Review of THE END OF THE WICKED CONTEMPLATED BY THE RIGHTEOUS by Jonathan Edwards (Amazon Digital Services, 2011)

Won’t the presence of the damned rotting in Hell spoil Heaven for the saints? To this, legendary Calvinist preacher and theologian Jonathan Edwards answers emphatically, No! Taking his cue from Revelation 18:20 (“Rejoice over her thou heaven, and ye holy apostles and prophets; for God hath avenged you on her.”), Edwards argues that the suffering of the hellish majority will not subtract from the pleasure of the heavenly minority; rather, it will—indeed it must—add to it. And so, with demonic relish, he paints the scene: monoemotive saints—capable of feeling only orgiastic joy—sing praises as they witness the judgment of Hell’s new tenants, those objects of God’s insatiable wrath. Devils rend flesh; Jesus mocks; the saints sing on. To children Edwards issues this terrible threat: “How will you bear to see your parents, who in this life had so dear an affection for you, now without any love for you, approving the sentence of condemnation, when Christ shall with indignation bid you depart, wretched, cursed creatures, into eternal burnings?” Quite simply, the choice is this: watch a never-ending snuff movie or act in it. It’s a dark vision from the mind of America’s premier purveyor of Puritan torture porn.

Review of ABERRATIONS edited by Jeremy C. Shipp (Attic Clown Press, 2011)

From a group of horror writers with an impressive set of combined credentials, this is an inexpensive—and if you’re an Amazon Prime member, free—ebook-only collection of ten original tales, each about monsters, including vengeful children, the ghosts of influenza victims, zombie hordes, a demon coughed up by a cat, a not-so-mythical mothman, and some very black and very hairy things. They’re everywhere, both in places you would expect (mountain caves, dark woods, post-apocalyptic landscapes where the limbs of fallen trees are adorned with dogs and deer) and ones you almost certainly would not (an aging aunt’s frail body, public transport). Guilt, fear, insecurity and violence call them into being. One of my favorite monsters was the one in Scott Nicholson’s “The Hounds of Love,” the story of a sociopathic boy, Dexter, and his dead dog, Turd Factory. For fun, Dexter kills and buries animals of every kind—with unexpected but not entirely unwelcome consequences. Other favorites were the baby finger-eating, blood-belching passengers in Simon Woods’ “Bus People”—whose disgusting descriptions of transmogrifying flesh brought to mind Brian Yunza’s classic movie Society—and the sinister seducer, Peter, in Lisa Tuttle’s “Bug House.” All in all a great read, but let’s hope and pray these aberrations remain in our Kindles and out of [reviewer pulled apart by baby chimps]