Rating: 
Summary: When Bad Things Happen to Good People
Review: The publishers seemed to have "dumned down" the back cover synopsis and changed the title of the book to make it more mainstream and palatable. It's actually more cerebral than what is described. The term "Wetbones" doesn't even appear until halfway through the book.The basic premise of the story is this; the pleasure we derive from our addictions are controlled by these invisible demons called the "Akishra," who feed off the energy. Now the trouble begins when a few people attempt to summon and manipulate the Akishra for their own nefarious purposes. The Akishra become more powerful, more hungry and are able to influence us rather than just feed off of us. Worse yet, conditions are ripe for them to reproduce, so if you think the world is in the toilet now, buckle your seatbelts! My only problem with the Akishra and the whole concept, is that it really raises more questions and issues than the book has time to address. However, the characters and their relationships were the real heart of the story. Shirley creates some really believable and unique protagonists. One becomes completly wrapped up in the fates of these people, so much so that the book becomes hard to put down. Lastly, there is plenty of blood, sex and gore to balance the thought-provoking plot.
Rating:
Summary: Don't read this and eat steak at the same time......
Review: This is the first John Shirley novel I have read, and I was pleasantly satisfied with it. Not as well written or edited as some others, this is nonetheless an inventive foray into the dark bloody side of horror. Ephram Pixie can take control of people?s minds; not just motor control but their pleasure centers. Controlling them, stimulating them, punishing them, it?s all good to Ephram. Especially the ?Wetbones?, where he calls down the Nameless Spirit to feast, leaving only a bloody, pulpy mass of wet bones for the detectives to bag up. Garner is a Reverend, and a recovering alcoholic/crack addict who has not touched anything for years, who lives with his young teenage daughter Constance.
Ephram zeros in on Constance?s innocence and takes her with him, initiating her into his world of pleasure and punishment and control, forcing her to perform sadistic, brutal acts of pornography and enjoy it. Prentice is a down-on-his-luck screenplay writer trying to convince a man named Arthwright to give him work. His friend Jeff is already working with Arthwright, and this brings them together; along with the fact that Jeff?s little brother Mitch is missing and Prentice?s ex-wife was just found dead and mutilated. Mitch was in JD until he cut himself up really good, and managed to get away from the hospital where he had been taken. Jeff suspects Mitch has gone out to the Doublekey Ranch, home of Sam and Judy Denver. As Ephram travels about with Constance in tow, leaving a mass of wasted and bloody bodies behind them, Garner goes in search of his daughter while Jeff & Prentice go in search of Mitch. Garner sinks into the abyss of his own addictions, and Shirley manages to get extremely realistic in his portrayal of the crack addicts behaviors, thoughts, feelings, backgrounds, and needs. Everything swirls towards a slick and gruesome ending, as Ephram lets Constance in on the secret of the Akishra, the wormlike spirits that feed off human beings, and tells her the dark past of the Denver's. I really don't want to give too much away here, suffice to say that Shirley brings everything together in the end, though I was disappointed that Ephram did not have more to do in the end. The editing is truly atrocious, but if you can skip past that this book will please any aficionado of the "blood and guts" genre, and the Akishra are spooky enough to throw a satisfying lump of SF into the mold. I can't wait to read more Shirley.
Rating:
Summary: Don't read this and eat steak at the same time......
Review: This is the first John Shirley novel I have read, and I was pleasantly satisfied with it. Not as well written or edited as some others, this is nonetheless an inventive foray into the dark bloody side of horror. Ephram Pixie can take control of people?s minds; not just motor control but their pleasure centers. Controlling them, stimulating them, punishing them, it?s all good to Ephram. Especially the ?Wetbones?, where he calls down the Nameless Spirit to feast, leaving only a bloody, pulpy mass of wet bones for the detectives to bag up. Garner is a Reverend, and a recovering alcoholic/crack addict who has not touched anything for years, who lives with his young teenage daughter Constance.
Ephram zeros in on Constance?s innocence and takes her with him, initiating her into his world of pleasure and punishment and control, forcing her to perform sadistic, brutal acts of pornography and enjoy it. Prentice is a down-on-his-luck screenplay writer trying to convince a man named Arthwright to give him work. His friend Jeff is already working with Arthwright, and this brings them together; along with the fact that Jeff?s little brother Mitch is missing and Prentice?s ex-wife was just found dead and mutilated. Mitch was in JD until he cut himself up really good, and managed to get away from the hospital where he had been taken. Jeff suspects Mitch has gone out to the Doublekey Ranch, home of Sam and Judy Denver. As Ephram travels about with Constance in tow, leaving a mass of wasted and bloody bodies behind them, Garner goes in search of his daughter while Jeff & Prentice go in search of Mitch. Garner sinks into the abyss of his own addictions, and Shirley manages to get extremely realistic in his portrayal of the crack addicts behaviors, thoughts, feelings, backgrounds, and needs. Everything swirls towards a slick and gruesome ending, as Ephram lets Constance in on the secret of the Akishra, the wormlike spirits that feed off human beings, and tells her the dark past of the Denver's. I really don't want to give too much away here, suffice to say that Shirley brings everything together in the end, though I was disappointed that Ephram did not have more to do in the end. The editing is truly atrocious, but if you can skip past that this book will please any aficionado of the "blood and guts" genre, and the Akishra are spooky enough to throw a satisfying lump of SF into the mold. I can't wait to read more Shirley.
Rating: 
Summary: Disturbing, with a great big helping of Revulsion
Review: This isn't your namby pamby, tip toe around the details Horror. This is in your face, Oh my God I can't believe that just happened, Horror. Good Horror. The story is both involving and intriguing as well as extremely heart wrenching. Also, it's undeniably gross. A Lovecraftian tale of the less subtle variety; of things existing just beyond the threshold of our reality and the next. An unspeakable horror, capable of reducing a human to an amorphous pile of gore and bones in seconds. A creature that endows men with the power to control the thoughts, and actions, of others. A creature that thrives on the darkest perversions. A creature that hungers to be very much a part of our world. You will be amazed. You will be shocked. Your eyes will bulge, your gorge will rise. The talent of John Shirley is apparent here. This was the first piece of writing I had ever read by the author (except for the lyrics on Blue Oyster Cult's album Heaven Forbid) and now I can't wait to read more of this demented man's work. A word of warning to the faint of heart: Wetbones is what some might call Splatter Horror. It bears all the subtlety of an upside down crucifixion. So pregnant women, people with heart conditions, and those with weak stomachs, proceed with caution. But by all means proceed. Don't let the numerous typographical errors sway your judgement either, this is a damn fine example of Horror fiction, even if the editor assigned to it was a complete idiot.
Rating: 
Summary: AN IMAGINATIVE, BUT STICKY MESS!
Review: WETBONES is a novel about addictions. In it, you will find vivid depictions of heinous behaviors fueled by compulsive dependencies on both substances and actions, including alcohol, crack, sex, power, ego, self-mutilation, torture and murder. Set in LA, Hollywood and Malibu, (where else?), the characters are a mixed bag of active addicts, addicts in recovery, future addicts and even an addict-come-preacher who has to fight his own cravings and compulsions before he can save his daughter from the greatest addiction of them all - the need to feed the blood lust. But that's not where the real horror lies. The real horror here is that Shirley attributes addictions - all addictions - to myriad species of inter-dimensional, worm-like parasites that infect human hosts and feed off the pleasure the hosts receive from indulging their addictions. These astral worms, or Akishra, in turn reinforce the addictions and manipulate their hosts in mind and body by supplying "reward" or "punishment" - direct stimulation to the pleasure and pain centers of the brain. What I found profoundly disturbing about this novel is Shirley's reduction of addictions to entirely external forces. Effectively, he removes all personal responsibility from the addict and places the onus of the addicts' behavior squarely on otherworldly shoulders. He demonstrates graphically, that the things that we crave can possess even the most innocent among us. WETBONES is the first of John Shirley's novels that I've read. It was a recommended selection from Amazon.com based, I'm sure, on my recent purchases of books by Poppy Z. Brite, Douglas Clegg and Brent Monahan. I'd previously read many rave reviews of Shirley's work and decided to give this novel a try. I found WETBONES to be an imaginative story that was riveting, well written and utterly decadent. I loved it. And I will definitely pick up a few of Shirley's other novels for future reading. But while I found the story to be engaging and well crafted, I was distracted throughout the entire book by a string of careless typographical errors. The book was littered with them on practically every other page. This is certainly no reflection on the author. He crafted an ingenious and highly imaginative story. For the connoisseur of the sticky macabre, this is one of the stickiest and certainly one of the scariest. But my question is this ... Where was the editor? A respectable publishing house would never have been so careless as to allow this imaginative, but sticky mess out the door. If I were rating strictly the author, this book would have received 5 stars ... but because of the sad, sorry shape of the supposedly edited product, I could only rate the overall package 3 stars. And I suggest that Mr. Shirley start looking for a more professional publisher. His work deserves better than this.
Rating:
Summary: The New Naked Lunch
Review: Wetbones is an over-the-top, disturbingly inspired tale of several Californian lost souls who stumble across a race of astral parasites that spawned all human addiction, and the dissolute telepaths who serve them. Shirley keeps it fast-paced, crowded with deliciously all too human(and inhuman)characters while ambitiously formulating his own Burroughsesque mythology surrounding the origins of mankinds sensorial lust. Stuart Gordon was born to direct this.
Rating:
Summary: The Kitchen Sink
Review: Whew. I was a little offended by the frequent references to Lovecraft in reviews and book notes. Sure, it's horror genre and the bogeyman is an ancient unspeakable creature (or creatures, hell I couldn't even make sense of it). But Lovecraft would never have penned anything like this mess. He knew how to tell a story. The "special effects" here are way overblown and read like they're on their way to a movie script. There are subplots galore, threads (albeit some good ones) going in all different directions, and much gratuitous pornography. What's it really about? A little this and a little that. Who knows. Maybe I'm old fashioned (I'll agree that so many current novels are like this), but this is five (or more!) good stories, not one. It's so disappointing because Shirley is obviously quite talented. There are many gems of character insight, human nature, and philosophical notions in here, but also loads of offal and noise to wade through to get to them. This book could have been so much better at half its length. But, it is a cut above the rest as is, so it gets three stars from me.
Rating:
Summary: splatterpunk too weird for the mainstream
Review: _Wetbones_ by John Shirley combines the 3 Ms - murder, mutilation (to the point of maceration), and mind control into an erotic, yet extremely graphic splatterpunk novel probably too strange for the mainstream. A cult-like group can manipulate people by stimulating their brain centers and doling out Punishment or Reward. Several people with nothing apparent in common -- a man hung up on his ex-wife's death via self-mutilation, another searching for his juvenile deliquent brother, a reverend who counsels drug addicts, and an ex-cult member performing grotesque murders -- all find their paths crossing at the cult's compound. At the compound they discover unspeakable rituals and the cult's secret of mind control. However, _Wetbones_ does more than just describe the horror of hacked-up human bodies; it is also a study of addiction and the depths of despair. Its intensity and flat out weirdness make this book a highly recommended read for the "slice-and-dice" horror set.
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