ZIPPERED FLESH 2 a “jaw-droppingly fine collection of stories”
Chuck Briggs has written a detailed review of ZIPPERED FLESH 2: MORE TALES OF BODY ENHANCEMENTS GONE BAD, which features my short story, “The Little Things”:
…What we have here, is a collection of mostly independent writers tapping into the darkside, all writing on the Barkeresque theme of “body enhancements gone bad”, surgically, chemically, whatever. It’s also the second of the series, which isn’t a promising start for the newcomer. One initially assumes that all of the good stuff was used up in the first anthology and what we’re stuck with here are bloody, splatter happy, intellectually wonting remainders.
Wrong, wrong, dead wrong, all wrong, and let’s start again.
ZIPPERED FLESH 2 turns out to be a jaw-droppingly fine collection of stories. I won’t tell you that everyone is a masterpiece. I won’t tell you there aren’t a couple of predictable clinkers and some that go for the gore and debauchery as an end itself. What I will tell you is that overall the writing is of a very high caliber. A glance through the author information at the end of the book reveals a cadre of extremely talented, experienced people. Editor Weldon Burge has done a remarkable job of finding a variety of approaches to what could have been an exercise in blood thirsty tedium…
Read the rest of the review here. Be sure to pick up your own copy and pick out a few of your own favorites:
- “The Modern Adonis” by Bryan Hall
- “Taut” by Shaun Meeks
- “The Hunger Artist” by Lisa Mannetti
- “Skin Deep” by Carson Buckingham
- “The Sun-Snake” by Christine Morgan
- “Knowledge” by Kate Monroe
- “Prosthetics” by Daniel I. Russell
- “After Darque” by M.L. Roos
- “The Affair of the Jade Dragon” by Rick Hudson
- “The Future of Flesh” by J.M. Reinbold
- “We’re All Mad Here” by E.A. Black
- “Seeds” by L.L. Soares
- “Perfection” by Doug Blakeslee
- “Underneath” by Kealan Patrick Burke
- “The Perfect Size” by A.P. Sessler
- “Piper at the Gates of Dawn” by David Benton & W.D. Gagliani
- “BabyDaddy” by Jonathan Templar
- “The Little Things” by Christian A. Larsen
- “Clockwork” by Shaun Jeffrey
- “Luscious” by Jezzy Wolfe
- “Rapture” by Charles Colyott
- “Primal Tongue” by Michael Bailey
ZIPPERED FLESH 2 was published by Smart Rhino Publications, a new publishing firm based in Delaware, with a current leaning toward (but not limited to) horror and suspense fiction.
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