Jeremy

Everything you ever wanted to know about The Onion but were too afraid to ask

Revisado: 04-18-25

I've been wanting a book like this for years, I was curious about the origins of The Onion, and this book takes a journalistic approach, in doing many interviews with the people involved, and telling their story. Going into the lives of the founders to the first print in 1988 all the way to 2023, this book fills you in every major step of the way.

The way that The Onion has grown with the times and adapted to new technologies, like making the decision to embrace the internet when everyone was stealing their stories and not giving them credit, getting on social media, making web videos, a couple TV shows I was unaware of, and plenty of things that didn't turn out as well, like what happened to The Onion Movie.

The book being 12 hours is an ideal length, it never wears out it's welcome. I listen to audiobooks while walking my dog, and she's been taking me on hour to 100 minute walks twice a night lately, so this book went by very quickly for me.

The author does the narration, and she does a great job, it's entirely professionally recorded, like you can tell this was recorded in studio, you never hear breathing or anything else that would take away. She has the right voice and tone through the narration. There's a level of confidence to respect in doing it yourself instead of letting the publisher pick a professional voice actor.

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Jon Athan clearly read The Darkest Web

Revisado: 02-11-25

This book took direct inspiration from some of the worst true crimes against children that have been traded on the internet, but in those cases the men responsible are in prison, there was no vigilante torture. Creating fictional villains inspired by sadists like Peter Scully makes for a good extreme horror premise. If you haven't read The Darkest Web, it's a very disturbing nonfiction book with the end focusing on hurtcore, ranging from torture to blackmail, and generally targeting children. These are men that make Jeffrey Epstein look like Mr. Rogers.

In the earlier parts of the novel, once things really start going hard into splatterpunk, it does have a series of crimes from the villains of the story, which are inspired by true crimes so severe that anyone who downloads these images has gotten a long prison sentence. In the novel, it's disturbing, but not quite as horrible as the true events, and obviously you don't want to exploit real tragedy like that. But by the 2nd half or so, when the story becomes the father desperately trying to find his daughter, and the police aren't useful, you don't hear about these criminals until they are discovered and tortured to death. When the story is about perverts who torture kids of all ages, it's a very easy way to get vicious torture where you can't feel bad about the men in pain, by the end, I could feel the rage of the father.

As for the narration, I'm 90% sure it's the same voice actor from The President's Son, but here he reads it straight, in the other book, he's playing an over the top psychopath so he hams it up. This reads more like your typical pulp crime thriller, just with very excessive violence.

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The ultimate gross out splatterpunk novel

Revisado: 01-05-25

I've read plenty of sick books, recently Dead Inside, The Slob series, The President's Son, Cows, but after Hogg, nothing has been able to shock me, until this book. It's relentless, but also quite well written. Unlike Hogg, this book does have tension, risk, and situations the characters can't easily get out of.

On a scale of 1 to 10, this is definitely a 10 in terms of extreme depravity. What works so well is the very over the top nature of the story, it's never downright disturbing or too unpleasant to be fun, it's shocking and gross, but so far out there, like hearing a professional telling the aristocrats joke, only this story doesn't involve animals or kids.

This is my undisputed heavyweight champion of splatterpunk. Also, the narrator really goes all out to give everyone a distinctive voice and accent. It's a very animated performance. The kind of book where it's very worth it on Audible.

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Absurdist dark political satire and gutwrenching brutality

Revisado: 12-23-24

One thing that will take some getting used to is the choice in narration. This is a professional narrator, but when he's talking through the perspective of Vincent Campbell, he had these weird infections, it's intentional, like playing a fictional crazy person, such as The Joker in The Dark Knight or Hannibal Lecter.

As for political satire, that's one thing that kept me away from checking this out for a while, because like most people, I'm sick of the endless news cycle. The book takes a more nihilistic tone, essentially instead of playing sides like sports teams, it's really greedy elites playing theater.

The protagonist here is like if a president's son was some ungodly mix between the Joker and Alex Jones. He's a sociopathic killer and avid conspiracy theorist, as well as an unreliable narrator. It starts where he's locked up and made to see a therapist, so he assumes she's writing a book about him, so go for absolute sensationalism, pepper in extreme embellishments with the truth.

The story eventually leads to Vincent being involved in a number of modern historical events, and making things so much worse. There's also a sly reference to the novel Dead Inside, if you know you know. And like that book, this has no shortage of violence against babies. There's even a whole subplot that's supposed to be the infamous Epstein isle. A lot of it is either changing names or not having a spoken name but a nudge that it's who you think it is, all under the guise of parody.

Probably the only way you'd get angry over the politics of the novel is if you are obsessed with Infowars and think it's all true, but then I can't imagine you'd be reading gross out horror novels. Much of it feels like the stuff Alex Jones would have nightmares about.

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A life of failing upward

Revisado: 10-02-24

There is no shortage of books about Donald Trump, from the salacious like the Michael Wolf books that play fast and loose with verifiable information to nearly everyone from his administration who has burned bridges with Trump, even his niece wrote a book, which was more about her father who died in his 40's. What seperates this book is that the journalists who wrote it, read through the long suppressed tax returns and followed the money.

It turns out that the secrets of the Trump empire were a life of Donald spending other people's money and taking bank loans for his numerous ill fated investments, and not having to pay his taxes because he's usually billions of dollars in debt from businesses that aren't profitable. As well all know, his reality TV show The Apprentice did everything to change his public perception, this book gets quotes from people who worked on the show, explaining how editing did all the work to hide his irrational firings and how uninvolved he was in the show.

I have to say that this book got me depressed quite often. I'll admit, I hate Donald Trump more than any living person. And learning more about how his father gave him everything, bailed him out for decades, and banks kept giving him free money, never a single consequence because he was born rich, and the media has spent over 40 years reporting his lies and not questioning him. Even as president, he called the free press the enemy of the people, but they to this day give him a free pass, and put Kamala Harris under three times the scrutiny, while pretending Trump is a stable genius.

This is a book that sticks exclusively to throughly verifiable facts and avoids any speculation. Following the money trail is the core, but it's written as a biography. It's a very well written and heavily researched book that has no interest in shocking claims or rumors. It's everything Trump is afraid of, exposing his lack of wealth.

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FYI it does end on a cliffhanger

Revisado: 03-03-24

The book was definitely what I was expecting it to be, and there are some of the most unhinged descriptions of genitalia torture that I've heard. Essentially it's a revenge story, they crossed the wrong man, and he's going to make everyone pay. There isn't much in the way of backstory to the characters, like how he become Dr. Sadist, you get some details of his past, but nothing unnecessary like what his childhood was like, it's just what you need to know, so the story can move at a brisk pace with enough going on between scenes of extreme violence. It's well written, but more about lean meat and not serving up much extra. The only thing is this is part of a connected series of 4 novels, each an individual story with a connection to the man at the top Mr. Snuff. The 4th book is the conclusion to all these stories, but this is the only book on Audible. That being said, the Kindle versions were pretty cheap, I think I got the bundle for under $15 and a discount on this audiobook. But just keep on mind, you won't get the full story here, it'll leave you wanting to buy the other novels to get the full picture.

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The brutal and uncensored history that isn't taught

Revisado: 02-05-24

This is very much a history lesson for adults, no punches are pulled and American expansion actually reads like Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy. So there is a reason why public school text books play very loose with the truth, otherwise you'd have generations of doomers and rebels. But seriously, it's a very eye opening read/listen, and it's a long book, 34 hours long.

First thing to mention is the narration, the narrator is fine, nothing spectacular, but it's what the book calls for. The issue is the actual sound recording, for some reason, you get chapters that are sometimes noticeably louder and the next is quieter, and this is consistent for the whole book, chapter transitions can feel a little jarring because of this.

This book goes from the brutal truth about Columbus, who sailed to the Caribbean, labeled the locals "Indians" and savagely tortured thousands to death for not finding him enough gold each month. A common thread is that this is history as told by the billions of victims of capitalism. Native genocide, slavery, segregation, the uphill battle for civil rights, women's liberation, the natives refusing to be forgotten, the great depression, and the resistance to every American war, even from a minority of consensus objectors who went to prison for avoiding the draft.

It would be fair to call this a leftist narrative of American history, but that doesn't change the facts. There are countless history books where the presidents are superheroes and the rich only became rich because they worked the hardest and that's the American dream. You can buy The Patriots History Of The United States if you want a conservative fantasy novel that starts with Columbus actually discovering America and treating the Indians to the first Thanksgiving, and how the blacks actually were ecstatic for slavery. The way Ben Shapiro and Alex Jones would approve of.

The author had a strong distrust of government and the rich. I don't think he's terribly biased in the sense that he's trying to sell you on communism or socialism, he's quite critical of the failings of these movements, like the socialists generally not allowing black people or listening to their problems in unfair labor. The narrative is more about the underdog story, resistance groups and how they were crushed by the government. Especially by WWII when America was attacked, and most Americans were united, unless you were of Japanese decent, and off to the interment camp.

It's not a fun book and there are no powerful targets who are spared. I'd say Bill Clinton had the most time spent on what a God awful president he was, constantly trying to win over conservatives (who were sent out to impeach him from day one) which isn't much different from Joe Biden in his first term. It's more about the greedy and callous policies of the presidents than an in depth history of the first 43 presidents. How their capitalist goals and military over spending affected the 99%. It's how we got where we are today with half the population having so much apathy about voting and 1% of the population hoarding all the money.

The book ends during the first term of George W. Bush, which was when it was being written. There are plenty of topics over hundreds of years that are briskly covered, and plenty of more in depth books to read after this. If the author focused more attention on everything, this book would probably still be in the process of being written to this day and release more like an encyclopedia set. It's a great starter course in the story of America from various resistance groups, minorities, and the poor people we've bombed in wars that had nothing to do with us.

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Very intense painful suspense

Revisado: 01-04-24

From the notes from the author after the book ends, he talks about this being his first published novella, and a few years ago, he went back to it to rewrite it and bring the story closer to his present standards, extend it, and give it the extra polish. And I didn't know it was his first story he released, which is a good way to start with his books.

This is very much a revenge story, and I wasn't too sure what to expect, what do these 5 challenges entail. I'll say that it's very creative, it goes places that I wasn't expecting, and the author does know just where the line is and how close to the edge he should go. It's not a splatter gore fest, I mean you can't finish 5 challenges if you're dead, that would be a bad plan. What it does is very painful and outright disgusting. I mean it's not as gross out as The Slob by Aron Beauregard, but it's still shocking and revolting.

The book really kept me interested, especially to keep listening to find out what's next and what exactly this 5 and final challenge is, what's the end game of this grueling night of punishment? I was kept in suspense to the very end.

As for the narration, the narrator has a very professional voice, in a way almost a little too sophisticated sounding to talk about all the bodily fluids and bullying cringe stories, but he does a great job, it's what you get when you hire a seasoned professional who will read anything you put to page.

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One of the most original novels of the 00's

Revisado: 12-19-23

I knew generally what to expect from the format of this book. Different time lines with different unrelated characters, and shared thematic elements. I would say it took me until around the 3rd story before things started to really click, but it's not that I wasn't interested before that, it just takes some time to get to it's high concept. Everything really comes together as it goes on and is neatly tied up by the end.

The format is a challenging read, you have 6 stories going from the 1850's to 3 from the 1900's/early 00's, and leading to the future. To place the various connections will take time, and it's more than simply, the person in the next story was reading the previous story before being interrupted. And that is part of the format. You get dropped into the narrative and it abruptly ends, and the 2nf half of the book goes back to conclusion each story in reverse order, ending with the story it started with.

There's a variety of different genres and characters, and for an audiobook they really went all out for the casting. Each story has its own specific narrator and they all give strong performances, even respectably doing various accents. Each narrator really sounds like they're speaking for the character, as if you were listening to an audio log from this person. It's a spectator audiobook.

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The sequel is much bigger and more twisted

Revisado: 11-18-23

You really should read Gone To See The River Man before you start this sequel. It will give you a summary at the start, not too spoiler heavy, but it does go more into the secrets of that book later on in this sequel, and it's a direct sequel, so you should absolutely check it out first.

This sequel has a lot more about the serial killer Edmond Cox, and takes a bigger dive into his past that wasn't explored in the first book. And because of this, the sequel has a much higher kill count and far more descriptions of sexual assault, torture, and murder. There is no pretense here, you're going into the darkest places of the mind.

There's a detective who was on the task force that caught Cox, a private investigator looking for a missing girl, a young woman visiting the town to learn more about the life of Cox, a troubled young woman seeking out the river man, and smaller characters who are basically there to be killed.

I will say that there are a fair number of people to mentally keep tabs on through this story, it's not as simple as the first book where it's two sisters in the woods. This book also goes into the small town, seeing some of the locals, and gives a better picture of what the area is like before heading into the back woods where it's reclusive people living in shacks.

There's so much more happening in this sequel. I put it on right after finishing River Man, and it's a great listen, and a really well done sequel. No idea of there would be a 3rd River Man book, I think go for a trilogy, and I'm sure there's always some people out there who want to make a pact with the River Man.

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