Happy Goat Horror

In this bleak and disturbingly erotic debut novel, iconoclast Chandler Morrison provides readers with a dark exploration of the nature of death, individuality, and generational identity. Along the way, lines will be crossed, taboos will be violated, and common decency will take an extended leave of absence. This is not for the faint of heart or weak of stomach. Or anyone who enjoyed Fifty Shades of Grey.

A young hospital security guard with a disturbingly unique taste in women. A maternity doctor with a horrifically unusual appetite. When the two of them meet, they embark on a journey of self-discovery as they shatter societal norms while engaging in destructive and abhorrent behavior. As they unwittingly help each other understand a world in which neither of them seems to belong, they begin to realize what it truly means to be alive…and that it might not always be a good thing.

Dark bleatings, tribe. Dark indeed.

This book is despicable… despicable, I tell you! Now, before I proceed, I can’t stress enough how much I just don’t like this type of extreme horror, so when I’m throwing hyperbolic statements around like ‘this book ruined my life’, just bear in mind that I do it in a tongue-in-cheek manner. This is the kind of story I would normally hand off to Angry Goat, but both Angry Goat and Jolly Goat have trotted off together, presumably into the sunset. Or a ball of fire. Or the pits of Hell. One of those. So that just leaves me to deal with books in genres that I normally actively avoid. This review wasn’t a request from the author but I did discuss it in a YT video, and barely said a word outside of that I thought it was horrible, so for balance, I’d like to elaborate here.

So, the reasons I don’t like it are the reasons that I think extreme horror fans WILL like it. Imagine the most horrid, twisted acts a human can commit. Are you imagining them? Is your mind awash with the filth of mankind, the effed up actions spurred by some deep cracks in the human psyche?….. Whatever you’re picturing is nothing compared to the things that lurk inside the pages of Dead Inside. Just thinking about it almost makes me sick in my own mouth.

Don’t go into this if you’re just newly discovering books in this genre. That was the rookie mistake I made. Just when I thought nothing could disgust me more than Zola, written by (the actually lovely) D.E. McCluskey, I started reading this and the walls of decency dissolved all around me.

To its credit in terms of things I do enjoy, there is a decent plot, which – as I’m discovering along my extreme horror journey – isn’t always the case for this genre (or any genre, to be fair). A sort of love story. A sick and twisted one, but Morrison does work in themes, attachment types, and trauma, in a way that explains the characters. But the content is sick sickity sick!

I’d recommend this to seasoned extreme horror fans, people who are entertained by cannibalism, for example. People who don’t flinch at… oh god… grotesque stuff involving infants and foetuses. If your interest is piqued and you’d like to check out the book or author, I have popped some links for you below:

DEAD INSIDE SALES LINKS

CHANDLER MORRISON’S SURPRISINGLY SUNNY CORNER OF THE WEB