue of her as a child. We are told a few t! imes that Danny had a bit of goodness somewhere inside him, but we never see any evidence, so it's inexplicable to the reader that Karin would have any positive feelings for the man at all. The other characters are throwaways. None are likeable.
It's not hard to see why Poppy Z. Brite raves about Devereaux's writing on the cover. They both share a fondness for mindless gore at the expense of plot and characterization. If you found her awful 'Exquisite Corpse' to your liking, you may wish to seek this one out. Otherwise, don't bother.

Rating:
Summary: Lots of blood, but little heart and soul.
Review: Every day Karin visits her husband Danny's grave, the husband she killed when his abuse finally became too much. But her mourning has awakened a spark in Danny, and now he's coming back, fueled by a penchant for explosive violence and a thirst for revenge.
It may not sound like much, but it's pretty well done - for the first half or so. The descriptions of Danny's return to the land of the living are particularly, er, realistic (that is to say, it is shown convincingly, how you might expect it to happen.) But once he's freed from his earthly prison, the book goes downhill. The author seems mainly concerned with having Danny continually one-up himself in his rampage of murder and torture, and everything else falls by the wayside. As graphic and over the top as these scenes are, they are really kind of dull. The characters have no depth: the only hint we are given as to why Karin is the way she is comes in a brief prologue of her as a child. We are told a few t! imes that Danny had a bit of goodness somewhere inside him, but we never see any evidence, so it's inexplicable to the reader that Karin would have any positive feelings for the man at all. The other characters are throwaways. None are likeable.
It's not hard to see why Poppy Z. Brite raves about Devereaux's writing on the cover. They both share a fondness for mindless gore at the expense of plot and characterization. If you found her awful 'Exquisite Corpse' to your liking, you may wish to seek this one out. Otherwise, don't bother.

Rating:
Summary: The greatest, goriest, resurrection story ever!
Review: It's too bad [e-mail] was so way off on his review of the brilliant DEADWEIGHT. I hope his unkind words don't scare off potential readers from what is certainly one of the better horror novels of the 1990s. Robert Devereaux's DEADWEIGHT, clearly the best of the Dell Abyss line of "cutting-edge" horror books, is the kind of novel that takes your breath away. It could be labelled "splatterpunk" because of its scenes of outrageous sex and grue, and yet it could also be called a story of hope. The exquisite writing (Devereaux's playful and beautifully precise language lends a poetic irony to the gruesome events within) seduces us into Karin's story of revival. The jaw-droppingly horrible struggle that Karin must endure on the way to that revival is almost physically painful for the reader, but Karin's psychological victory at book's end is rendered all the more exciting. Please read this book! It's the first and possibly greatest book (so far) by an author destined for infamy!