Skull Slime Tentacle Witch War

by Rick Claypool

There are hideous mutants on the Moon. Their bodies are messed up in weird ways and they live in a shitty little town called Moontown. The mutants don’t remember how they got there or why they’re there. They’re just there, working shitty jobs, living shitty lives.

One of the mutants is Skullface. Another one of the mutants is Tentaclehead. Skullface and Tentaclehead are neighbors. They share a duplex. They’ve barely met. They never talk.

Then one day they finally meet for real and the day they meet for real is the day everything changes. Because the day they meet for real is the beginning of the end. Because Skullface and Tentaclehead meeting for real is how THE SKULL SLIME TENTACLE WITCH WAR begins.

Genres: Horror, Bizarro Fiction, Fantasy

303 pages, Paperback

Published July 9, 2024

About the author

Rick Claypool is the author of Skull Slime Tentacle Witch War (Anxiety Press 2024), Tentacle Head (2022), The Mold Farmer (Six Gallery Press 2020) and Leech Girl Lives (Spaceboy Books 2017). He lives in Rhode Island.

Reviews

[Christopher · Rating 4 out of 5]

A bizarre, (somehow) charmingly repugnant, and utterly unpredictable gross-out romp, with a surprising amount of heart. I enjoyed this goopy ride! I’ve never read anything quite like it.

[Austin Shirey · Rating 5 out of 5]

SKULL SLIME TENTACLE WITCH WAR is the weirdest, most bizarre, most absurd, most original book I think I’ve ever read and I absolutely loved it! It’s like the literary equivalent of an Adult Swim cartoon: Adventure Time by way of Ren & Stimpy and Smiling Friends with a heaping helping of Nickelodeon slime. But even that description doesn’t do justice to this maniacally whimsical novel—it’s just something you’ve got to experience to believe. I dig the way this Rick Claypool fella writes.

[Lori]

Aw man. I really gave this one a try but I ended up DNFing at 110 page mark.

The novelette Tentaclehead was weird and bizarre and fun in a really cheeky way and its length definitely worked in its favor. Skull Slime Tentacle Witch War is a whole lot of the same, only there's soooo many more pages... and the weirdness, which was kind of fun at first, kept getting weirder and weirder and I felt my brain turning to mush and my eyes starting to roll in their sockets.

I just couldn't see myself reading about a soda bottle baby who gushed brown liquid out of their mouth, nose, and eye holes or about a skullhead who vomited pink foam that dissolved anything it touched or about Tentaclehead's obsession with a store mannequin and his own suicidal thoughts or about a slimy goo thing that argued with itself over what to eat for another 200 pages.

But you never know. It might be the perfect summer read for you! And what a cover, huh?!

[Adam McPhee · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wrote a review of this which is up now at Sage Cigarettes.

[Albert Marsden · Rating 5 out of 5]

SMOKING ON THAT SLOPP

[Brooklyn Attic Books · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think I needed this in my life! Brought back nostalgia for the weird, bizarro parts of the old 90s Nickelodeon cartoons like: Ren & Stimpy, Rocko's Modern Life. I would even say, it was as atmospheric and strange as Salad Fingers. Yet, had a lot of Aqua Teen Hunger Force. This is my millennial brain trying to compare this book to other media.

I have no clue how the author was able to put this together so well. But it is definitely an enjoyable ride. When I mentioned to the author that I was enjoying the book, he responded with, "In a weird way it's probably the most personal thing I've ever written (and also the most ridiculous)." And I love that.

I highly recommend this book! It's not anything you've read before, it is definitely NOT for everyone, though. If you are a person who has aphantasia, skip this book! It's not for you.

[Alex · Rating 1 out of 5]

I will never not eat the jerk goat from the roadside stand.

Once, on vacation in Jamaica, I pulled over at a roadside stand. I'd smelled charcoal smoke and grilling caprine flesh a hundred yards away. I felt compelled to sample this once in a lifetime delicacy.

I spent the next day curled up in a ball in our hotel room, suffering through the process of involuntarily ridding myself of every last molecule roast, jerk goat that had passed between my teeth the day prior.

Quite reasonably, my wife asked, "Will you ever not eat the jerk goat from the roadside stand?"

"No," I said through gritted teeth. "I will never not eat the jerk goat from the roadside stand. Gwaaaaah!"

So there I was, enjoying a literary afternoon out in Providence with my beloved bride, a few weeks ago. We'd stopped in at a little Lovecraft-themed bookstore in downtown Providence. I was browsing their shelf of books by local authors. Look at that title! 'Skull Slime Tentacle Witch War!' Look at that cover! And the green-haired, goth-looking, sales clerk recommended it!

I will never not buy the book titled 'Skull Slime Tentacle Witch War' from the green-haired sales clerk at the quirky little Lovecraft-themed bookstore. That's just not going to happen.

Gwaaaaah!

I got a hundred and twenty pages into this one. That's a hundred and twenty pages of goodwill, hoping the story would break free from the mire of its experimental acid trip / therapy session vibe and build some actual narrative momentum.

It never happened. This story is ugly. It's gross. It's so self-consciously transgressive that it can't get out of its own way. I picked up 'Skull Time Tentacle Witch War' hoping for an unpolished lark from a developing writer. I got a book that strained for alt-coolness so earnestly that it dared me to put it down. Rather than show me a good time, 'Skull Slime Tentacle Witch War' seemed more interested in pleasuring itself.

Still, I will never not eat the jerk goat from the roadside stand. If I have to wade through ten books like this to get one 'Waking the Merrow' (killer mermaids of Narragansett Bay!), it will have been worth it. I love a safe, reliable Lee Child or Stephen King novel. But if you don't spend any time in the rough, you'll never find the diamonds.

Update: I went back and finished the book. Awful as it was, I couldn't bring myself to DNF a book with a title, and a cover, like this one's.

I never did warm up to it. The book is vulgar, disgusting, ugly, and confusing. It reads as if the author came home from a Sarah Squirm show, dropped acid, played some some Call of Duty with Adventure Time on in the background, then dictated the whole thing into some kind of weird algorithm with a predilection for the Caps Lock key.

I want to recommend 'Skull Slime Tentacle Witch War.' I really do. But this book couldn't have been less for me than if it had been covered in resin, carved into a blade, and jabbed in my eye.

Nevertheless, I'd rather read ten books like this than one more HBR article jumped up to a 225-page business book. Author Rick Claypool's swings are not for me, but I've got to give it up for him: he is taking big swings.

[Robert Bose · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm honestly not sure how to describe this book. Definitely a bizzaro and non-stop insane ride, with weirdly relatable moon mutants and a deeper edge than immediately apparent. If you love reading books that make you stop and think 'what the absolute...', this book ticks every box.

[Dave Lizotte · Rating 4 out of 5]

To say this is a unique read is a drastic understatement. In fact, if there is another book remotely like this, I would be floored. With a mixture of dystopian world building, slime and goo, and industrial textures, the novel manages to elicit a variety of feelings while going for this wild journey, ranging from laughter to contemplation, gross out to sad, it's really an amazing feat to craft such a strange but thought provoking piece of literature. This book is not for those without imagination nor an open mind as it really challenges you to envision and believe in a world where individuals puke knives, are easily disposed of, and are constantly posing the question of whether to eat or not to eat their friends.

"Everything is new and nothing can possibly go wrong" is said by a character right before he engages in a behavior that has been happening his whole life. This is the type of thought-provoking content that will sit with me far beyond the closing of this book.

I have read some reviews mentioning the length of the novel being too long for their preference. With that being said I can see validity to that, however, the true glory of this novel is that this feels so unapologetically a piece of artistic expression, so to dictate or put parameters on that feels inappropriate in the case of this piece of work.

[David Simmons · Rating 5 out of 5]

Skullface responds with a solemn nod. "A video store. Of course." A tear trickles out of the corner of his eye socket.

"We'll love all the movies," Ray continues. "All of them equally. The award winners. The bombs. The low budget horrors and the nature documentaries and the stupid comedies. And when someone comes up to the counter to rent one, we'll always say 'good choice.'" He coughs. "And we'll always be right."

This book is wild because it is hyper-violent with Bizzaro-level chaos and slapstick comedy, and yet, there are moments like the one above that pull at the heartstrings. I asked the Broken River Books Men's Health Men's Support Group Group Chat what it is called when a writer incorporates this technique in their writing, and Kelby Losack suggested calling it "juxtoposition."

Where you have these scenes of extreme nonsense and surreal violence, where the characters are two mutants in hospital beds in a research facility, being medically tortured and what not, and then they share a moment of tenderness, that s**t just hits hard to me for real.

This joint is way different than Claypool's last joint I read, The Mold Farmer, which is way more serious and bleak, if that makes sense. SSTWW is fun and funny and sad and disgusting.

[Ivy Grimes · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've never read anything like this! It is truly bizarre, with pathos and cultural critique all wrapped in comic book fun. Lots of absurdity, goo, and mutants. One character burps knives. Another spews pink acid when angry. Another has turned her lover into a park. This slime world is disturbing, funny, vivid, and always surprising. The characters form tight bonds with each other as they struggle to survive in a world that commodifies them and ignores their mental health. Lots of suspense and action! An Abomination!

[Eric Williams · Rating 5 out of 5]

Skull Slime Tentacle Witch War is the absurdist weird fiction adaptation of Three Men and a Baby that you'd didn't know you needed! It's a surreal, messy, hallucinogenic trip of a book that ALSO manages to be a deep and sharp examination of oppression, immiseration, and rebellion, all while being an absolute blast to read. For real, Claypool is a master at capturing the sheer joyful fun of real weirdness, a truly rare talent these days.

[Brandon Getz · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a fucking wild ride. Claypool's world of Moon mutant mayhem is a vivid satirical cartoon doused in Brownish Soda, like a darker, moldier Adventure Time or an absurdist Aaahh!!! Real Monsters. The mutants are depressed, the adventures are surreal, and the satire is biting. Skull Slime Tentacle Witch War is as bonkers as its title suggests. You absolutely need to read it.

[Katherine Doll · Rating 4 out of 5]

What an absurd and fun ride! You could never guess what kind of weirdness was lurking on the next page. An exuberance of bodily fluids (and what extraordinary bodies!), absorptions of one sort or another & goop. Highly recommended...

My only complaint was that it seemed to go on a bit too long (for me).

[Emily · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wildly inventive and unlike anything I’ve read this year! Loved it!

[Mike Kleine · Rating 5 out of 5]

Y'all are definitely not ready for this.

[Tony · Rating 5 out of 5]

Delightfully twisted, ranging from the absurd and the grotesque to the tragic and hilarious. Claypool is adept at pithy turns of phrase that drive home all of these elements.