I don't think of horror as something I read, but in fact I do read a certain amount because there are so many fine horror writers. Lucius Shepard, for example, writes dark fantasy that often shades into horror.

I tried this book based on a recommendation at last Readercon. A detective, having had to cut off his own hand to save his life, is recruited to solve a crime committed in a secret cult whose members consider amputation and mutilation a good. They gain status among their peers by progressively giving up ever more of their bodies. A "one", having cut off just one body part, has less status than a "three" who has done so three times; the elite count their mutilations in double digits.

Given this premise, Evenson's writing is about as muted as it could be; sensation is not the point, for all the dismemberments he describes. The normal detective-story interplay of human motivation and deception occurs, with detective Kline unavoidably becoming part of the story.

The novel has an introduction by Peter Straub. Its first part was published as "The Brotherhood of Mutilation." The afterwords note that Evenson's fiction has led to his losing a teaching job at Brigham Young University, and breaking with the Latter-Day Saints (Mormon) Church.

This is a solid piece of writing, but I can't say that anyone should pick it up in place of any of the other well-written, less grisly books out there - and don't really understand what Evenson is doing here.

Kline, suffering from depressions after a forcible cutting off of his own hand is dragged, against his will to investigate a murder of the head of a religious cult, one that follows the precept that you should cut of your hand if it offends you.

Whoa this book is intense, I could just not read it in one sitting. That's partly due to my feeling on amputation but mostly its just Brian Evensons extreme story and hard hitting style. It's almost pared down to the minimum, there are no long descriptions here, no out of place words (no surnames!) and yet there is a perfect balance kept between the extremity of the story and the brotherly matter of fact tone. It is violent but never gratuitous, its characters deeply unlikeable but always interesting and never unbelievable. You are simply dragged into a labyrinth of fleeting and changing facts and are unable to leave until till end.

This is book is expanded from the "The Brotherhood of Mutilation" novella but it doesn't seem to suffer, thematically its suits being cut into a few sections, which just serve to keeping you unsettled. ( )

http://shelf-monkey.blogspot.com/2008... ( )