Carnal Surgery [Paperback]

Do you like reading about psychopaths, sociopaths, and other malcontents, with gross-out over the top guts, gore and dismemberment thrown in for your sick mind to absorb like a sponge? If you answered yes, then add this nasty sucker to your amazon cart, choose warp drive delivery, and you're there. Or if you've read Ed Lee's other 2 collections from Deadite Press, Bullet Through Your Face and Brain Cheese Buffet, and got twisted joy, amusement and laughter from them, then, well... it's pretty much a no brainer that YOU MUST HAVE IT!

In Carnal Surgery you get 11 stories of gore soaked madness, violence and depravity. Like the 2 previous Deadite Lee collections I mentioned, your gag reflex will seriously be tested, maybe even more so. All but two(maybe three... I'm having trouble remembering!) of the stories I had read before. I won't go into too much detail about each individual story, but I will mention my absolute favs. I can't really pick one particular favorite, but Hands, Please Let Me Out, The Table, The Blurred Room, and Gut-Shot were the standouts for me, though the other six are still excellent. I can still remember reading Hands in Lee's collection The Ushers. Hands is sort of a whodunit about a killer who likes to collect trophies... you can probably guess what those trophies are. It has a really nasty twist at the end that'll have you screaming and squirming!

I first read Please Let Me Out in The Ushers as well, and still clearly remember it from 10 years back. The word sociopath comes to mind with this one. This is a sick, sick, sick and twisted, twisted, twisted story! A lawyer goes to extreme measures to ensure that her boyfriend stays "put". Yikes! The Table I first read about 5 years ago as a limited edition chapbook(100 copies?) that I got off ebay for a song. Oddly, I can't for the life of me find that chapbook. I know I didn't sell it because I liked the story very much. Anyway, this one is quite frankly more disturbing than just about anything I've read. Autopsy fetishes taken to the the extreme, anyone? And no, I don't mean someone who has a fetish for performing autopsies. That in itself is creepy... read The Table and it'll jump that aforementioned creep-o-meter up ten fold.

The Blurred Room and Gut-Shot I had not previously read. Well, that's not entirely true. If you've read Lee's story ICU, which was published in the 999 anthology that was edited by Al Sarrantonio, then you've read The Blurred Room... sort of. Blurred Room was the original title of ICU, and it's more than a bit different from it. ICU is more twisted than a pretzel... The Blurred Room is even more so! Finally, Gut-Shot is a story Lee based on a real life story. The gist of that story is this: Lee was a police officer in the early 1980's and he quit to go back to school and... well, of all the luck the guy who took his place as a police officer was SHOT! Talk about scary! Anyway, this story was published way back in the day on a cd-rom titled Personal Demons and is probably now near impossible to find. Oh hell, I'm not telling you anything else about these "extreme" stories of happiness and cheer. Go buy the damn book already!

But before you do get your barf bags and splatter goggles in their upright ready positions because you never know when you might need'em! As side note I hope in another future Deadite Press Lee collection(preferably the next one) that everyone gets a taste of Stick Woman. I read that story probably 5 or 6 years ago and it is still, to this day, the most sadistic, depraved, nasty, and gruesome thing I've read, ever!!!

Savor it til the next blood-soaked gore-fest from Lee!!! It's always a welcome TREASURE finding an EDWARD LEE novel in the mailbox:)

Here's a list of the contents of Carnal Surgery(isn't that a super cool title? The artwork is a creepfest, too!)

The Seeker
Please Let Me Out
The Order of Nature
Goddess of the New Dark Age
Hands
The Table
Death, She Said
The Piece of Paper
The Blurred Room
Gut-Shot
Make A Wish

In reading Ed Lee's work, I've come to a general expectation: great gorey stories that more often than not feature some hints to philosophy. This is definitely true with Deadite's other Lee short story collection, Brain Cheese Buffet.

My issue with this one is that the stories aren't great. Plain and simple. They succeed in telling a horror story, in getting a point across. But unlike other work by this splatter king, I felt no thrill in reading these stories. The same great writing style, wasted on lackluster stories.

The only story that stuck out to me was "The Piece of Paper" which, as a title, doesn't get any more general than that (maybe my attraction to it?). It was a fun little flash piece.

All that being said, you'll probably want to give this collection a try. And I say go for it. I just figured I'd share that it didn't really blow me away like Brain Cheee Buffet or Bullet Through Your Face.

so I had not heard of this book, but the first review of get your barf bags out did it for me, I have not been disappointed, the cover reminds me alot of a modern day cover of " brain cheese buffet " the only thing that I warn you about is that there is also another book by lee out there called quest for sex, truth,and reality - this one has 2 of the stories that it contains in this one, pay me within this one is really good, but you are getting more bang for your buck with this one, thank you to the first review for it , it has been a wild ride !

› Go to Amazon.com to see all 9 reviews  3.9 out of 5 stars