Reviews with content warning for Murder - Изысканный труп

I don’t think anyone needed to write jeffrey dahmer fanfiction but at least it’s written well. Answering the are these characters loveable question made me laugh out loud tho

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moosereads1's review against another edition

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dark mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

A story that truly disturbs me and makes me shudder is a rare find, and exquisite corpses did just that. If you want a book that will traumatize you, this is the one. It takes you into the minds of two serial killers who, when combined, come together in a near picture perfect image of Jeffrey Dahmer and it is as utterly horrifying and disturbing as such a story should be. There were moments in which I had no words, just shock - however, in a good way rather than how many extreme horror books sacrifice good writing for shock value. Brite’s writing managed to make even the most disturbing scenes sound eloquent. However, the one issue I had was the synopsis compared to the content - it advertises that the two killers spend their time with the perfect victim, yet there are only a few scenes at the very end of the book in which they do so. Regardless, this was a great disturbing book and I’m going to find something light hearted to feel better about myself and my mental state after choosing this book.

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adorableautist's review against another edition

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challenging dark reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

If you're looking into William Joseph Martin's (formerly known as Poppy Z. Brite) notorious queer splatterhouse opus, then you likely already have some sense of what you're getting into with this one. Its indulgences in sexuality and gratuitous violence is genuinely difficult to read, and I almost gave up on the book multiple times right up to the last few pages.

Exquisite Corpse lacks the campy revelry, magical realism, or self conscious introspection that marks most of the splatterhouse lit that is actually worth reading. Instead it ambitiously attempts to grapple with the cruel confluenceof queerness and violence that became the dominant culural narrative for gay men in the eighties and nineties. Most characters in the book are HIV positive and nearly all of them have received, witnessed, or inflicted grotesque violence by the end of the book.

This willfully tasteless literary construction might've amounted to something genuinely compelling if it hadn't undermined itself by depicting its serial killer characters as romantically powerful and hyper inteligent super villains. For all of the literary talent on display, which is by no means meager, the end result feels juvenile in its romanticization of serial killers. The monstrous characters would have better served the the book's emotional and thematic needs, no matter how sweetly nihilistic they might be, if they had been allowed to be altogether more pathetic than enticing.

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revacholdawn's review against another edition

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dark tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Loveable characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

fucked up 👍

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_p0ssum_'s review against another edition

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Amazing premise but I found it dull and lacked life.

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