Tatters: Extreme Horror

by Ash Ericmore

Harold is an old school clowner . Big in the day, they were. Standing on the sides of roads, scaring the normal folk. But it just doesn't work anymore ... not these days. It's all been watered down, and nobody is scared anymore.

But Harold wants to bring back the fear .

At least, that's what Howdy the Magnificent - the clown that has been resident in Harold's head since his school days, and one particular day where he had a silly little accident balancing on the back feet of his chair - says.

But when things go wrong in the park in the middle of the night, Howdy and Harold decide to really ... bring back the fear ... in a life changing rampage of gore soaked vengeance.

Consider this a trigger warning for everything.

Genres: Horror, Splatterpunk, Fiction, Adult

85 pages, Paperback

Published February 22, 2023

Reviews

[Lady MacDeath · Rating 5 out of 5]

Harold is an “old school” clown, who likes nothing more than jumping out of the bushes at night (in full clown gear) and scaring people.

One night, things don’t go swimmingly for him, and he is attacked. From then, Harold, along with his “friend” ‘Howdy The Magnificent’, go out to seek bloody revenge, and “bring back the fear!”

I used to be scared of clowns but I’m obsessed with the ones we meet in Ash Ericmore’s books. I really feel for Harold, who is lonely, and obviously has some serious issues, but also a decent heart.

This is a great little novella, which isn’t full on extreme, which we have come to expect from the author, but it still has some triggers, and a fare bit of gore. You also get to see into the life of a clown and can really empathise with Harold...well I could anyway!!

If you subscribe to Ash Ericmore’s Ko-Fi page, and become a top tier member (gold/silver) you will be treated to early releases, and free digital copies, as well as “behind the scenes” exclusives. Or why not, sign up to his monthly newsletter.

5 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

[Peter Topside · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5 stars. Very meh for me. Killer clowns are a horror subgenre that I take very seriously here at the Topside compound. I did not think this qualified as an extreme horror. Yeah, there were some gory scenes, but nothing substantial. Harold was a hard lead to follow, as his motivations didn’t make a whole lot of sense. The jumping around past to present with no distinctions also made things hard to follow. I think this story had good bones, but it desperately needed a good content editor to make this flow better and be a higher quality horror experience.

[Stitching Ghost · Rating 5 out of 5]

My reading was interrupted a number of time that's simply beyond human comprehension every single time I picked up this title. I want the world to know that if I ever go full evil this was where it happened, when I had to reread the same paragraph for the 15th time for the 28th time in a row.

Now that my villain origin story is out of the way. Tatters is a short, delightfully violent, and bleak tale of a clown having one heck of a day. It's dark, it's gritty, it's funny and I loved everything about it.

[Casey M · Rating 1 out of 5]

As far as extreme horror goes this was really tame. I've seen people saying it's one of the most disgusting and awful books they've ever read and I don't see it. I was bored through this book.

[Leah · Rating 1 out of 5]

If you're a reader of any decent lit, this is... lackluster. There are spelling errors, grammatical errors and a very real lack of more developed plot, characters and "atmos" as he puts it.

[Sara · Rating 1 out of 5]

This was 100% a “booktok made me do it” read.

There has been some controversy around about this book so I was curious.

I did read the entire novella but none of it was good. It was definitely gory just to be gory. This to me isn’t a horror and just a gore fest for the sake of trying to get shock value. Which to be honest wasn’t that shocking.

[Stephen Cooper · Rating 4 out of 5]

Love how British this one is. Feels like it should be read with a nice cup of tea. Always a fan of Ash's writing and really enjoyed this quick brutal story about a clown that just wants to scare people, but ultimately goes a teeny tiny bit to far. Great fun.

[Quirky Turtle · Rating 1 out of 5]

Not worth the hype

Read this off the back of some reviews that claimed this was the most shocking thing they'd read. Either I'm completely desensitized or their shock threshold was incredibly low because I found it quite boring. The characters were nothing new and could have been developed, the gore is tame if you've read the likes of American Psycho - overall underwhelming

[Lisaa27x · Rating 1 out of 5]

1 ☆

[ten thousand bees · Rating 3 out of 5]

this was ... fine? as someone who reads extreme horror/splatterpunk quite a bit, i thought the actual violence going on in here was kind of mid, but i mean. certainly nothing to take lightly. if you want to try reading a splatterpunk book, try this. if you don't like gore and violence and general gross shit that's got excel spreadsheets of trigger warnings... don't.

[CarlysGrowingTBR · Rating 3 out of 5]

I honestly picked this up based on a negative review, claiming it was way too gory and just plain disgusting. It's clear that the person who wrote that had never read extreme horror before.

Tatters follows Harold, who is an old-school clowner. But honestly, that profession is extremely outdated and so is Harold. Harold suffered a traumatic brain injury as a child, which resulted in him having an alter ego, or an invisible friend, that only he can talk to and see. This character is named howdy, the clown. And howdy wants Harold to bring back the fear. Bring back the old school horror that accompanies the old school clowners. This sets Harold off on a killing spree of disastrous proportions. This book definitely has body horror, animal, death, gore, dismemberment, etc. I found this to be an extremely interesting and fun book, but it was definitely middle of the road. It was definitely not as bad as others I've read, but it was still compelling enough that I enjoyed my Read. I would say this is a very good entry to extreme horror because it is a quick read, and it covers a lot of the bases of extreme horror in general.

[Crystal Cook · Rating 5 out of 5]

More bloody, clown fun from Epicmore! This time we get to see more into the man behind the big red nose. A fast paced, fun read, enjoy!

[Nelli Lakatos · Rating 2 out of 5]

I just want to start my review by saying that clown horror is my absolute favorite so my expectations were high going into this novella. I was a little disappointed by this one unfortunately, as a horror lover I wanted more gore and brutality since this was technically an extreme horror I wished for more extremity. I mean there were definitely some gory scenes and there was one with killing an animal so be aware of that going into the story.

But overall I expected more, I found this an average read but not one that I will remember or ponder on.

[Optimisticbooknerd · Rating 3 out of 5]

3 ⭐️

Such a weird little book. however the extremeness was good, I don't have thoughts but clowns freak me out soooo lmao

[Brandy Brusseau · Rating 5 out of 5]

Clowns! I hate clowns but love reading stories about them! Well-written and fast paced. Another short but fun read from Ash.

[Noelia · Rating 3 out of 5]

una lectura suuuper rápida y entretenida y tampoco es tan gore como lo pinta la gente tiene sus descripciones gráficas pero tampoco es para sorprenderse y en general el prota muy bueno literalmente fighting his demons y solo daña a la gente que le ha hecho daño y no quiere causar mal a nadie más muy bueno me da mucha pena

[Charlotte Wood · Rating 5 out of 5]

poor tatters

Even though it says it’s extreme horror this wasn’t that bad. So give it a go if you are new to the genre. Also if you don’t like extreme horror, still read it and then give Mr Ericmore a bad review because it “wasn’t your thing” then grow up. And go and read Care Bears or something.

[Phyllica · Rating 4 out of 5]

CLOWNS!!! I love clowns.
I love the horror and the extreme horror genre, so no surprise I enjoyed this dark and twisted novella. Since this book was so short, I felt it could have even been pushed further. I did however enjoy the underlying aspect of seeing another entity and the mental anguish Harold is going through.
Another great horror read!

[Daniel Bayer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow

This book was exciting. Like always, Ash delivered something I won't soon forget. It had everything I love; clowns, laughs, and lots of blood and death. The twist at the end was definitely chefs kiss, and I did not see it coming.

[Ashley Hana · Rating 2 out of 5]

I feel like this had so much potential, but it was fairly boring. I also hated the animal abuse (didn't let this influence my rating though, as this is just too much for me personally). But as always, the writing style was still great!

[Rachel · Rating 4 out of 5]

*I'm not going to give you the 'what this book is about' blurb - you can read that elsewhere.

1. Ash and his creepy clowns 🖤. This clown is quite different than those in the Carnie trilogy, however.
2. The twist! I did not see that coming.
3. I love Ash's writing; it's always such great fun, full of dark humor and good old-fashioned gore. His novellas tend to be a bit more 'surface' in writing. Now, don't get me wrong, I love them, but there's not always a deep meaning behind them; they're quick, and they're brutal. His novels are different though, the man (skeleton?) can craft a heck of an engaging plot. In this novella, there was a vein of that serious/deeper meaning that we see in his novels, and I am here👏for👏it👏. I can't say much more without giving things away. Honestly, novel or novella Ash is an author you can't go wrong with!

[The_Macabre_Reader · Rating 3 out of 5]

🤡 🎈🩸Book Review 🩸🎈🤡

Summary: Harold misses the good ol' days when people would run screaming at a clown smiling from the bushes. With the help of his buddy Howdy the Magnificent, maybe it's time to bring back the fear...

Thoughts: I went into this novella completely blind. I saw a booktok reviewer slamming it for being "totally f*cked up and beyond disgusting". Naturally I downloaded it right away.
It was decent, it definitely qualifies as splatter-punk and is a quick fun read. Was it the most disturbing book I've read? No. I wanted a little more disturbance lol but over all a good little read.

Would I recommend it? Yes, I would actually (coming from someone who hates clowns). HOWEVER, check your triggers ⚠️. There is graphic content, if you're not familiar with splatter-punk then maybe skip this one 😅

[Holly Horror · Rating 4 out of 5]

Clown revenge

Poor Harold. He spends his nights all dressed up in his clown costume, standing in the shadows of a park to scare those who wander by at night. But it's not the same anymore. No, people just don't fear clowns like they used to. After an altercation in the park with some punks, Howdy, a clown living inside Harolds head, urges Harold to "bring back the fear," so he does just that.
Suited up in his clown costume, Harold, or Tatters as he's now named himself, along with Howdy, set off on their mission to bring back the fear people once had of clowns, leaving lots violence and blood in their wake.
Tatters was a quick, gory, and comical story easily read in a couple of hours.

[Freya Gordon · Rating 3 out of 5]

I fell for the marketing campaign! I saw the tiktoks about how it was so disgusting that they couldn't recommend it to anyone, I saw the over dramatic guy saying to burn it, that even Amazon didn't want it back etc etc etc and I was like 'what are they talking about?' so I went to get it. It's free on kindle unlimited anyway and only 80 pages. And I ended up reading a book where a killer clown beats someone to death with a dogs corpse and being like 'that's not so bad'.

It's actually a short, charmingly british, middlingly brutal story about a hallucinating clown hunting down and murdering those who wronged him.

[Oliver Saul Osborne · Rating 3 out of 5]

I feel the title is misleading. It claims to be extreme horror, and yet it felt neither extreme nor horrifying. That being said, the premise has a lot of potential and I can see it being expanded into something truly grotesque and horrifying. The ending is a little jarring due to a sense of being rushed, however with some refinement it could be smoother and lead into a "oh no here we go" type of soft cliffhanger that may or may not require a second installment. A few grammatical and spelling errors throughout, but nothing outrageous. All in all this feels like a second or third draft to a truly great story.

I encourage the author to keep writing and bring us more of their imagination!

[Erica Summers · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love Ash Ericmore's humorous horror style so much. I find myself laughing in the midst of a really depraved scene and I just love that. Its a delicate blend and I think Ash walks that fine line perfectly. Tatters is such a fun extreme tale of a clown who just wants to make people fear clowns like they once did. No one takes this clown (named Tatters after an unfortunate incident with a dog) seriously, but they certainly should because Tatters only has one thing on his mind: rekindling the flames of fear in suburbia.

[D.H. Jonathan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Extreme

I saw a video on TikTok of a guy talking about how disgusting this story was and that no one should read it. And then two responses to that video, both by women, defending it as a great example of “extreme horror” (which is stated on the cover of the book). So I decided to see for myself seeing as how this was on Kindle Unlimited and would cost me anything.

Tatters was a deep examination into loneliness and mental/emotional disorders. And it was graphic but not as extreme as I was expecting.

[Car ☕️ · Rating 1 out of 5]

Looks as if nobody proofread the book at all. The author tried hard to tie in humor, but it just did not work for it. The book also broadcasts “extreme horror,” but everything was very overused and predictable. There was nothing disturbing about the images being described.

I made this purchase based off of a FB group recommending it and I wish I would’ve read the reviews closer. It was a quick read, — only 80-ish pages, — I just wouldn’t have spent my money on it.

[Glance Ghoulish · Rating 3 out of 5]

Harold and Howdy two clowns who set out on a revenge killing spree after they are attacked in the park.
Their goal: to bring back the fear surrounding Clowns.

I love clowns, so any clown book is a good time for me.
The kills in this were fun and bloody and the revenge was sweet.
However I wish it had continued to focus on the whole 'bringing back the fear' point, but that died out real quick. Also The character descriptions were lacking and i just was not at all satisfied by the ending.

[Clariece · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book but it’s not extreme unless your scared of clowns I guess. The writing I enjoyed I expected the ending from the beginning.
Overall, I think it would be a great Halloween read if your looking for something not ridiculous when it comes to the extreme horror genre, so I give 3 stars over all.