stephbookshine's review
5.0
*I received a free ARC of this book via Rachel’s Random Resources blog tour. The decision to review and my opinions are my own.*
I’m writing this minutes after reading the last word of Cuttin’ Heads because I wanted to capture my thoughts while the story was still ringing in my ears and buzzing in my teeth.
Warning: This book contains sex and drugs and rock music. Also violence and gore and very strong language.
Oh, and some lovely, juicy Scots words which you will find yourself memorising for use in times of strong emotion!
Cuttin Heads is what you get when you take Trainspotting and mash it up with occult influences like Dennis Wheatley, The Exorcist, The Devil’s Advocate, and Bedazzled. Sample a refrain from Terry Pratchett’s Soul Music, but play it straight and unplugged, like the good old-fashioned psychological horror of Alfred Hitchcock and Ira Levin. Think Stephen King at his earlier, terrifying best, but with tighter plotting and deeper characterisation.
At the beginning of the book I forgot for a while that I was reading a horror story at all, as I became immersed in the mundane struggles of the Scottish trio and their musical passion. The tension crept in obviously yet insidiously with the appearance of Gappa Bale, and from then on the author kept a steady hand as he expertly slid the pitch, shifting key and tempo until the total dissonant chaos of Easy Rollin Manor, leading to the eventual crescendo of the finale and the final release. Even the little bridge at the end is perfect, shifting the reader from the intensity of the story into the slight distance, but also the authentication of an urban legend.
Throughout the story the love and knowledge of music bleeds and shines through at every point. The author has taken the quiet, brooding malevolence and explosive, shrieking rage of heavy rock/metal and captured them on the page like scientists trap sound vibrations in a box, so the reader puts the book down with the heavy, full (and slightly deaf) feeling you get after a great gig, when you can still feel the vibration from the rhythm section somewhere in your bones and the harmonies are singing in your veins.
Just to clarify. This was a terrifying, excellent horror story and also a love song to music and performing. It really resonated with me. I would not read it with the lights out.
‘Aldo’s problems about money and debt and responsibilities are illusions. Glammers. Real truth, he knows, real grace, is found in moments like these. In verse and chorus.’
– D. A. Watson, Cuttin’ Heads
Review by Steph Warren of Bookshine and Readbows blog
https://bookshineandreadbows.wordpress.com/2018/06/16/cuttin-heads-d-a-watson/
I’m writing this minutes after reading the last word of Cuttin’ Heads because I wanted to capture my thoughts while the story was still ringing in my ears and buzzing in my teeth.
Warning: This book contains sex and drugs and rock music. Also violence and gore and very strong language.
Oh, and some lovely, juicy Scots words which you will find yourself memorising for use in times of strong emotion!
Cuttin Heads is what you get when you take Trainspotting and mash it up with occult influences like Dennis Wheatley, The Exorcist, The Devil’s Advocate, and Bedazzled. Sample a refrain from Terry Pratchett’s Soul Music, but play it straight and unplugged, like the good old-fashioned psychological horror of Alfred Hitchcock and Ira Levin. Think Stephen King at his earlier, terrifying best, but with tighter plotting and deeper characterisation.
At the beginning of the book I forgot for a while that I was reading a horror story at all, as I became immersed in the mundane struggles of the Scottish trio and their musical passion. The tension crept in obviously yet insidiously with the appearance of Gappa Bale, and from then on the author kept a steady hand as he expertly slid the pitch, shifting key and tempo until the total dissonant chaos of Easy Rollin Manor, leading to the eventual crescendo of the finale and the final release. Even the little bridge at the end is perfect, shifting the reader from the intensity of the story into the slight distance, but also the authentication of an urban legend.
Throughout the story the love and knowledge of music bleeds and shines through at every point. The author has taken the quiet, brooding malevolence and explosive, shrieking rage of heavy rock/metal and captured them on the page like scientists trap sound vibrations in a box, so the reader puts the book down with the heavy, full (and slightly deaf) feeling you get after a great gig, when you can still feel the vibration from the rhythm section somewhere in your bones and the harmonies are singing in your veins.
Just to clarify. This was a terrifying, excellent horror story and also a love song to music and performing. It really resonated with me. I would not read it with the lights out.
‘Aldo’s problems about money and debt and responsibilities are illusions. Glammers. Real truth, he knows, real grace, is found in moments like these. In verse and chorus.’
– D. A. Watson, Cuttin’ Heads
Review by Steph Warren of Bookshine and Readbows blog
https://bookshineandreadbows.wordpress.com/2018/06/16/cuttin-heads-d-a-watson/
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