Eviscerated Panda: Back in Bamboo

Eviscerated Panda #2

by Sarah Tipper

Eviscerated Panda - Back In Bamboo is a book that meanders around the topics of heavy metal, happiness, sex, morality, love and biscuits. It follows the lives of keen for success metal band Eviscerated Panda and their friends, families and lovers over a four month period. There are chance meetings with old band mates, birthday celebrations and career aspirations. Eviscerated Panda play loud gigs in Camden, in Coventry, in their home town of Reading and in Torquay. They have to cope with the temporary closure of their favourite pub, the Green Man, which is the scene of much of their carousing. Ian has trouble in his life of love while Dean and Lucy are getting started on theirs, if only his Mum would give them a minute of privacy. Suzi does a rude thing in a dressing room suitable only for mature readers. They go to see the inspiring kings of metal, Manowar. They play an April Fool's day joke on their fans. Some of them wake up in a room that smells of onions. The book ends with the Pandas playing on the same bill as Nightshade Milkshake, the band that lead guitarist Phil was in before he made the Pandas happen.

333 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2013

About the author

Sarah Tipper was born in Oxford in 1974 and was very nearly called Robert. She enjoyed school, especially any classes that involved writing and that did not involve wearing shorts. She once sniggered her way through an entire assignment about the Cerne Abbas giant. At age thirteen Sarah started listening to metal. She was lightly teased for wearing tight jeans and an Anthrax or Slayer T shirt. This didn't bother her, she felt safe from the Bros dross culture other teenagers at the time were so keen on. Sarah's religion is heavy metal. Her favourite biscuit is the chocolate shortcake ring. The best gigs she's ever been to were Suicidal Tendencies, Manowar, Dedlok and Bolt-Thrower. She can't cope with the responsibility of having a pet but if she could she'd have a ginger rabbit called Ronnie (after Ronnie James Dio).

Sarah studied Psychology at the University of Reading. She missed her graduation ceremony because it clashed with seeing Black Sabbath. She went on to graduate with a Masters in Health Psychology from Coventry University. Luckily this didn't clash with anything and her Mum got a nice day out.

During the day Sarah does cancer research, squirting things at other things in a science type way. She started writing her first novel because a friend kept telling her to write a book and because another friend had inspired her to write a "things to do before you're forty list" and write a book made it on to this list.

Eviscerated Panda - A Metal Tale was written after twenty-four years of experience of going to gigs and drinking in rock pubs and twenty-five years experience of listening to metal. It was hugely enjoyable to write and Sarah hopes to create heavymetalworld, much like Terry Pratchett created Discworld. The sequel to Eviscerated Panda is half written. The author photo was taken by the lovely Bernie Galewski during a strange evening that involved giant pencils and a glittery skull.

Reviews

[Iain · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very much on a par with the first one and plods along nicely. The low star-age is, similarly to volume 1, predominantly due to it really being more of a "chick novel". Sadly, especially for my wife who'd lumbered with me, I'm not a chick and therefore it's not quite my cup of Brownian-motion induced boiled leaf tips. This does, however, mean that it's quite filthy so a bit of a guilty pleasure!

It's good to find out how the characters get on after the first book, and it's wide open for a third instalment which I believe is in the works.