Happy Goat Horror

For fans of Evil Dead, The Blair Witch Project, The Frighteners, and In A Violent Nature.

In 1996, four friends discovered the terrible secret hiding on a quiet island on Lake George, in Upstate New York. They went for a vacation from which they never returned. Read the harrowing account of how they partied, had sex, and ultimately fell prey to the… God Damn Zombie Chainsaw Murderer.

Dark bleatings, my amazing tribe. This god damn zombie novel is an extremely weird story and I still don’t know how I feel about it. What I can tell you is, at the time of writing this review, I read it a few weeks ago and I’m still thinking about it and telling people about it.

Two couples (Amy and Dave, and Jake and Melanie) go off to the woods to camp, in true late 1900’s horror fashion. Unluckily for them, lurking in the trees is – you guessed it – a god damn zombie chainsaw murderer. Even more unluckily for them, said zombie chainsaw murderer isn’t the only weird and evil thing they have to worry about. Things escalate, the four of them are scattered, everything is insane and going wrong, and thus they must try to outrun and out-think their foes in order to survive.

So, where to start with this absolutely batshit book? Let me go in with my couple of criticisms and then move on to my praise. The relationships were all over the place and it took me a minute to figure out wtf was going on. The four of them are friends, but apparently none of them are trustworthy. Amy and Dave initially seem very loved up but then Amy is also really into Melanie, and then in the blink of an eye, all her feelings for Dave seem to just vanish. Can’t blame Amy too much, since she knows that Dave cheats on her all the time, but he doesn’t know she knows, but he is super in love with her, we’re assured. Jake, who’s with Melanie, is pissed that Dave sleeps around because he likes Amy, which is something he has in common with his girlfriend, who slept with Dave before she had a thing with Amy.

Are you still with me?

I initially was a bit overwhelmed and mildly irritated by this… dynamic(?), but then something weird happened. I carried on reading it and thanks to the overall tone, which becomes stronger and stronger the further into the story you go, I suddenly became fine with the fact that none of them were really behaving or reacting to each other the way actual humans likely would. The title is, after all, God Damn Zombie Chainsaw Murderer, and as the tone of the title itself might suggest, we’re here for a fun time with this book, not a “let’s get really deep into character analysis” time.

Story-wise, this is exactly what I expected, given the title, and I mean that in a good way. It’s fun, loud, full of danger but also humour, and has a good dollop of the self-aware silliness of something like The Cabin in the Woods. Just when I thought I had a full grasp of what I was reading, the goal posts moved on me, and it started to morph into something else – still of the same style but… well, let’s just say that I was constantly surprised and amused.

I am on the fence about the ending. It utilises a trope I hate (and I mean HATE – I, in fact, recently ranted about this trope on YouTube). However, the ending justifies itself, adds something that makes the trope itself questionable, and it also opens out the universe to allow for sequels, or other stories set in the universe of this book. So, I still don’t quite like it, but I can make allowances for it, enough so that it doesn’t colour how much I mostly enjoyed the rest of the book.

I’d recommend this to fans of horror comedy. If you’d like to get a copy or check out the author, there are some links below for you:

GOD DAMN ZOMBIE CHAINSAW MURDERER

SEAN MALIA THOMPSON

Bleeeeat!