Title: Body After Body
Author: Briar Ripley Page
Publisher: Self-Published
Length: 232 Pages
Category: Sci-Fi Horror
Rating: 5 Stars
At a Glance: This book is a full-throated homage to the genres it represents, unique in its substance and delivered descriptively, sometimes gruesomely (beware of cannibalism). Briar Ripley Page just catapulted their way to the top of my list of favorite new finds.
Reviewed By: Lisa
Blurb: In this long novella inspired by the Mountain Goats & John Vanderslice concept EP Moon Colony Bloodbath, three indentured, memory-wiped laborers at a crumbling storage facility make some unexpected discoveries about the genetically engineered mutant bodies they tend each day.
Sex, drugs, violence, cannibalism, psychic powers, a catgirl (sort of)…BODY AFTER BODY is the lurid, dreamlike, amoral queer/trans sci-fi trash literature at least four or five people have been waiting for.
Review: “The world is decaying slowly, and we’re stuck in it; that’s all.”
Body After Body is one of the finest horror novels I’ve read in years. Maybe ever. Briar Ripley Page was inspired by music, and they transformed that inspiration into a story that shocks, provokes, and repulses. It drew me in, sent me on a twisted journey, and then used the human condition to keep me hooked as I empathized with their characters’ conflicts.
“O brave new world. What will we build out of the ashes and carnage, the melted ruin? I hope something better.”
In this dystopian Sci-Fi novel, Earth harbors a Station where the laborers are all Johns or Jennys, where bodies of sentient beings are held in stasis and harvested for their organs and hormones, among other things. Medical ethics, wealth and privilege, and the decay of empathy are among the many things the story confronts. But it’s who is and is not permitted to transition that drives the story and provides for the Big Twist that left my jaw dropped for the horror of it.
This book is a full-throated homage to the genres it represents, unique in its substance and delivered descriptively, sometimes gruesomely (beware of cannibalism). Briar Ripley Page just catapulted their way to the top of my list of favorite new finds. They appear to be utterly unafraid to confront the things that frighten, the ghastly and ruthless, and expose the things that show the world its shame. Selfishness and cruelty made villains of those who should serve to protect, and victims of those who couldn’t advocate for themselves.
Body After Body is most definitely one of those book I will remember for the way it made me feel—a little disturbed and a whole lot of impressed.
You can buy Body After Body here: