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acanthae's review
dark
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.5
Remedial nosleep horror. It's okay, but mostly exists just to be shocking.
bluejayreads's review against another edition
5.0
My husband discovered this story on Reddit's r/nosleep, a horror story subreddit, but E.Z. Morgan didn't post the ending. So of course we had to buy it in book form and devour the whole thing at once.
I'm normally not much of a fan of horror, but I found this to be a really good story. Intense and very gory, it's more deeply disturbing than anything. The story is told out of order and from a bunch of different perspectives, and it's almost like a puzzle, slowly putting together the story of the four generations of Allship surgeons and the twisted work they're doing with their "1%."
The book is short and a quick read - I finished it in less than an hour - and in a lot of ways feels like a gory accident you just can't look away from. There's a lot of intense, horrifying surgery (making feet a smaller shoe size, major skin grafts, amputations) done with no anasthesia and in intentionally painful ways meant to break the victims mentally and emotionally as well as physically. If you have a weak stomach for gore or torture, this is NOT the book for you.
It seems like every chapter of this book is told from a different perspective - members of the Allship family and some of the "numbers," Dr. Allship's subjects identified by numbers only. It can be almost confusing at times, especially if you have dyscalcula like me and can't keep numbers straight to begin with.
That said, that's really my only criticism. It definitely could have been expanded into something more atmospheric and slow-burn, but the way it is is vivid and intense and completely works. If you can stomach gore and intensely sadistic characters, it's a great read.
I'm normally not much of a fan of horror, but I found this to be a really good story. Intense and very gory, it's more deeply disturbing than anything. The story is told out of order and from a bunch of different perspectives, and it's almost like a puzzle, slowly putting together the story of the four generations of Allship surgeons and the twisted work they're doing with their "1%."
The book is short and a quick read - I finished it in less than an hour - and in a lot of ways feels like a gory accident you just can't look away from. There's a lot of intense, horrifying surgery (making feet a smaller shoe size, major skin grafts, amputations) done with no anasthesia and in intentionally painful ways meant to break the victims mentally and emotionally as well as physically. If you have a weak stomach for gore or torture, this is NOT the book for you.
It seems like every chapter of this book is told from a different perspective - members of the Allship family and some of the "numbers," Dr. Allship's subjects identified by numbers only. It can be almost confusing at times, especially if you have dyscalcula like me and can't keep numbers straight to begin with.
That said, that's really my only criticism. It definitely could have been expanded into something more atmospheric and slow-burn, but the way it is is vivid and intense and completely works. If you can stomach gore and intensely sadistic characters, it's a great read.
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