Jodi was driving her children to college when The Man got in their car.
Uninvited, unwanted, and unhinged…
The Man has no name, but he does have a gun… a knife… and a bag of “toys”.
What starts as a forced ride into the desert escalates into a disturbing series of crimes and assaults.
Jodi and her children will soon pray for death.
WARNING: This novella is incredibly disturbing. It features graphic scenes of sexual violence, torture, and gore. It is not intended for easily offended readers. The print edition of this book includes an exclusive short story, which is not availble on ebook. It is also gross and disturbing.
Dark bleatings everyone! Happy Novella November!
So… I recently went on an adventure. An extreme horror adventure. Now, I’m not claiming that before this venture, I’d NEVER read a single extreme horror book – I’ve read some. However, I decided a few years back that the subgenre really just wasn’t for me. It was exactly the kind of horror I prefer to avoid. So, naturally, for comedic reasons, I decided to buy 5 extreme horror novellas (voted for by the Books of Horror group on FB), and make a YouTube video about my experience reading these dastardly tales. No One Rides For Free was one of these books.
So, apparently I don’t hate extreme horror after all. I just hadn’t found the right flavour. I think Judith Sonnet might be my favourite flavour. Wait… is that a weird thing to say? It probably is. I must be slightly warped by the books I’ve recently read…
The first 60 or so pages of this had me hooked and confused. The inciting incident is thrilling – a woman is driving her kids across the country to the college they’ll be attending, stops for gas, and then unbeknownst to her, ends up with another passenger. This guy is… well… he’s a wrong un, and he’s holding them hostage. I can think of few set ups that are more horrifying or tense than this one, and I was fully invested. I liked the family, they were wholesome, and this dude was a nasty piece of work that scared me. What an absolute nightmare.
I was confused because it didn’t seem like extreme horror at all, just regular horror. But then… I came upon a page-long trigger warning, and when I proceeded to read the rest of the book, I was severely disturbed. I’d read a couple of other books before this one that were absolutely brutal and disgusting, but this was on a whole other level. The things that happen are just…. I don’t even have the words. And yet… I found myself thinking “Must read more Judith Sonnet”.
The other extreme horror books I’d read were more outrageously violent and despicable than this one, but don’t get me wrong, this is absolutely heinous. The thing is though, that though what I was reading didn’t make me sick in my mouth the way, say, Stuart Bray’s Violence on the Meek did, it was somehow so much worse. I think this was due to a combination of factors.
Firstly, I loved Sonnet’s writing. She’s very talented and I loved reading her prose. She’s eloquent in her word wizadry. Secondly, she’s a great storyteller, and the book opened with such a great hook and such life-like characters that I was well and truly engrossed. I really cared about these people, so it was quite torturous reading the vile things that happen to them. And guys… I cried. Actually cried, with misery.
If you can’t already tell, I was really impressed. As I finished reading and gently placed this work of sheer debauchery down, I thought, “Well shit. I think Judith Sonnet just ruined my life.” But after soothing myself by telling my cats all about it and then having a nice cup of tea, I went online and added more work by Sonnet to my Christmas wish list. I still don’t think this genre is really for me…. unless Sonnet is writing it.
And now I’m kind of excited, because if there’s Sonnet, there might be others I like. I think this experiment just opened up a whole new branch of horror for me.
I’d recommend this to extreme horror fans… obviously. But seriously, my goaties, check the trigger warnings for this. I went in blind (which is on me), but wish I’d mentally prepared myself.
If you’d like to get your own copy or check out the author, there are some links below for you:
Happy Goat Horror 
Leave a comment