For the patrons of the Olive Refuge Nudist Resort, a day at sea aboard The Naked Neptune Tour means sun, sea, cocktails, and naked flesh. Hard drinking and hot bodies are par for the course.
For the enormous Great White Shark that has followed the party boat out to sea, it means dinner.
Dark bleatings, my toothy tribe! Got a little shark novella for you today, and it’s exactly what the title makes it sound like. This, my friend, is the story of a bunch of nudist party people getting chomped up in a variety of amusing ways.
Our ill-fated characters are on a boat, drinking heavily and soaking up the sun in all their nude glory. The games begin, and that’s where the trouble starts. The game in question involves walking the plank, and when the first person ends up in the water, only then do they all realise the peckish threat below. The first death causes chaos on board as panic erupts, drinks are spilled, and fires are accidentally set.
I do wish the author had gone “full silly”, as I’d call it, with the unfolding events. Don’t get me wrong, the pacing is insane, and one disastrous thing after another keeps happening, so it’s not lacking in action and bloodshed, by any means. I just think that considering that all of the human characters are naked, there was much more scope for some truly slapstick comedy here (there is some, but I’m talking Monty Python levels of silliness). That’s not a criticism so much as a personal wish on my part.
I had a couple of gripes. The description of the shark attacking people was several times referred to as like a freight train, for example. It’s an excellent, image-conjuring description, but it was used at least 3 times in a row I think. The other thing that made me go ehhhhhh was what I’d consider a kind of mean-spirited take on an overweight woman. I initially thought this opinion of her was just from a character’s perspective, but there were a few jokes made at the expense of her weight in the prose a bit later, and I was a bit disappointed to see that. In a story where everyone’s nips are in danger of being nipped off, and there are dangling penises aplenty, I just think there are better and much funnier things to joke about when we’re talking a murderous shark eating everyone.
However, despite the couple of niggling bugs for me, I found this overall quite a laugh. The author doesn’t take it seriously (and in fact, wrote a lovely piece at the beginning of the book defending real sharks, and making it clear this is just a bit of fun). As scenarios go, it’s hilarious, and of all things, hilarity really does go hand in hand with horror. For those chomping at the bit for bloody carnage, there’s plenty of it here. Limbs chomped off, water full of blood, naked people going up in flames – it’s all here, my loves.
In summary, this reads like watching a slasher film, if the slasher in question is a shark. It uses the same kind of humour as some of what you see in something like Deep Blue Sea, knows what kind of story it is, and fully embraces it.
For those who enjoy killer animals and killer shark stories that are a little bit on the silly side, I’d recommend it. If you’d like to check out the book or the author, I’ve popped some links below for you:
Bleeeeat!
Happy Goat Horror 
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