Well, it turns out that everything being said about Splatterpunk Award-nominee Janine Pipe’s debut is bloody well true, with an emphasis on the ‘bloody’.
Right from the Books of Blood-esque opening framing device, it’s starkly evident that Janine writes with an economy of prose that comes across both as effortless and elegant. When you read as much horror as I do, you come to recognise an author who’s gorged upon everything the genre has to offer, who has digested the very finest expelled-viscera-infused gourmets that horror has burst forth. You come to recognise these authors, but you also come to recognise those who simultaneously and seamlessly blend into their writings both tribute and originality, innovation and acknowledgement of the shoulders on which they stand.
Janine Pipe is such an author.
From her tribute-hybrid of Nevill’s The Ritual and The Blair Witch Project (my all-time favourite horror), to further creature features that bask in the glory of both psychological and gore-infused horror, to just-as-horrifying human-based traumas, there is a consistency of tone throughout Twisted: Tainted Tales that results in a work that is at once highly cohesive as a whole, rip-roaringly unpredictable, and – as previously stated – bloody bloody.
So what exactly is everyone saying about Janine’s debut with which I so passionately concur? What is this general consensus to which I refer? What the fuck’s the deal with this weird, 80s-inspired splatterpunk gore-em-up?
It matters not.
Go forth. Gorge upon its horrors just as Pipe has seemingly guzzled up the very best the horror genre has to offer. Go on, indulge upon her nightmares, these amalgamations of her heroes, manipulated like clay into something both truly original and utterly disgusting.
Go forth, and discover that nothing anyone can say about Twisted: Tainted Tales matters but a jot, for you will have discovered that which matters most:
True horror.
-GG