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sanddanz's review against another edition
4.0
Kevin Shamel's debut release from Eraserhead Press, Rotten Little Animals, is a bit like Animal Farm on crack. The animals in Shamel's novel, however, are trying to keep their presence unknown to humans. While filming their latest masterpiece, the animals are spotted by a young boy that lived across the street. When the boy comes to investigate what he has seen (it's not every day you see a zombie cat fight!) the film crew of animals decides to kidnap him and re-write the movie that were working on to include the boy as their newest cast member. They figure staging an abduction will be more realistic-looking than their previous project, and it might help their chances in the Animal Academy Awards. What the crew doesn't count on is some of the animals turning against each other... and when that happens, you never know what Rotten Little Animals might do next! These animals are crude, rude, and usually drunk and/or high. They aren't your typical, cuddly pets that you'd want to take home, but this is definitely a novel that you want in your collection! Shamel has created a tale that is disturbingly rude, laugh-out-loud funny, and at times, just so bizarre that you can't even wrap your head around the fact that these are animals doing these things. Of course, some scenes I couldn't even fathom humans doing to other humans! In particular, there is a scene in the book where the animals put the human boy, Cage, in a room that he had to share with Filthy Pig (obviously a pig) that is known as the "Toilet Room". As you can guess, there is a grating above the room that all of the other animals stand above and let their urine and feces come down through... right onto poor Cage. It's a powerful scene, but greatly disturbing at the same time. It makes the reader feel for Cage though and want him to pull through somehow and escape. That scene, as well as numerous others, kept me reading Rotten Little Animals, fast and furious, as I wanted to see what was going to happen at the end. As this was part of Eraserhead Press' New Bizarro Author Series, I am hoping that Shamel will have more releases in the future because I am greatly anticipating reading more by this author. Highly Recommended!
Contains: Adult Language, Adult Situations
Review also posted at MonsterLibrarian.com
Contains: Adult Language, Adult Situations
Review also posted at MonsterLibrarian.com
dantastic's review against another edition
3.0
When a human boy named Cage stumbles across a group of talking animals filming a movie, he uncovers a vast conspiracy, a conspiracy that he cannot be allowed to reveal... until the animals decide to make a fictomentary about his kidnapping. Will Cage ever escape and return to normal life?
Rotten Little Animals is my first foray into the 2009-2010 New Bizarro Author series and I was fairly pleased with it. The core concept, that animals are secretly intelligent and can talk, reminded me of Anonymous Rex a bit. Stinkin' Rat and Dirty Bird were by far my favorite animal characters. Cage was okay, a fairly standard teenage boy character. I cackled with glee when Cage and his father
So why did I only give Rotten Little Animals a three? While I liked it, it felt like it went a little long, like it should have been over around page 60. The retaliation that came after could have easily been another book, though Cage's tutelage under Aargh was hilarious.
All in all, Rotten Little Animals was a satisfying bizarro experience. 3.25 out of 5.
Rotten Little Animals is my first foray into the 2009-2010 New Bizarro Author series and I was fairly pleased with it. The core concept, that animals are secretly intelligent and can talk, reminded me of Anonymous Rex a bit. Stinkin' Rat and Dirty Bird were by far my favorite animal characters. Cage was okay, a fairly standard teenage boy character. I cackled with glee when Cage and his father
Spoiler
massacred the audience at the Animal Academy Awards with shotguns and 9 millimeters.So why did I only give Rotten Little Animals a three? While I liked it, it felt like it went a little long, like it should have been over around page 60. The retaliation that came after could have easily been another book, though Cage's tutelage under Aargh was hilarious.
All in all, Rotten Little Animals was a satisfying bizarro experience. 3.25 out of 5.
sarahconnor89757's review against another edition
5.0
The first half of the book was a crude kind of adorable with Muppet Show-esque characters (sassy rats and silly chickens) being hard nosed, sexual and violent. Very funny. The second half of the book branches into a great story that gives depth to the human Cage in what comes off as a great origin story. I don’t want to create a spoiler so I’ll just say I’d like a sequal.
The book is REALLY funny, really smart, and more than it seems to be right off the bat. The story is speedy and reads like a technicolor movie; and like a movie it was fun to flip through and re-visit favorite scenes. The speciesist themes of the book are very mirror-like to our world. The disregard for human's lives among the animals and the idea of sexual relations between them to be demeaning to the animals is great paradigm shifting satire.
This book is like a phone call to North Korea that pisses them all off. This book is true zef.
The book is REALLY funny, really smart, and more than it seems to be right off the bat. The story is speedy and reads like a technicolor movie; and like a movie it was fun to flip through and re-visit favorite scenes. The speciesist themes of the book are very mirror-like to our world. The disregard for human's lives among the animals and the idea of sexual relations between them to be demeaning to the animals is great paradigm shifting satire.
This book is like a phone call to North Korea that pisses them all off. This book is true zef.
doomfiction's review against another edition
5.0
Kevin Shamel's ROTTEN LITTLE ANIMALS is the equivalent of John Waters directing a Pixar movie. It may as well be called PIXAR B. DEMENTED.
The animals in this story however, while cute and furry on the outside, are hard mean-ass cutthroats who will do anything to make it in the underground world of animal snuff filmmaking, even if that means kidnapping a human to star in their films - a law punishable by death.
Shamel is a new voice in the growing bizarro genre and a voice you should get used to. I have the feeling that ROTTEN LITTLE ANIMALS is simply the first rung on a ladder of full of sick, twisted fun - and that's an exciting feeling. :)
The animals in this story however, while cute and furry on the outside, are hard mean-ass cutthroats who will do anything to make it in the underground world of animal snuff filmmaking, even if that means kidnapping a human to star in their films - a law punishable by death.
Shamel is a new voice in the growing bizarro genre and a voice you should get used to. I have the feeling that ROTTEN LITTLE ANIMALS is simply the first rung on a ladder of full of sick, twisted fun - and that's an exciting feeling. :)
meganreadsome's review against another edition
5.0
I started the book and thought “Oh, we’re doing this?” And it only took about a chapter before I was thinking “Yeah, we’re doing this!!” Rotten little Animals is equal parts crazy funny and crazy insane. I loved it. I now have a crush on the sexiest man alive, Arrrgh, who can feed me pork and beans any day. The ending was great, I hope there is a sequel bouncing around Kevin Shamel’s evil brain.
xterminal's review
3.0
Kevin Shamel, Rotten Little Animals (Eraserhead Press, 2009)
One of the great strengths of the bizarro fiction movement (along with the fact that all of it I've read, even the horror novels, is gut-wrenchingly funny) is that the basic scenario of each book is original. And by “original” I mean “what were you on when you came up with this stuff, and where do I get some?” As another case in point, I offer Rotten Little Animals, a recent book from bizarro auteur Kevin Shamel. Shamel's thesis here is that animals have an entire world that humans don't know about. That world includes independent cinema. And when, thanks to a drunk watchbird, a human boy finds out about the animals' independent cinema (during the filming of a movie about zombie cats), the director of the flick decides to kidnap the human kid and make a mockumentary about the human kid getting kidnapped (since all their careers would be wiped out if the animal community found out the film crew had slipped up and let a human knew about the underground animal culture... you get the picture).
One of the great weaknesses of the bizarro fiction movement is that these awesome scenarios don't often have their potential realized. I love about the first half of Rotten Little Animals, the actual kidnapping and the filming of the movie (and the big blow-up at the wrap party, not only the best scene in the book, but the best-written as well, and if I seem to imply at any point in this review the book isn't worth your time, I will tell you right now: buy it for that scene). The fact that the book's climax comes halfway through sets up some amazing possibilities, actually, for an extended denouement (while I know there are a number of excellent examples of this outside Shakespeare, the only one I can think of off the top of my head is Greene's The End of the Affair, because it's far too early in the morning for me to be thinking about the plot structure of classic novels). How awesome would it be for Shamel to have come up with a narrative for the second half of the book that mirrored the first half, for example, or simply reversed the themes, with the human world gaining wide knowledge of the animal conspiracy and kidnapping some sort of exotic animal to film its own mockumentary? Instead, it kind of stalls, as if Shamel knew where the book was ending (and it does pick up steam again when we get to the end, which ends up being a second climax rather than an extended denouement), but wasn't quite sure how to get there. And when you start talking about the pace lagging in a book that comes out less than one hundred pages, you know there are some structural problems with it.
Shamel is an original writer to be sure, and when Rotten Little Animals is hitting on all cylinders, it's a barnburner. When he puts together a novel that's as solid from front to back as the bests scenes here are, it'll blow your head off. This one won't, but when it's good, it's very, very good. ***
One of the great strengths of the bizarro fiction movement (along with the fact that all of it I've read, even the horror novels, is gut-wrenchingly funny) is that the basic scenario of each book is original. And by “original” I mean “what were you on when you came up with this stuff, and where do I get some?” As another case in point, I offer Rotten Little Animals, a recent book from bizarro auteur Kevin Shamel. Shamel's thesis here is that animals have an entire world that humans don't know about. That world includes independent cinema. And when, thanks to a drunk watchbird, a human boy finds out about the animals' independent cinema (during the filming of a movie about zombie cats), the director of the flick decides to kidnap the human kid and make a mockumentary about the human kid getting kidnapped (since all their careers would be wiped out if the animal community found out the film crew had slipped up and let a human knew about the underground animal culture... you get the picture).
One of the great weaknesses of the bizarro fiction movement is that these awesome scenarios don't often have their potential realized. I love about the first half of Rotten Little Animals, the actual kidnapping and the filming of the movie (and the big blow-up at the wrap party, not only the best scene in the book, but the best-written as well, and if I seem to imply at any point in this review the book isn't worth your time, I will tell you right now: buy it for that scene). The fact that the book's climax comes halfway through sets up some amazing possibilities, actually, for an extended denouement (while I know there are a number of excellent examples of this outside Shakespeare, the only one I can think of off the top of my head is Greene's The End of the Affair, because it's far too early in the morning for me to be thinking about the plot structure of classic novels). How awesome would it be for Shamel to have come up with a narrative for the second half of the book that mirrored the first half, for example, or simply reversed the themes, with the human world gaining wide knowledge of the animal conspiracy and kidnapping some sort of exotic animal to film its own mockumentary? Instead, it kind of stalls, as if Shamel knew where the book was ending (and it does pick up steam again when we get to the end, which ends up being a second climax rather than an extended denouement), but wasn't quite sure how to get there. And when you start talking about the pace lagging in a book that comes out less than one hundred pages, you know there are some structural problems with it.
Shamel is an original writer to be sure, and when Rotten Little Animals is hitting on all cylinders, it's a barnburner. When he puts together a novel that's as solid from front to back as the bests scenes here are, it'll blow your head off. This one won't, but when it's good, it's very, very good. ***
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