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A review by screamdogreads
Cuckoo by Gretchen Felker-Martin
4.0
"At night she dreamed of Casey torn apart by lions on the African veldt, of hyenas with matted red faces cracking her daughter's blood-slimed femurs in their jaws, of black flies swarming over exposed viscera and vultures roosting on the rotten arch of a scraped knee, plucking Casey's eyes out of their sinking sockets."
This is one angry fucking horror novel. Intense, horrific and highly disturbing, Cuckoo is perhaps one of the single most terrifying and grotesque extreme horror novels there is. It's absolutely relentless and unforgiving, refusing to offer even the smallest moment of respite. Cuckoo is the type of book that invades your personal space and won't ever leave. Despite the gritty, grimy, gore slicked outer coating of this hyper-ferocious novel, there's a real tenderness hidden away, you just have to be brave enough to plunge headfirst into this nightmare. An insanely creative novel, with top-notch body horror, Cuckoo is like stepping right onto a landmine, immensely painful, regrettable, and life changing. The vividty of the awful, horrible focus around smell really elevates this into something absolutely putrid and nasty.
Cuckoo stands as one of the most confrontational, visceral, feral, and blistering horror novels on the market today. This book is guaranteed to make you heave, it promises to find your limit for gross shit. It's uncomfortable, shocking, gory and slimy - packed full of disgusting, god-awful body horror. Really, it's a masterful novel, not only is it horrible and sickening, it's also thought-provoking and weirdly beautiful. Gretchen Felker-Martin writes with such a gorgeous tenderness, it's vivid and entirely unsettling, but there's some real charm to this novel too. Cuckoo is a violent novel, it's a volcano erupting, it's an RPG fired directly into your face, it's a novel made up entirely of cruelty. Be warned, you won't be able to ever forget this one.
This is one angry fucking horror novel. Intense, horrific and highly disturbing, Cuckoo is perhaps one of the single most terrifying and grotesque extreme horror novels there is. It's absolutely relentless and unforgiving, refusing to offer even the smallest moment of respite. Cuckoo is the type of book that invades your personal space and won't ever leave. Despite the gritty, grimy, gore slicked outer coating of this hyper-ferocious novel, there's a real tenderness hidden away, you just have to be brave enough to plunge headfirst into this nightmare. An insanely creative novel, with top-notch body horror, Cuckoo is like stepping right onto a landmine, immensely painful, regrettable, and life changing. The vividty of the awful, horrible focus around smell really elevates this into something absolutely putrid and nasty.
Cuckoo stands as one of the most confrontational, visceral, feral, and blistering horror novels on the market today. This book is guaranteed to make you heave, it promises to find your limit for gross shit. It's uncomfortable, shocking, gory and slimy - packed full of disgusting, god-awful body horror. Really, it's a masterful novel, not only is it horrible and sickening, it's also thought-provoking and weirdly beautiful. Gretchen Felker-Martin writes with such a gorgeous tenderness, it's vivid and entirely unsettling, but there's some real charm to this novel too. Cuckoo is a violent novel, it's a volcano erupting, it's an RPG fired directly into your face, it's a novel made up entirely of cruelty. Be warned, you won't be able to ever forget this one.
"It was waiting at the forest's edge. They must have been almost a mile away by then, but the size of it made distance hard to judge. A landslide of flesh, white and pink and brown and scabby red, banners of wet hair hanging like moss from limbs that coiled around dead tree trunks. Delicate fronds waved among the branches as the thing heaped itself higher, cresting like a wave but never quite breaking for all that it strained toward them."
For everything that this novel is, it's also entirely exhausting. Experiencing Cuckoo will tire you out, it'll leave you utterly desperate for a break. Seamlessly blending together mundane real world horrors with something entirely otherworldly, Cuckoo is a novel of contrasts, with a rather stunning depiction of the American landscape being cast against its brutality. A heap of wonderful, traditional horror elements have been flung into this novel, that, in a way, make it all feel rather nostalgic for the days of IT and Invasion of the Body Snatchers. It's a bloodthirsty beast of a story, something dark, twisted, rotting and festering, entirely intent on trampling all over anyone's tolerance for disgusting content. It's startling and utterly gutting, and it deserves to be read.
"This is the nature of separation. Pain. Loneliness. Deformations of desire all to bridge a gap that cannot be bridged, save through union with us. With me. Aren't you tired of being afraid? Of being lonely?"