What do you think?
Rate this book
Tentacle Death Trip
Five drivers. One race. Millions of tentacles.
It's the year 2025 in the neon-colored nuclear wasteland that was once the United States of America. The remaining inhabitants are at the mercy of mutants, freaks, marauders, gangs, and the last millionaire in the country, the mysterious Mr. Silver. Now, five drivers must compete in a life-or-death race that will determine the fate of the planet. There's Samson, a lone wolf who buried his life in racing after he lost his wife and son. Gabby Peppermint, a cold-hearted bitch with a huge pink sledgehammer and an unrivaled thirst for blood. Junko, a cross-dressing ex-sex slave in a 1987 Honda Civic. Mama Hell, a God-fearing Christian who wears a shawl made of tattooed human skin. And Drac, a glass-skulled madman who drives a tentacled car possessing eldritch powers.
Something timeless and beautiful has risen off the Eastern Seaboard, the ancient city of R'lyeh and these five racers have been called together for the most epic race in history. Tearing through a post-apocalyptic New Jersey landscape rife with mind-bending terrors, Drac, Samson, Gabby, Junko and Mama Hell will encounter things far more dangerous than each other. A tooth-tornado, nuclear mutants, cannibal Christians, a gargantuan ejaculating marionette, a friendly crab dealer, and the great city itself: the city of R'lyeh, either their doom or their salvation.
It's the year 2025 in the neon-colored nuclear wasteland that was once the United States of America. The remaining inhabitants are at the mercy of mutants, freaks, marauders, gangs, and the last millionaire in the country, the mysterious Mr. Silver. Now, five drivers must compete in a life-or-death race that will determine the fate of the planet. There's Samson, a lone wolf who buried his life in racing after he lost his wife and son. Gabby Peppermint, a cold-hearted bitch with a huge pink sledgehammer and an unrivaled thirst for blood. Junko, a cross-dressing ex-sex slave in a 1987 Honda Civic. Mama Hell, a God-fearing Christian who wears a shawl made of tattooed human skin. And Drac, a glass-skulled madman who drives a tentacled car possessing eldritch powers.
Something timeless and beautiful has risen off the Eastern Seaboard, the ancient city of R'lyeh and these five racers have been called together for the most epic race in history. Tearing through a post-apocalyptic New Jersey landscape rife with mind-bending terrors, Drac, Samson, Gabby, Junko and Mama Hell will encounter things far more dangerous than each other. A tooth-tornado, nuclear mutants, cannibal Christians, a gargantuan ejaculating marionette, a friendly crab dealer, and the great city itself: the city of R'lyeh, either their doom or their salvation.
224 pages, ebook
First published April 9, 2012
7 people are currently reading
393 people want to read
About the author
Jordan Krall
102 books260 followersBooks include:
TENTACLE DEATH TRIP
FISTFUL OF FEET
MOTEL MAN
KING SCRATCH
BEYOND THE VALLEY OF THE APOCALYPSE DONKEYS
PIECEMEAL JUNE
SQUID PULP BLUES
NEWLY SHAVEN SAINT
UNFRUITFUL WORKS
PRELUDE TO SPACE RAPE!
SQUID KILLS
THE PISTOL BURPS
ALL POEMS MUST DIE
FALSE MAGIC KINGDOM
BAD ALCHEMY
THE GOG AND MAGOG BUSINESS
YOUR CITIES, YOUR TOMBS
TENTACLE DEATH TRIP
FISTFUL OF FEET
MOTEL MAN
KING SCRATCH
BEYOND THE VALLEY OF THE APOCALYPSE DONKEYS
PIECEMEAL JUNE
SQUID PULP BLUES
NEWLY SHAVEN SAINT
UNFRUITFUL WORKS
PRELUDE TO SPACE RAPE!
SQUID KILLS
THE PISTOL BURPS
ALL POEMS MUST DIE
FALSE MAGIC KINGDOM
BAD ALCHEMY
THE GOG AND MAGOG BUSINESS
YOUR CITIES, YOUR TOMBS
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews
April 24, 2012
2025 - The last millionaire in the country recruits five of the best race drivers to compete in a deadly race across New Jersey with the fate of the world hanging in the balance. The prize: the winner will be allowed to live in the recently risen city of R'lyeh for the rest of his days...
I say this every time but this may be my favorite Jordan Krall book yet. While a Cthulhu-laden homage to Deathrace 2000 at first glance, Tentacle Death Trip rises above its roots and delivers one hell of a ride.
Krall crafts a larger cast of characters than he normally works with and does it well. You have Samson, the loner with a tragic past, Junko, the cross-dressing former sex slave, Gabby, the cold hearted mall girl, Mamma Hell, the Christian with a shawl of human skin, and Drac, the man with the tentacled car. All of the racers have distinct personalities and Krall does a great job playing them off of each other.
The denizens of the post-nuclear wasteland of New Jersey are an interesting menagerie. You get a tornado of human teeth, mutants, cannibals, a giant marionette, and assorted other beasties.
Another thing I liked was the way Jordan Krall was able to incorporate flashbacks into the narrative without stopping the momentum of the story.
The only bad marks I can give this book are because of the ending, but that's a matter of taste. I shouldn't have expected it end much differently considering R'lyeh was the prize.
Four easy stars. Jordan Krall is an author to watch!
I say this every time but this may be my favorite Jordan Krall book yet. While a Cthulhu-laden homage to Deathrace 2000 at first glance, Tentacle Death Trip rises above its roots and delivers one hell of a ride.
Krall crafts a larger cast of characters than he normally works with and does it well. You have Samson, the loner with a tragic past, Junko, the cross-dressing former sex slave, Gabby, the cold hearted mall girl, Mamma Hell, the Christian with a shawl of human skin, and Drac, the man with the tentacled car. All of the racers have distinct personalities and Krall does a great job playing them off of each other.
The denizens of the post-nuclear wasteland of New Jersey are an interesting menagerie. You get a tornado of human teeth, mutants, cannibals, a giant marionette, and assorted other beasties.
Another thing I liked was the way Jordan Krall was able to incorporate flashbacks into the narrative without stopping the momentum of the story.
The only bad marks I can give this book are because of the ending, but that's a matter of taste. I shouldn't have expected it end much differently considering R'lyeh was the prize.
Four easy stars. Jordan Krall is an author to watch!
November 11, 2016
Cannonball Run meets Cthulhu.
Warning, this book contains explicit language, graphic violence, sexual situations, a guy with a glass head, Lovecraftian menaces from beyond angled infinity, a sweet sixteen party, Mama Hell, skinning people alive, white slavery, fecal flowers, crab faced triangles, man merging with machine, man merging with crab, the Abgrund Aschaum, religious cults who worship engines, nuclear wasteland mutants whose flesh makes for good food and drugs, chambers made of lizard skin, R'lyeh, tornados made of teeth and more awesomeness. Why are you still reading this? Jordan succeeds at melding Lovecraft's conception of the unknown with the uncompromising sleaze of the 70's, only it's set in the future where everything has been wiped out, yet we carry on with no hope or mercy in sight.
The final chapters are such a tour de force of cosmic monstrosities and locales that you'll think you're sightseeing at a zoo in the architecture of infinity.
P.S. I really wish Krall would get back to writing masterpieces like this instead of the plotless pamphlets he's been writing the last few years. How did that happen!?
Warning, this book contains explicit language, graphic violence, sexual situations, a guy with a glass head, Lovecraftian menaces from beyond angled infinity, a sweet sixteen party, Mama Hell, skinning people alive, white slavery, fecal flowers, crab faced triangles, man merging with machine, man merging with crab, the Abgrund Aschaum, religious cults who worship engines, nuclear wasteland mutants whose flesh makes for good food and drugs, chambers made of lizard skin, R'lyeh, tornados made of teeth and more awesomeness. Why are you still reading this? Jordan succeeds at melding Lovecraft's conception of the unknown with the uncompromising sleaze of the 70's, only it's set in the future where everything has been wiped out, yet we carry on with no hope or mercy in sight.
The final chapters are such a tour de force of cosmic monstrosities and locales that you'll think you're sightseeing at a zoo in the architecture of infinity.
P.S. I really wish Krall would get back to writing masterpieces like this instead of the plotless pamphlets he's been writing the last few years. How did that happen!?
April 14, 2012
Jordan Krall's TENTACLE DEATH TRIP is the literary equivalent to someone stomping your head against a curb and breaking all your teeth out. Krall proves himself to be bizarro's king of visual nightmares. Tomato Joe, motherf***er. You need this.
April 17, 2012
TENTACLE DEATH TRIP is Jordan Krall’s personal homage to every B-movie out there about a post-apocalyptic future with cars and crazy drivers or more notably, DEATH RACE 2000. Here’s the ultra quick synopsis: “five drivers... one race… [and] millions of tentacles.” Or… Let’s just go ahead and make a few comparisons here: TENTACLE DEATH TRIP is TWISED METAL meets MAD MAX meets DEATH RACE 2000 (duh) meets CALL OF CTHULU meets HEAVY METAL meets FALLOUT meets everything post-apocalyptic ever meets every the-world-has-gone-to-shit scenario. And here’s the strange thing: Krall manages to take an already bizarre and familiar plot (come on, seriously: a death race involving a bunch of weirdos driving souped-up cars in the future? That’s strange…) and make it interesting, in a totally unique Krall-way. In TENTACLE DEATH TRIP, it’s the year 2025 and some sort of apocalypse happened—this is all revealed in some sort of a paragraph-long intro—fine. Anymore back story and things would start to become tedious.
TENTACLE DEATH TRIP also isn’t the most original of stories—but it doesn’t try to be—and what makes it more interesting are the five rather exceptional racers: Samson, the mysterious self-vindicating family man driving a custom built Ligotti Turbo Z-23; Junko, the Japanese transvestite sex slave with a unique sense of pride and an appetite for his/her/ze(?) own hair driving the souped-up 1987 Honda Civic Si; Gabby Peppermint, the blond psycho with a cellphone and pink sledgehammer driving the Camaro; Mama Hell, the right-wing religious zealot wearing a shawl made of flesh covered in red tattoos driving a souped-up minivan and Drac Dunwich (truly the most bizarre of them all) the man from the Bronx with a skull made of glass and gasoline and an uncanny sense of honor driving the convertible with tentacles (yep, that’s him on the cover).
But don’t take any of this too seriously—as a lot is left unexplained, and for good reason too. It’s almost like the Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez collaboration that ultimately became the grindhouse-fest that was PLANET TERROR and DEATH PROOF. And in a similar vein, Jordan Krall goes all out here with TENTACLE DEATH TRIP and writes a B-movie/grindhouse-worthy tale about a death race in a post-apocalyptic future.
The prose in TENTACLE DEATH TRIP is matter-of-fact and very to-the-point and anything but ambivalent and sort of far from being poetic; rather, it’s something akin to conversational story-telling, almost like an oral narrative. And in the strange and fascinating world that is TENTACLE DEATH TRIP, Krall doesn’t restrict himself to the use of descriptors for the surroundings; rather, he forces the racers to crash and skid into just about anything that isn’t nailed to the ground—in true DEATH RACE 2000 fashion.
All bizarro-ness aside though, the most interesting thing about TENTACLE DEATH TRIP—really—are the five racers and here, I’m not even talking about their personalities or their cars or their special quirks. It’s remarkable, really, how Krall manages to fuse five fascinating and out-of-the-ordinary origin stories for reach of these characters within the story of TENTACL DEATH TRIP. And yes, while the world had still completely gone to shit, Krall attempts to give us these characters who (for some reason or another) think they are normal in the most non-normal of ways. And ultimately—and this became more obvious toward the end of the story—the overall story isn’t supposed to be much more than something fun and liberating—like some sort of escape—and honestly, TENTACLE DEATH TRIP doesn’t try to be something it isn’t. This isn’t something deep or intellectual or philosophical, and it isn’t trying to offer some deep message about life or the world we live in right now. It’s just very good mindless fun.
Krall’s imagination runs wild in TENTACLE DEATH TRIP as you’ll quickly find out about things like: the Scrutumi Goliath and Hoghead Heaven and the tornado made of teeth and the Gears and Tomato Joe and Enzo and Mr. Silver and Hell’s Fish Market and water coffins and Lee Basatan and Bowsman and the bikers (who are also Tomato Joe’s men) and Carol and Jack and Nate and Jane Mary and a handful of midgets and bare-chested men in torn denim jeans and the characters of COP and SLAVE and mushroom cigarettes (otherwise known as tcho) and the year 2025 and about the tentacles coming out from under Drac Dunwich’s car and dried horseshoe crab and shoe-leather moonshine and the Zone of Dead Roads and the Zoners and Lord Bing Bong and Chaps and Ryan and Mario and Paulo and the nuclear holocaust of 2015 and fabric that melds to your body and all the tentacle sex and Cobra Canfield and hot meat-water and Lee Basatan’s crab and Simon Revair and the Church of the Starry Engines and the Dunwich clan and scratch houses and Xnoybis IV and a spatilomancer and a vacuum-woman and Atlantic City and Sabbath and R’lyeh and Dogunville and LeRoux and pistols made of flesh and bone and Atlantis and old Tom Clancy novels and the spectators (or audience, as some like to call them) and Marsh and Trash and Ogre and Goehrig’s and Mayo and Ingmar and Savage Freddie.
And yes, Krall’s bizarro trademarks are still present in TENTACLE DEATH TRIP, there’s: squid, crab, perspiration of some kind, feet, midgets, phalluses, hallucinogenic drugs and hallucinogenic dreams, ultra-violence, internal monologues, areolas, pancake references, middle fingers, a wooden donkey and then a cartoon donkey, ancient texts and tomes, and public defecation. It’s like a lexicon for everything Krall, and then some more! And, in classic Krall fashion, the story comes complete with an intro, a prologue and then an epilogue to seal everything off.
Unfortunately, with everything great, there are also some not-so-great moments. For instance, a few passages leave a lot to be desired. There were bits where I honestly wanted to know more about what was happening. Like, why isn’t there more about Hell’s Fish Market or the water coffins, for instance? And Lee Basatan, one of the more interesting side-characters, I thought, why isn’t there more of him? And then the cannibalistic Christians? All of these things were mentioned in passing which would be fine but with texts like TENTACLE DEATH TRIP, there is always just too much stuff going on and it would be impossible to cover everything, which is why I understand Krall when certain things are only mentioned in passing but, since there is always the need to explain certain things, like how and why everything is the way it is and who these people are—which Krall does fairly well—there were moments when the exposition felt a bit hurried and truthfully, a little tacky. Like, certain things seemed to happen just because they were happening…For no apparent reason—with no real explanation—and while this can be done fairly well and can seem believable in certain cases (especially in a universe like that of TENTACLE DEATH TRIP,) a handful of sections feel forced and finally, read like wasted potential, really. Tons of great ideas that, in theory, sound awesome when put into a synopsis but then—that’s it—it’s all really great when summarized and what we’re missing from the text is the depth and detail necessary to make it all seem more authentic and really, interesting—so, TENTACLE DEATH TRIP comes with a few moments of not-so-great execution.
Aside from all that TENTACLE DEATH TRIP is an excellent what-if story about a future that doesn’t seem too far off (2025) and all the characters and situations and cars make for a truly wonderful read. I remember Krall talking about TENTACLE DEATH TRIP back in 2009/2010 and after reading the synopsis, I was immediately hooked: DEATH RACE 2000 with tentacles. And I can honestly say that after having read the book (in a single sitting, which I very rarely do) you won’t regret reading TENTACLE DEATH TRIP. TENTACLE DEATH TRIP is the feel-good spring-time bizarro post-apocalyptic blockbuster about cars and tentacles you’ve been waiting for all year.
TENTACLE DEATH TRIP also isn’t the most original of stories—but it doesn’t try to be—and what makes it more interesting are the five rather exceptional racers: Samson, the mysterious self-vindicating family man driving a custom built Ligotti Turbo Z-23; Junko, the Japanese transvestite sex slave with a unique sense of pride and an appetite for his/her/ze(?) own hair driving the souped-up 1987 Honda Civic Si; Gabby Peppermint, the blond psycho with a cellphone and pink sledgehammer driving the Camaro; Mama Hell, the right-wing religious zealot wearing a shawl made of flesh covered in red tattoos driving a souped-up minivan and Drac Dunwich (truly the most bizarre of them all) the man from the Bronx with a skull made of glass and gasoline and an uncanny sense of honor driving the convertible with tentacles (yep, that’s him on the cover).
But don’t take any of this too seriously—as a lot is left unexplained, and for good reason too. It’s almost like the Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez collaboration that ultimately became the grindhouse-fest that was PLANET TERROR and DEATH PROOF. And in a similar vein, Jordan Krall goes all out here with TENTACLE DEATH TRIP and writes a B-movie/grindhouse-worthy tale about a death race in a post-apocalyptic future.
The prose in TENTACLE DEATH TRIP is matter-of-fact and very to-the-point and anything but ambivalent and sort of far from being poetic; rather, it’s something akin to conversational story-telling, almost like an oral narrative. And in the strange and fascinating world that is TENTACLE DEATH TRIP, Krall doesn’t restrict himself to the use of descriptors for the surroundings; rather, he forces the racers to crash and skid into just about anything that isn’t nailed to the ground—in true DEATH RACE 2000 fashion.
All bizarro-ness aside though, the most interesting thing about TENTACLE DEATH TRIP—really—are the five racers and here, I’m not even talking about their personalities or their cars or their special quirks. It’s remarkable, really, how Krall manages to fuse five fascinating and out-of-the-ordinary origin stories for reach of these characters within the story of TENTACL DEATH TRIP. And yes, while the world had still completely gone to shit, Krall attempts to give us these characters who (for some reason or another) think they are normal in the most non-normal of ways. And ultimately—and this became more obvious toward the end of the story—the overall story isn’t supposed to be much more than something fun and liberating—like some sort of escape—and honestly, TENTACLE DEATH TRIP doesn’t try to be something it isn’t. This isn’t something deep or intellectual or philosophical, and it isn’t trying to offer some deep message about life or the world we live in right now. It’s just very good mindless fun.
Krall’s imagination runs wild in TENTACLE DEATH TRIP as you’ll quickly find out about things like: the Scrutumi Goliath and Hoghead Heaven and the tornado made of teeth and the Gears and Tomato Joe and Enzo and Mr. Silver and Hell’s Fish Market and water coffins and Lee Basatan and Bowsman and the bikers (who are also Tomato Joe’s men) and Carol and Jack and Nate and Jane Mary and a handful of midgets and bare-chested men in torn denim jeans and the characters of COP and SLAVE and mushroom cigarettes (otherwise known as tcho) and the year 2025 and about the tentacles coming out from under Drac Dunwich’s car and dried horseshoe crab and shoe-leather moonshine and the Zone of Dead Roads and the Zoners and Lord Bing Bong and Chaps and Ryan and Mario and Paulo and the nuclear holocaust of 2015 and fabric that melds to your body and all the tentacle sex and Cobra Canfield and hot meat-water and Lee Basatan’s crab and Simon Revair and the Church of the Starry Engines and the Dunwich clan and scratch houses and Xnoybis IV and a spatilomancer and a vacuum-woman and Atlantic City and Sabbath and R’lyeh and Dogunville and LeRoux and pistols made of flesh and bone and Atlantis and old Tom Clancy novels and the spectators (or audience, as some like to call them) and Marsh and Trash and Ogre and Goehrig’s and Mayo and Ingmar and Savage Freddie.
And yes, Krall’s bizarro trademarks are still present in TENTACLE DEATH TRIP, there’s: squid, crab, perspiration of some kind, feet, midgets, phalluses, hallucinogenic drugs and hallucinogenic dreams, ultra-violence, internal monologues, areolas, pancake references, middle fingers, a wooden donkey and then a cartoon donkey, ancient texts and tomes, and public defecation. It’s like a lexicon for everything Krall, and then some more! And, in classic Krall fashion, the story comes complete with an intro, a prologue and then an epilogue to seal everything off.
Unfortunately, with everything great, there are also some not-so-great moments. For instance, a few passages leave a lot to be desired. There were bits where I honestly wanted to know more about what was happening. Like, why isn’t there more about Hell’s Fish Market or the water coffins, for instance? And Lee Basatan, one of the more interesting side-characters, I thought, why isn’t there more of him? And then the cannibalistic Christians? All of these things were mentioned in passing which would be fine but with texts like TENTACLE DEATH TRIP, there is always just too much stuff going on and it would be impossible to cover everything, which is why I understand Krall when certain things are only mentioned in passing but, since there is always the need to explain certain things, like how and why everything is the way it is and who these people are—which Krall does fairly well—there were moments when the exposition felt a bit hurried and truthfully, a little tacky. Like, certain things seemed to happen just because they were happening…For no apparent reason—with no real explanation—and while this can be done fairly well and can seem believable in certain cases (especially in a universe like that of TENTACLE DEATH TRIP,) a handful of sections feel forced and finally, read like wasted potential, really. Tons of great ideas that, in theory, sound awesome when put into a synopsis but then—that’s it—it’s all really great when summarized and what we’re missing from the text is the depth and detail necessary to make it all seem more authentic and really, interesting—so, TENTACLE DEATH TRIP comes with a few moments of not-so-great execution.
Aside from all that TENTACLE DEATH TRIP is an excellent what-if story about a future that doesn’t seem too far off (2025) and all the characters and situations and cars make for a truly wonderful read. I remember Krall talking about TENTACLE DEATH TRIP back in 2009/2010 and after reading the synopsis, I was immediately hooked: DEATH RACE 2000 with tentacles. And I can honestly say that after having read the book (in a single sitting, which I very rarely do) you won’t regret reading TENTACLE DEATH TRIP. TENTACLE DEATH TRIP is the feel-good spring-time bizarro post-apocalyptic blockbuster about cars and tentacles you’ve been waiting for all year.
July 20, 2019
I happened across this book almost by accident in our local public library, and thought the combination of Lovecraft mythos elements and a post-apocalyptic future rather interesting. However, it ended up sitting on a shelf for quite some time, until our library changed its renewal policy, so I decided to just get it read so I could get it back to the library.
Some years ago, I recall Ian Sales (editor of the hard-sf anthology Rocket Science, in which I have a story) blogging a list of ten or twelve tropes he really, really wanted to stop seeing in fiction. Among them was rape as a quick and easy character motivator, and people in post-apocalyptic futures behaving in gratuitously nasty ways to one another. Having read this book, I can completely see why he'd argue for the disappearance of those tropes with all possible speed.
I don't consider myself overly squeamish -- as a historian I've read many accounts of the Holocaust, the Holodomor, and the other atrocities that made the past century run red with blood. But that's research, work, not something one does for entertainment -- and even then it is easy to become numbed to the horrors, for even primary-source accounts to become just another interchangeable SS or NKVD thug being nasty. Small wonder that atrocity-porn horror for entertainment would require continually ratcheting up the shock and disgust levels to maintain their impact page after page.
By contrast, it's surprising just how genteel the horrors of the original Lovecraft mythos works were. Read closely, and you realize that again and again the most shocking events are told rather than shown. For instance, in "The Dunwich Horror," we never see what became of Wilbur Whateley's mother (although a nasty fate is darkly suggested), nor his death at the fangs and claws of the Miskatonic University Library's guard dog, only his dead body with its unnatural hybrid anatomy revealed. Even the climactic fatal attacks upon several local families are merely reported, and only as Wilbur's monstrous twin is about to be vanquished does the story shift from telling to showing.
Had it been written by this author, I daresay that Lavina Whateley's monstrous and unnatural mating to Yog-Sothoth would've been lovingly detailed, as would her ultimate fate and those of the families that her monstrous son presumably devoured. And quite honestly, I do not believe that it would've been stronger for it -- in fact, it has been creditably argued that the intensely detailed description of Wilbur Whateley's monstrous anatomy is one of the weakest scenes of the entire story, and actually shrinks the horror by leaving so little room for the reader's imagination to build fear from shuddersome suggestion.
Some years ago, I recall Ian Sales (editor of the hard-sf anthology Rocket Science, in which I have a story) blogging a list of ten or twelve tropes he really, really wanted to stop seeing in fiction. Among them was rape as a quick and easy character motivator, and people in post-apocalyptic futures behaving in gratuitously nasty ways to one another. Having read this book, I can completely see why he'd argue for the disappearance of those tropes with all possible speed.
I don't consider myself overly squeamish -- as a historian I've read many accounts of the Holocaust, the Holodomor, and the other atrocities that made the past century run red with blood. But that's research, work, not something one does for entertainment -- and even then it is easy to become numbed to the horrors, for even primary-source accounts to become just another interchangeable SS or NKVD thug being nasty. Small wonder that atrocity-porn horror for entertainment would require continually ratcheting up the shock and disgust levels to maintain their impact page after page.
By contrast, it's surprising just how genteel the horrors of the original Lovecraft mythos works were. Read closely, and you realize that again and again the most shocking events are told rather than shown. For instance, in "The Dunwich Horror," we never see what became of Wilbur Whateley's mother (although a nasty fate is darkly suggested), nor his death at the fangs and claws of the Miskatonic University Library's guard dog, only his dead body with its unnatural hybrid anatomy revealed. Even the climactic fatal attacks upon several local families are merely reported, and only as Wilbur's monstrous twin is about to be vanquished does the story shift from telling to showing.
Had it been written by this author, I daresay that Lavina Whateley's monstrous and unnatural mating to Yog-Sothoth would've been lovingly detailed, as would her ultimate fate and those of the families that her monstrous son presumably devoured. And quite honestly, I do not believe that it would've been stronger for it -- in fact, it has been creditably argued that the intensely detailed description of Wilbur Whateley's monstrous anatomy is one of the weakest scenes of the entire story, and actually shrinks the horror by leaving so little room for the reader's imagination to build fear from shuddersome suggestion.
August 24, 2012
Fantastic Cult-Movie Action From Jordan Krall!
I have to admit, when I first heard about this book, my initial thought was "how the hell do you turn a car race movie into a novel?"
Well, Krall has totally pulled it off, making it every bit as speedy and action-packed as the movies that inspired it, while also adding a whole new level of character development that you don't always see in those source movies.
The story takes place post-apocalypse, and involves a group of drivers in fully armored and weaponized vehicles that have been entered into a cross-country road race to the death... not all willingly.
The story is told through action sequences (accompanied by a sort of tv-show announcer), and punctuated with flashbacks into each of the main characters lives, including how they came to be entered into the race.
A super-fun read, there are all sorts of delightful things to be found in here, including the rise of R'lyeh, lots of tentacle action, a tooth-tornado, and a driver with a glass skull who drinks gasoline...
If you like tentacles and movies like Death Race 2000, you will love this book!
Highly recommended!
I have to admit, when I first heard about this book, my initial thought was "how the hell do you turn a car race movie into a novel?"
Well, Krall has totally pulled it off, making it every bit as speedy and action-packed as the movies that inspired it, while also adding a whole new level of character development that you don't always see in those source movies.
The story takes place post-apocalypse, and involves a group of drivers in fully armored and weaponized vehicles that have been entered into a cross-country road race to the death... not all willingly.
The story is told through action sequences (accompanied by a sort of tv-show announcer), and punctuated with flashbacks into each of the main characters lives, including how they came to be entered into the race.
A super-fun read, there are all sorts of delightful things to be found in here, including the rise of R'lyeh, lots of tentacle action, a tooth-tornado, and a driver with a glass skull who drinks gasoline...
If you like tentacles and movies like Death Race 2000, you will love this book!
Highly recommended!
March 19, 2019
Closer to 3.5 stars. This book reminded me a lot of the movie Death Race 2000. Set in a post-apocalyptic world, life in the US is tough and you have to be tough to survive. Most of the entertainment there is ran by the head honcho... Mr. Silver. He loves to entertain and the more gory and horrific, the better. This time there is a race and not only do they need to win, they have to stay alive first.
This story had interesting characters and a cool set up of the post-apocalyptic world. I really like the back stories for each character. Made them more human than just some mindless racers. The different type of abominations that showed up through the story were really cool as well. As with a lot of bizarro, you tend to roll your eyes at some far-fetched parts but all in all in was a decent fun story.
This story had interesting characters and a cool set up of the post-apocalyptic world. I really like the back stories for each character. Made them more human than just some mindless racers. The different type of abominations that showed up through the story were really cool as well. As with a lot of bizarro, you tend to roll your eyes at some far-fetched parts but all in all in was a decent fun story.
January 4, 2013
Tentacle Death Trip follows five racers in a post apocalyptic race...TO THE DEATH! Death Race 2000 is one of my favorite movies so it's pretty easy to say that I loved this book. Then add on the fact that it has a heavy Lovecraftian influence...Yowzah!
There are plenty of unique characters and interesting back stories to keep readers engrossed. Inventive landscapes, strange aquatic blasphemies and I'm pretty sure there was even some neon meat.
It's about time someone wrote a book about a death race and Jordan Krall does not disappoint. If you're a fan of Death Race 2000, Road Warrior or Bizarro Literature this is a must read.
There are plenty of unique characters and interesting back stories to keep readers engrossed. Inventive landscapes, strange aquatic blasphemies and I'm pretty sure there was even some neon meat.
It's about time someone wrote a book about a death race and Jordan Krall does not disappoint. If you're a fan of Death Race 2000, Road Warrior or Bizarro Literature this is a must read.
November 21, 2015
Excellent racing story with some uneven HPL thrown in.
I really enjoyed the racing aspect of the story. The characters were interesting. Drac, the kid with the glass skull full of gasoline was my favorite. Would've been nice to have had more characters in the race just to see more high speed deaths. Character backstories were fun too. I found the Old Ones mythos that is sprinkled throughout the story a great idea but it still had some weak points. Overall it worked, the car was cool, the characters were fun, more Drac please, a bit anticlimactic at the end though. Still a fun read for those who dig their Mad Max mixed with their Cthulhu. 3.5 stars.
I really enjoyed the racing aspect of the story. The characters were interesting. Drac, the kid with the glass skull full of gasoline was my favorite. Would've been nice to have had more characters in the race just to see more high speed deaths. Character backstories were fun too. I found the Old Ones mythos that is sprinkled throughout the story a great idea but it still had some weak points. Overall it worked, the car was cool, the characters were fun, more Drac please, a bit anticlimactic at the end though. Still a fun read for those who dig their Mad Max mixed with their Cthulhu. 3.5 stars.
June 27, 2012
As a fan of the Death Race films and Lovecraft, I was totally excited when I read about this book and bought it immediately. Most of it was great in terms of the concept, the world, or the characters. Sadly, the ending just didn’t work for me. I’m sure it’s my own fault for having certain expectations, but them’s the breaks.
November 6, 2015
I *loved* this book. I did occasionally (read: from the moment there was a mention of a character named Mario) picture the racers as psychotic MarioKart-ers. Couldn't help it, it was too funny.
Note the book isn't really like that, I just got the idea in my head and couldn't shake it
Note the book isn't really like that, I just got the idea in my head and couldn't shake it
May 27, 2016
I was liking this book at first. An homage to Death Race and other genre classics. Then towards the end, it gets a bit, for me, kitchen sink lunacy. Every crazy, weird thing is thrown in at the end. It veers way of course. Thus only the two stars for me.
March 9, 2015
It's like the game Twisted Metal but far more twisted and weird. Got too weird toward the end but held my attention.
January 26, 2016
An amazing ride
Its very hard to come across originality when it comes to Lovecraft stories. This one is a nonstop ride along.
Its very hard to come across originality when it comes to Lovecraft stories. This one is a nonstop ride along.
November 30, 2024
*3.5*
Amazing ending.
This book is funny because I know it's not that great, but it makes you feel a kind of dispair and hopelessness you never thought you'd feel with a book with this title lmao.
Amazing ending.
This book is funny because I know it's not that great, but it makes you feel a kind of dispair and hopelessness you never thought you'd feel with a book with this title lmao.
October 25, 2012
It's almost always fun to read a Jordan Krall book (the exception being when it is sad), and TENTACLE DEATH TRIP is no exception. Samson, the main protagonist of the story, is in a race against 4 other strange people through New Jersey. The object is to win the race, and also not die. Straight forward stuff then?
Not quite, because Krall does what Krall does and veers sharply left not long after the engines start. Rather than have a straightforward race where each driver is trying to kill the others and maybe some pedestrians too, Krall also entertains you with an occult plot line that drives the entire race.
It's nice to see a reference to Bing Bong (you may know him as the apocalypse donkey) thrown into the mix too.
The pace is never slow, the plot is always moving, developing characters, developing story, and written in exciting and sometimes poetic language. This is certainly more in line with Krall's other Eraserhead Press releases rather than his Copeland Valley Press books, with tons of gore splattered throughout.
Recommend it to fans and newcomers alike, it will give you a good idea of what to expect from Krall's Eraserhead Press releases, but don't assume Krall is a one trick pony, his other works are superb and unique.
Not quite, because Krall does what Krall does and veers sharply left not long after the engines start. Rather than have a straightforward race where each driver is trying to kill the others and maybe some pedestrians too, Krall also entertains you with an occult plot line that drives the entire race.
It's nice to see a reference to Bing Bong (you may know him as the apocalypse donkey) thrown into the mix too.
The pace is never slow, the plot is always moving, developing characters, developing story, and written in exciting and sometimes poetic language. This is certainly more in line with Krall's other Eraserhead Press releases rather than his Copeland Valley Press books, with tons of gore splattered throughout.
Recommend it to fans and newcomers alike, it will give you a good idea of what to expect from Krall's Eraserhead Press releases, but don't assume Krall is a one trick pony, his other works are superb and unique.
June 18, 2014
My two main fiction interest are crime and bizarro. Most of the time, these two interests don't intersect. I'm not under the impression that most crime fans are big fans of, say, Tao Lin or Sam Pink.
But Jordan Krall's the kind of author more crime fans should try, and the wild, original Tentacle Death Trip is a good gateway drug.
It's the post-apocalyptic American future, a Mad Max nuke wasteland of mutants, criminals, religious freaks, and a few hard-core survivors. A sadistic billionaire decides to throw a bone to the bloodthirsty masses in the form of a no-rules race to the death through New Jersey.
From there it's a balls-to-the-wall pulp fest. I mean, the characters are named things like Mama Hell (a bible thumper ready to exact God's Old-Testament wrath on any asshole man who gets in her way) and Drac (a glass-skulled sociopath in a tentacled car). One hundred percent badass.
Yet the end of the book--when the characters who survive the death race reach the lost city of R'lyeh--is genuine, beautiful, and cathartic.
This is the third Krall book I've read--along with Squid Pulp Blues and Squid Kills--and I'd highly recommend any of them to fans of bizarro or pulp.
But Jordan Krall's the kind of author more crime fans should try, and the wild, original Tentacle Death Trip is a good gateway drug.
It's the post-apocalyptic American future, a Mad Max nuke wasteland of mutants, criminals, religious freaks, and a few hard-core survivors. A sadistic billionaire decides to throw a bone to the bloodthirsty masses in the form of a no-rules race to the death through New Jersey.
From there it's a balls-to-the-wall pulp fest. I mean, the characters are named things like Mama Hell (a bible thumper ready to exact God's Old-Testament wrath on any asshole man who gets in her way) and Drac (a glass-skulled sociopath in a tentacled car). One hundred percent badass.
Yet the end of the book--when the characters who survive the death race reach the lost city of R'lyeh--is genuine, beautiful, and cathartic.
This is the third Krall book I've read--along with Squid Pulp Blues and Squid Kills--and I'd highly recommend any of them to fans of bizarro or pulp.
July 22, 2012
If you like books or movies about death races, you will definitely find this one entertaining. There's plenty of blood and violence (and tentacles).
The story is set around a race between five racers through a post-nuclear apocalyptic New Jersey to the finish line in Atlantic City where the winner shall claim a very special prize--to be not only the business partner of the race director, Mr Silver, but also to be one of two residents (the other being Mr Silver himself) of the city of R'lyeh that had risen again after countless aeons hidden beneath the waves. The racers range from a Bible-thumping, racist, smite-happy bitch; a Japanese-American transvestite out to prove that he's no longer a sex toy; a rich, bratty, spoiled bitch who deserves to win; a father who has lost everything and finds his only chance in the race; and a glass-skulled, gasoline drinking demon behind the wheel.
This is such a fun read and the 200 pages will blow by so quickly. The book is completely engrossing and captivating and will hold you to find out who the winner will be.
The story is set around a race between five racers through a post-nuclear apocalyptic New Jersey to the finish line in Atlantic City where the winner shall claim a very special prize--to be not only the business partner of the race director, Mr Silver, but also to be one of two residents (the other being Mr Silver himself) of the city of R'lyeh that had risen again after countless aeons hidden beneath the waves. The racers range from a Bible-thumping, racist, smite-happy bitch; a Japanese-American transvestite out to prove that he's no longer a sex toy; a rich, bratty, spoiled bitch who deserves to win; a father who has lost everything and finds his only chance in the race; and a glass-skulled, gasoline drinking demon behind the wheel.
This is such a fun read and the 200 pages will blow by so quickly. The book is completely engrossing and captivating and will hold you to find out who the winner will be.
January 16, 2023
Truly inspired bizarro mash-up of "Death Race 2000" (the good one) and Lovecraft. The book races along at a brisk pace, taking the drivers and the readers through imaginative and nightmarish post-apocalyptic/Lovecraftian landscapes. Especially enjoyable are the many side-trips (flashbacks) that fill in the back-story and motivations for the characters. A strong finish grips the reader viscerally as well as emotionally. Good stuff.
September 8, 2013
Loved it!
Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews