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A review by ribbenkast
You've Lost a Lot of Blood by Eric LaRocca
dark
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
2.75
The premise of this book is strong, a report of the found bemusings of a serial killer; transcripts of sound recordings, diary entries, poems, intertwined with another horror novella written by said serial killer.
The execution, less so..
The writing is unfortunately not that strong. The poems are cliché and most prose lacked substance. The bad writing for the poems and in the novella could theoreticall be explained away as LaRocca simply writing in another voice, the voice of the character, named Martyr Black, he has created. But in the least spoilerly way, that is not the case. The writing is unfortunately just not that great, not because LaRocca was trying to do something clever, they just didn't write a better book.
Overall the book felt very disjointed. It felt like LaRocca came op with too many concepts that on their own wouldn't be enough to base even a short story on so he threw them all together in one book. The novella within the novel was the best part but it has zero thematic resonance with the rest of the overarching story. This could've been done way better.
There's a small "twist" at the end which I really liked. The ending was strong and it made me see what the author was getting at the entire time. However it was somewhat poorly forshadowed. I feel like If the author went back and tweaked some things in the poetry and the Novella that the book would've worked way better overall.
Last year I read 'Things have gotten worse since we last spoke' and absolutely loved it. In my eyes, Eric LaRocca had cemented themselves as one of the new voices in horror. But now I'm afraid it might have been a one off
The execution, less so..
The writing is unfortunately not that strong. The poems are cliché and most prose lacked substance. The bad writing for the poems and in the novella could theoreticall be explained away as LaRocca simply writing in another voice, the voice of the character, named Martyr Black, he has created. But in the least spoilerly way, that is not the case. The writing is unfortunately just not that great, not because LaRocca was trying to do something clever, they just didn't write a better book.
Overall the book felt very disjointed. It felt like LaRocca came op with too many concepts that on their own wouldn't be enough to base even a short story on so he threw them all together in one book. The novella within the novel was the best part but it has zero thematic resonance with the rest of the overarching story. This could've been done way better.
There's a small "twist" at the end which I really liked. The ending was strong and it made me see what the author was getting at the entire time. However it was somewhat poorly forshadowed. I feel like If the author went back and tweaked some things in the poetry and the Novella that the book would've worked way better overall.
Last year I read 'Things have gotten worse since we last spoke' and absolutely loved it. In my eyes, Eric LaRocca had cemented themselves as one of the new voices in horror. But now I'm afraid it might have been a one off