Reviews with content warning for Sexual content - Cows

Obvious reflection of society and the place of an individual in said society. Focus on darkness and emptiness of the world and people within.

For my taste too much focus in disgusting details for the sake of being shocking. There is no natural development into crazy things, all is described as horrible as possible.

In comparing for example “American Psycho” managed to show insanity inside the normal world, which “cows” misses to deliver on.

Content Warnings

promisesatsundown's review against another edition

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challenging dark medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

I gave into the hype that is so frequently mentioned in my favorite horror subreddits about this book. I’ve read a decent amount of extreme horror and knew somewhat of what I was getting into.

I found the parts about Steven’s daily life far more interesting than the actual cow part of the story. That part I just could not take seriously and it bordered on comical.

But then I started to think, Steven has been horribly abused his whole life and has had no real exposure to the outside world- what’s to say that anything in the book is truly happening? Maybe he’s just sitting on his bed, the TV on and nothing is real.

It’s gross and shocking for sure, if you can’t stomach gore, bodily waste, beastiality, or animal abuse, skip this one. But if you can realize it’s just a book and try and analyze what the underlying themes are (isolation, mental illness, the need for human affection) it’s not completely devoid of merit. Three starts for what (I think) the author was trying to say and for the prose itself, which was quite good considering the subject matter. All in all, at least I can say I read it.

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kingnixon's review against another edition

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challenging dark sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

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sylvermoon's review against another edition

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dark medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

1.5

Basically splatterpunk. Didn’t enjoy it at all, and not even for gore / similar reasons. Cows speaking and the slaughterhouse environment were so ridiculous. I would have DNF, except I don’t ever do that.

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jocelyn73c's review against another edition

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challenging dark sad tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

I'm not a big splatterpunk reader. Extreme gore is not really my thing. This book really pushed a lot of my boundaries, but that being said I thought the writing was good and there was an actual message about male isolation and dominance over others that I thought was well illustrated. I won't ever read it again, but I'm not mad I read it this one time.

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