You've Lost a Lot of Blood by Eric LaRocca | Horror Fiction Review
I've seen a lot of love for this author. Maybe I've chosen the wrong book? Or maybe I have terrible taste.
You've Lost A Lot of Blood by Eric LaRocca
Released March 2022
Source: Found in a Little Free Library!
A disturbing new vision of terror from the author of Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke.
"Each precious thing I show you in this book is a holy relic from the night we both perished-the night when I combed you from my hair and watered the moon with your blood.
You've lost a lot of blood . . ."
My 2 Cents for Free!
I’ve never read this author before and found this book inside one of the Little Free Libraries that I steward so I grabbed it up before someone else could (I've since returned it to another Little Free Library). I saw some buzz about this author online and for some reason, I was under the impression that their writing was grossly extreme but that might just be my brain being forgetful and mixing things up. Or maybe I’m horribly jaded. Probably a bit of both. There were some nasty scenes of ick and of humans being disgusting and deplorable but the writing didn’t sit in the ick for very long and that was fine by me. Either way would’ve been fine by me. I’ll never drag a book for being too extreme or too quiet or anything else that lies between the extremes. As long it grabs me, I’m good.
This is a weird one to write about. Not because it’s easy to give it all away (though there’s always that) but because it’s difficult to describe what’s happening here in this book. There’s a wrap-around story featuring two lovers who may be murderous, interspersed with sometimes random feeling dark poems, a repeated drawing of a centipede, and chapters from a disorienting novella about a young woman with sketchy memories who accepts a job to finish a game in a creepy mansion complete with creepy inhabitants. Or something like that. I did pay attention, believe it or not, I did take notes and I did enjoy coloring in that happy little centipede with my colored pencils whenever he appeared. And he appeared often. Sometimes every 4 pages and I never got tired of seeing him. He became my anchor and my book buddy as this story became stranger and stranger. I wish all books had a cute little book buddy tucked away inside.
This is a weird one to write about. Not because it’s easy to give it all away (though there’s always that) but because it’s difficult to describe what’s happening here in this book. There’s a wrap-around story featuring two lovers who may be murderous, interspersed with sometimes random feeling dark poems, a repeated drawing of a centipede, and chapters from a disorienting novella about a young woman with sketchy memories who accepts a job to finish a game in a creepy mansion complete with creepy inhabitants. Or something like that. I did pay attention, believe it or not, I did take notes and I did enjoy coloring in that happy little centipede with my colored pencils whenever he appeared. And he appeared often. Sometimes every 4 pages and I never got tired of seeing him. He became my anchor and my book buddy as this story became stranger and stranger. I wish all books had a cute little book buddy tucked away inside.
Look at him 💖
So that’s all I’m going to say about the plot, I think. The story started out great. I was hooked. I was thinking I was going to blow through the book and revel in its strange deviantness and it would become one of my newest favorites. Alas, it didn’t quite work out that way for me. I started having flashbacks to “I’m Thinking of Ending Things” which I finished sort of recently. That book made me feel as if I were trapped in a car listening to tedious conversations for half my life. I learned something about myself then. I don’t have patience for flowery speech and philosophical conversations with deeper meanings when they carry on and on and feel unnatural throughout a book. There may be people out there who talk like that but I’ll spend the rest of my life doing my best to stay away from them. Which brings me to the possibly (certainly) murderous couple who start out fine enough. I had flashbacks to “Exquisite Corpse” and I was engaged in their story but eventually their conversations devolved into the sort of thing I mentioned above and they lost my interest and I began to hope they’d murder each other (sooner rather than later) if only so I could stop hearing them talk.
There is some good squirmy writing in here, like this gem “his helpless body fruiting with more decay” but overall it all felt too disconnected for me and I found myself hoping for more emotional moments from some of the characters (in the novella) because the bones were there for some major pain and guilt and internal suffering but it didn’t dig in there deep enough for my liking.
Sorry to be the outlier and I'll probably lose my horror card here but I’m giving it a 2.5. You might love it though so give it a go if you stumble across a copy like I did!
You're not going to super enjoy everything everyone else does and that's ok.
ReplyDeleteI never understand why people go bananas about a not-so-great honest review.
DeleteIt's a creepy cover. But that little drawing of the centipede? Very cute. I'll probably pass on this book, though. It doesn't sound like my cup of tea.
ReplyDeleteYep, definitely not a book for everyone.
Delete