Ritualistic Human Sacrifice by C.V. Hunt
Grindhouse Press (October 2015)
200 pages; $12.95 paperback; ebook $3.99
Reviewed by Anton Cancre
So, there’s this guy. Nick Graves. Nick is a bit of a jerk. He hates his wife, but when her surprise pregnancy derails his plan to divorce her, he decides to move them both far from friends, family and anything they know. That’ll show her. Too bad he didn’t look into the neighbors a bit closer as everyone he meets seems to act very strange and they have their own plans for him.
Let’s be straight here: this is not a book for most of you. It’s chock full of violent sexuality and more than a fair bit of dead fetus. Normally, I’d call that a spoiler, but the cover has a wire hanger worked into the pentagram and little fetuses line the edges. You knew what you were walking into the moment you picked it up.
For those that have been longing for a bit of the old hardcore in their horror in a time that seems overrun with tentacles and sighs, Hunt will prove a gift. Purple putrescent people pieces abound within these pages. There’s violence and dismemberment and sex galore. Sometimes, the three slide across each other.
Hunt’s prose is lean and mean and aims straight for the gut. There isn’t much poetry to it, but I don’t think that was what she was going for here. I felt some kinship to Bentley Little (one of the authors she dedicates the book to) at times, especially with her ability to have me tearing pages at such a rapid pace while absolutely despising the person I was reading about.
I’m pretty sure you know by now whether or not you want this.
Good review. Thanks to C.V. Hunt’s offering the eBook for free, I was able to read RITUALISTIC HUMAN SACRIFICE. Brutal, vivid, and honest about many things in the marriage “dynamic.” I saw both POV characters as miserable and trapped, and couldn’t take sides—but the wife using pregnancy as black-mail stood out for me. Hunt shows it is possible to maintain authorial control over violent material, and I salute her portraying certain occult elements with a LOT more accuracy than I’ve recently read elsewhere. Her Grindhouse Press is really putting out interesting work, and I intend to put my money where my mouth is.