Customer Reviews

Ambrosial Flesh

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

As I said in the title, this book is evil. I don't mean evil in the sense of causing great harm or should be banned. I mean evil in the sense that reading it causes me great moral shivers. There's just something WRONG about what this book shows.

I like horror novels, and have always felt myself relatively immune to the "grossout" or "disgust" factor. That is no longer the case. This book has shown to me, once and for all, that there are limits to what my mind can accept as understandable and tolerable.

Cannibalism in and of itself has never bothered me. I've read about the "Alive" soccer team and the Donner Party plenty of times. I'm even a great fan of Jonathan Swift's "A Modest Proposal." But presented as it is in this novel, I shudder and turn away.

And yet, I read the whole thing. Its prose is a bit weak at times and this is one of those "bigger than necessary typefont so we can inflate the page count" books that annoy me, but it does move forward at a rapid rate. Is it believable? NO, and why would anyone ask that of a horror novel? Is it contrived in its plot? Sure, but this is genre fiction we're talking about here. Contrived plots and stock characters are part of the appeal. I gave this book 3 stars because while I found myself disgusted by the content, that's what horror novels are supposed to do. This novel, while not especially well written, helped me discover a limitation in my thinking, and a taboo that I hadn't quite known was there. It has made me think, and good books do that.

This book had neither plot nor any characters that you could actually feel for or care about. You are constantly waiting for the "purpose" or the plot to thicken, wonder where are we going here? The "speech" and thought patterns of the characters are very juvenile. The Catholic background of the main character does not even relate to the nature of this book. Flesh eating habits did not gross me out but made me wonder why I even picked up a book with this title. Life is too short to waste on bad books...almost anything would be better.

I agree with the previous reviewer. This is an evil book. Not that the plot amounts to anything. And I don't really have anything against gore myself. From a literary view, the book is weak - having a wife-killer... errr... "wife-eater" to be more exact, as a Raskolnikov-like character who later shows moments of real kindness (possible redemption?) just doesn't work. This book permeates an evil "feel" - maybe because of the presence of a very real devil in it.

This is a very unique, disturbing, and entertaining novel. It's the story of Jonathan both as a boy and a man and his dark fascination and perversion of flesh eating. For most of his early life, he would taste and eat his own flesh, but as he grows older he begins to have the desire to eat other people's flesh as well.

If you are squeamish and are easily offended, then this book is defiantly not for you. Many parts of the story are gory, gruesome, and downright morbid. However, if you keep the descriptive accounts in perspective, you'll find a very entertaining novel about a dark fetish and perversion towards cannibalism. The storyline stretches the limits of what is considered acceptable horror; almost a contradiction of terms. You may hate this book or love it but you will not be neutral to it. If horror and gore is what you're looking for, you're going to find it in this book.

As a horror fan I was astounded that this book could be so bad. The plot about a man driven to eat human flesh could have been written as an excellent serial killer novel in which the man begins tasting and then goes too far and actually kills his prey. How wrong this one turned. Part II of this book is truly boring. Instead of this man's obsession turning him into a serial killer, the plot turns strange and he begins waging war against the devil, humanized as a man named Yakut who claims the man as his son (the Antichrist). The rest of the book takes place in the sewer and the darkness- rats, baby eating, and burning flesh couldn't be more creepy. In a word, this book [is bad]!

I became a fan of Mary Ann Mitchell's, when I read her book "Sips of Blood."--Immediately, I was hooked!
So, I sought out her first novel: "Drawn to the Grave"...Again, EXCELLENT...
Then came the second book in her vampire series, that began with "Sips of Blood"--"Quenched"...I couldn't WAIT for the next book..
Then--DISASTER!: "Ambrosial Flesh"
It isn't so much that the book is 'bad', it just does not live up to the standard set by her other books.
It starts out promising..then takes a turn for the BORING, during the second half.
I am HAPPY to report, however, that here latest book, "Cathedral of the Vampires", which is the third book in her vampire series is EXCELLENT!!
So, if you did not like this, particular, book--PLEASE, give her other ones a try! :)

Despite what the other reviews have said, this book is not THAT gross. If you can bear to read about cannibalism, there's nothing new here.

As a horror book, it is severely lacking. Though it seems to be a philosophical-theological view of cannibalism at first, it quickly descends into a pseudo-Faustian thing, and later a weak story about the Antichrist. It basically gets more predictable and less entertaining with each new chapter.

As a piece of writing in general, there's only one word for it - boring. The prose is lackluster, and the dialogue is extremely stilted. There have only been one or two books in my life that I have been unable to finish (since they were so bad) - this came very, very close to being the third.

That's right, gentle reader. Not only do I want a refund but I want to regain the hours of my life that I lost reading this insipid, mediocre book. This is probably the worst book I have ever read (and I've read a lot).

Oh, where to begin.... The slow begining? The one-dimensional characters? The predictable plot? The disappointing ending? The author tried to compensate her poor writing with gratuitous gore and failed miserably. I could go on and on. If you really want to read the book, I suggest you read the "teaser" at the beginning. It's the only thing worth reading.

But not so bad that you can't read it. It's entertaining in its own right, the story interesting enough to keep you reading. Definitely has a high "blech" factor. Not at all for the squeamish. Quality of writing is fair enough. I've read far worse, that's for certain.

Don't read this book if you dislike gruesome horror. But if you have a taste for cannibalism and gross-out pick this up. It suprises me the bad reviews that this book has recieved because it is too repulsive-the book is clearly explained on the cover. Do you also rent porn films and complain there is too much sex? Jonathan develops a fetish for eating human flesh and the author excels at the creepy connection to the Catholic rite of communion. As he develops into an adult cannibal killer he meets what may be a demon who wants Jonathan to worship him. The later portion of the book seems less thoroughly drawn than the beginning, but at least the author is able to take the reader to places that they have never been before. Lunchtime!