Kim White is a very popular cheerleader. She’s pretty, healthy, and comes from a well-off family. She has everything a girl of sixteen is supposed to want. And she’s sick to death of it.
In search of something to pull her out of her suicidal thoughts, she begrudgingly decides to lose her virginity, having heard it’s a life-changing event. But Kim doesn’t want to do it the same way her peers do. She seduces one of her teachers, hoping to ruin his life just for the fun of it. This starts Kim on a runaway train of sadism, and she makes every effort to destroy the lives of those around her. But soon simple backstabbing is not enough to keep her excited, and she nosedives into sabotage, violence, and even murder.
When Kim finds out she’s pregnant with her teacher’s child, a new madness overtakes her, and she realizes there’s only one thing that will satisfy her baby’s hunger…
It was his debut, Body Art (2016, Blood Bound Books), with whom Triana won me as a fan.
Character-development, horror, splatterpunk – honestly: that’s the way it should be!
When I heard about a new horror/splatterpunk novel by him, of course I had to go for it!
A young girl; Kim: Cheerleader, pretty, well-off family…
… and bored. Fed up. Tired and passionless.
Suicide seems to be an option, but she does not want to give up – she does not want to be weak. She is not weak!
Sex should change life – lose virginity, start a new life – finally live.
A good plan, or at least a new option to try. But not with anyone – because she’s not anyone, too…
A young girl; Kim: Cheerleader, pretty, well-off family…
…and pregnant. From her teacher. And now awakened and full of desire.
Triana and character-development – rarely the word "madness" fits better.
The specialty of Triana can be found here in the simple fact, that you experience less a development, than an evolvement. What begins as a misanthropic mood evolves immediately into an amoral sociopathy, which finds its final conclusion in freedom, the ultimate abjured detachedness.
Sometimes it’s almost scary, with which matter of course Triana lures the reader into the darkest corners of the human psyche – yes, he lures! He doesn’t lead, it’s not to obey blindly, it’s an enthusiastic approach, an absolutely wanted and curious conscious to head for it – no matter, what kind of warning the mind spits out at that moment…
The farther, the deeper Triana leads me into the world, into the gnawed mind of Kim, the louder, the more intense the tone becomes, the sound is forming, until it seems to be just us, which exist – in her dungeon of hell, out of hateful visions:
» And time returns again
And my place to dwell
Lord of infinite power
Line my ancient walls
From my ancient woe
From my hatred seed «
Especially readers, which had problems with the end of Body Art, may feel better with Full Brutal – conversely, I personally miss exactly this "Body Art-Feeling" – but that’s really an absolute question of taste.
Finally, Full Brutal is neither better nor worse than Body Art – it’s (deliberately) different and yet so close to his debut. In some extent, it’s the mirror image of Body Art, which brings the supernatural parts (horror) into reality and lets them live here in the form of a psychosis (Splatterpunk).
In the last third of the book, Triana impressively demonstrates his skills. Even you’ll find my biggest criticism right here in the content (I just miss this cherished, supernatural horror of Body Art), this doesn’t change the stylistic execution of Triana, which almost has to be titled as a masterpiece – he just does everything right; even if I roar for something else, this would just worsen the story:
in addition to the steadfastness of not switching to classical horror, but staying in the here and now, it’s the autonomy (not autarchy!), he gives to his protagonist, with whom he knows how to shine.
So he doesn’t let himself go, but Kim – lets her dance in her delusion, without getting lost as a creator – awesome!
Full Brutal starts as a wave, grows and rears up, to find the ultimate climax not in the moment of the apparent maximum, but in grasping the nature of the self:
Nothing has lost the meaning – the meaning simply never existed.
Where Body Art was supernatural splatterpunk, Triana created nihilistic extreme horror with Full Brutal – and with it an effigy of the Übermensch.
[…] stay very well in the Here and Now; no supernaturalness, but unspoken reality – just think of Full Brutal (Grindhouse Press, 2018). With Toxic Love he didn’t just continue along this path, but […]