There are many terrible things in life. War, AIDS, other people and a lack of chocolate all spring readily to mind, though currently I'm only afflicted with one of those. There are however terrors that lurk in the darkest recesses of the human psyche. Unspeakable mishapen THINGS that are an affront to the very concept of sanity which no sane man can bear witness to without losing some piece of his very soul.
I'm of course talking about Paranormal Romance novels.
It seems that at some point in the recent past, nobodies sure quite when, publishers simply gave up. They stopped looking for new eciting authors. They no longer nurtured talent or promoted, if not originality, then at least basic literary skill, and decided to simply churn out any mindless turgid fanwank pap that whatever talentless hack from the depths of the internet ejaculated into their attention zone. And thus now we have large sections in bookshops where once there were shelves labelled Horror, now given over to a selection of books that must, by some obscure law or other, all feature the word Dark somewhere in their titles. Indeed, bonus points may awarded for those that manage to cram in as many synonyms for the concept as possible. Needless to say they all would appear to be written by people who's parents had a decidedly bizarre and sadistic taste in names, or those that think that whatever you call yourself in Second Life counts.
The additional fact that these books are, essentially, all themed around either beastiality, necrophilia or some nightmarish combination of the two seems to have passed most people by.
Anway, a while ago now I was out and about uptown with a lady friend one time when we happened to call into Forbidden Planet for a bit of a browse. And it was there that the insidious encrouchment of this trend first confronted me. I'd seen they had a small section of these books, and they had elicited giggles from me before. I mean seriously. DOG SEX.
But this time things had changed. Where once was but a tiny corner dedicated to darkest penumbral dog sex of blackest midnight now stretched forth a mighty swathe of such material. Being in a somewhat festive mood I decided to take a browse of such diversity as was on offer. Anything for a giggle.
I was however unprepared for the full onslaught of what I witnessed. For there was a book title of such intense gothic comedy value that it literally knocked me to the very floor.
Seriously. I was actually on the floor, in the middle of Forbidden Planet, laughing my absolute tits off. It was hilarious. I can't even think of it now without giggling. Which is somewhat unfortunate, for both me and you. You see, when I decided to move up to a grown up blog I had a bit of a think about things I could write about. And you'll never guess what I thought would be great idea.
Oh yes. THE BOOK. I'm going read it, and then I'm going to write about it. But not just a simple review. Oh no, that would be to simple. I'm going to go through the whole thing, poece by agonising piece. And I'm going to take you with me. I have no idea how long it will take. It all depends on how far I feel I can stretch it out, how inspired I am but the mighty prose on offer. I doubt I'll be doing a chapter by chapter breakdown, but who knows? This is a new experience for me.
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