Happy Goat Horror

In a bout of home buying anxiety, Joe purchases a house through an online real estate site without ever seeing the property. Once he moves in, however, he realizes the previous owner had posted pictures which conveniently excluded the portal to hell in the master bedroom. Riddled with self-doubt and a lack of purpose, Joe spends his nights pushing damned souls and hellish creatures back into the portal, while lonely laboring away in middle management during the day. But all that changes when the Hellhound of Gluttony invades his home looking for a friend… and food… mostly food.

Dark bleatings, my absolutely wonderful tribe. Today, because of author Gavin Dillinger, I have to bring your attention to a serious matter. But first, let’s review his newest novel, which I begrudgingly admit is actually fantastic, as far as a comedy horror novel story goes. A quick note here to say that although I never normally do this, there will be some light spoilers in terms of the plot for the sake of doing the book justice in this review. I won’t give away the ending or any real specifics, but there are some quick overall details in terms of story beats.

Joe buys a house without actually going to look at it first, and amongst some other small issues, he soon notices that there is a portal to Hell in his bedroom. And so begins his new nightly routine of keeping watch for things crawling out of it, and chasing them around and shooing them back in. Eventually, Munch – some sort of Hell dog, emerges, and Joe decides to keep him. Who wouldn’t want a pet? Unfortunately for Joe, Hell’s Dog Catcher comes a-looking, Joe hides the dog, and thus begins his infernal problems.

I did not know, because I’m not familiar with much of this author’s work, that he is hilarious. Joe’s general outlook and approach to problems is both relatable and comical, his inner monologue a funny treat, especially when really weird things are going down. There were so many laugh out loud moments in the writing, and here are a few examples, just to give you an idea:

A) Joe breaks his phone and then takes it to a phone repair shop. The shop is called ‘Why U Break?’ I don’t know why this cracked me up so much. I think it’s just the pure silliness of it.

B) This line: “GAAAH!” I yelled to express a sensation commonly referred to as pain.“

C) This paragraph, because of the last line, and the set up to the last line, the misdirection, and also the fact that there’s no further explanation afterwards:

“Marge and Louise were wonderful neighbors. The twin sisters had married twin brothers, and both couples had a couple twins. Now in their late 70’s however, the twin sisters had been widowed when their twin husbands had crashed flying a twin plane over the Twin’s stadium during the national anthem. It was tragic and left many confused, because neither of the men were pilots.”

Story-wise, it starts small (if you can call chasing hell spawn back into a portal small), and unravels into something much bigger at a great pace – it’s a real page-turner. The overall tone is very funny and light but the stakes for Joe become increasingly high – he feels responsible for keeping demons out of our realm, he doesn’t want that goddamn Dog Catcher getting his hands on Munch, his exes keep randomly turning up and attacking him, and he’s trying to reason with his old high school sweetheart, whose life he has now absolutely trashed with his mere presence. And of course, he inevitably is going to end up having to go through that portal. And all this while he’s, let’s face it, not exactly the hero the world might hope for.

It’s honestly such an entertaining book. Dillinger is super skilled at balancing a cracking sense of humour with the horror of the situation, the story itself is great (oh my f-ing god, don’t even start me on how amused I was by the ending), and I really liked his writing style.

Now, with all that said, to circle back to what I mentioned at the beginning – the serious matter. I have never ever inserted a personal grievance with an author in a review, but I’m sorry, I feel really strongly about this. For all of Gavin’s highly accurate depictions of Hell and its spawn (pffft passing this book off as a work of fiction when he’s clearly someone in the know – no one who hasn’t actually seen them could so accurately describe the spider demons) – he doesn’t mention any goats! NOT A SINGLE ONE! It’s as if he’s trying to give the impression that we (goats) wouldn’t all be present for the events in this book and I tell you, well that just goshdarn pisses me off. Considering he included the others beasties of note, I can only conclude that he was, therefore, trying to personally slight me, and all goats worldwide. Un-bloody-believable. This is war, Dillinger.

I’d recommend this to horror comedy fans, especially if you enjoy things like David Wong’s John Dies at the End. I personally would put this at the very top of my horror comedy book recommendation list, it was right up my street. If you’d like to check out this book or the author, I’ve popped the links below for you (also, if you could give Gavin shit on social media for not featuring any goats in this novel, you’d be doing me a real solid. I appreciate your loyalty):

AN EXPLORATION OF EXISTENTIAL INDIFFERENCE IN A VOID OF CONFIDENCE

GAVIN DILLINGER

Bleeeeeeeat!