Satanskin

by James Havoc (Editor)

A collection of surrealistic black fantasy fables which disclose an occult world of sex magick, lunar mutiny, excremental demonolatry, in utero lycanthropy, sadomasochistic vampirism, oneiric post mortem malediction, and other bizarre manias; a book steeped in arcane law, suffused with the perfume of graveyard erotica. The publication of James Havoc's anti-novel Raism was greeted with equal extremes of revulsion and delight. In Satanskin , he has taken the motifs of that book and woven them into a series of grotesque morality tales described in his own unique language.

Genres: Horror, Fiction, Short Stories

128 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1995

Reviews

[Jakob J. 🎃 · Rating 3 out of 5]

A succession of bad trips in print; obscene, surreal excursions into damnation like zeroing in on various Boschian depictions of suppurating lacerations, bloody vomit, and scorching invasions of orifices.

One might conclude that Havoc fears Hell as Dante did, and delights in equal measure casting sinners asunder, though less selectively than The Divine Comedian because nothing matters anyway, and that’s the Hell of it. If arcane acuity is at play in these tortured visions, let’s hope Satan doesn’t have as vivid of an imagination.

[J.M. Hushour · Rating 5 out of 5]

"An anal pact is easily struck," cautions James Havoc, "but it leads into labyrinths whose demon is hard to beat." In this single sentence could one sum up the experience of reading "Satanskin", a puerile, filthy miasma of giggling pus-driven absurdity and perversity. It's hard to know what to take seriously and what to laugh out loud at. When an angel falsely claimed dead sends her eyeball Lucifer out to sodomize those who transgressed against her, what is one to think? In these stories, genitals randomly sprout from the faces, torsos, and tentacular mailboxes of the characters. Beasts named Teatcleaver flounce about the landscape. There is an incredible amount of poop and solar orgasms. People vomit fish-bones, brothels, and new religions.
Again, it's difficult to approach this one. On the one hand, for all its obscenity and, I'll just say it, fucking weirdness, the stories are well-crafted with an imagery so provoking and beautiful that one wonders what "James Havoc" or whoever he really is, could've done with a more conventional work. On the other hand, nuns selling their skin to Satan in exchange for whippings and new genitals might be one of the worst, poop-shootingest things you've ever read.
I can't help but recommend this, if only so that no reader never go unscathed from reading the line "Thirteen nipples ooze faecal lava."

[Amlux · Rating 5 out of 5]

Two stories in and there's already vampiric salad tossing and rectal stigmata. It only gets better and more disgusting from there on. I listen to Godflesh while I read this. This is insanity. Nothing but insanity. One of the most demented books I've read. A bit Lautréamontian in scope and style, if a bit less effective on the whole. It sort of seems to emulate Lautréamont in the same way Lovecraft generally emulates Poe, but more effectively. But even capturing a bit of Lautréamont's brilliance puts it in the elite tier. Utterly ridiculous. For those brave few who can put up with pedophile butchers, wild armies of unborn children, tentacled vaginal monsters, castrated cat-beings, and a whole whole whole lot of unpleasant things involving the anus, a treasure chest of strange genius will await them.

t5 stories:
The Tears Tree
Crimes Against Pussycat
The Colour Hell
Ditchfinder
Tongue Cathedral

[Morgana Blackrose · Rating 4 out of 5]

Surreal, obnoxious, fragmentary outpourings of a beautifully-diseased mind. Or possibly a big fat piss-take, who can tell? My money's on the latter if Havoc is who I believe him to be. But still entertaining, and vocabulary-enriching.

[conanthelibrarian · Rating 1 out of 5]

high key pissed this is the 500th book i logged. pseudo intellectual dreck written by a precocious teenager w/ a cradle of filth shirt who accidentally swallowed a thesaurus.

[Virginia de Sade · Rating 5 out of 5]

We’ve all heard of some authors being described as “a writer’s writer.” James Havoc, a pen name, deserves some type of title like “an erotic’s erotic” or “a sadist’s sadist” or, perhaps less eloquently, an “erotic writer’s erotic writer.” The twenty-one short stories found within Satanskin are brimming with vampiric, cum-filled, literary, child-brain-rape insanity. Don’t feel perturbed if you have to grab your OED more than once.

I would like to party with Mr. Havoc. Though, like me, he’s probably pretty boring in real life. I heard through the grapevine that he moved to Bangkok, Thailand. There is a BDSM scene there.

What wonderfully colorful prose this stud writer can compose though! I’ve never read anything that is so sexually vivid. Let me quote some of this tasty smut. From my favorite chapter/story on Devil’s Gold:

“In dreams, Gillespie wanders sodden, hermaphrodite corridors, halls that resonate with the melancholy of outcast animal kings. He conjures forth and preens an eight mouthed ululating penis, unleashes tulpas from the folds of his scrotum, drag cold reluctant somatic formations from occult slits. Cephalopods. He caresses his breasts on a throne of bones, while eunuchs swing in the void.”

Do you enjoy whisky?

This is how best to consume Havoc’s prose. Allow yourself only to open this terrible terrible book later in the evening, not after midnight, but sometime before. Turn off all the lights except one, something shaded and halogen; avoid the candles cuz those are kitsch as hell. Have a bottle of single-malt Scotch whisky (should be $100 over or not worth it) on the table next to you. Savor your first drink for some minutes and then pour a second. Open Havoc’s bestial monograph to a start of a new chapter. Now enjoy. If you need music salting the air sweetly behind you, consider something on vinyl and of the chamber, the more piano the better. Your hand will soon be reaching toward your flowery vagina: Drip, drip, drip, after awkwardly yummy drip. Restrain yourself to only one chapter an evening.

And, indeed, this is the point—the orgasmic tip of it all. I do classify this as a piece of erotica. Why? Because anything that makes me wish to rub my clit is erotic, if not erotica, for me. Not unlike the great de Sade, Havoc will having you thinking and rethinking the ethics of your enjoyment of such tales. But of course this is what makes it all so riveting. The cerebral must be violated in the same way as all the usual orifices for a true libertine aficionado.

Yes, read Havoc's Satanskin. Come home to me Mr. Havoc. I have a bed waiting for you in Kansas!

http://virginiadesade.blogspot.com/20...

[Ryan · Rating 1 out of 5]

Where to begin? Within half a page I was laughing out loud at the cringe. I hoped things were just getting off to a rough start, or that perhaps I'd been mislead and the book is actually a satire of edgelord incels and not an earnest attempt and horrorscat erotica. But no. The cringe continued throughout the mercifully short book. I've read many books that were disturbing and good at the same time that also had substantive social or political commentary (The Painted Bird, The Story of the Eye, Hogg, etc.). And I've also read books that tried to be disturbing just for the sake of being disturbing and sometimes those work as well. But until Mr. Havoc, the pen name of James Williamson, I've never read anything that tried so desperately hard to be deep and disturbing. After a few pages of this mess an image of Mr. Havoc began to form in my head: that of a misunderstood grandiloquent moody teen who's constantly trying to prove how badass and intelligent yet messed up he is; an edgelord. I hate to stereotype, but a quick Google image search vindicated my assumption.

[Lily Ruban · Rating 4 out of 5]

It is so intense, I needed to dissipate its intensity with reading of other books at the same time. I wish Havoc found a better balance, it could have been a masterpiece. I believe there is something behind this raw. By the way, the topic of pedophilia - I thought it forbidden in any kind of art -

[Signor Mambrino · Rating 1 out of 5]

Hugely disappointing. One of the most pretentious piles of peurile nonsense I've ever encountered.

[cgi6pack · Rating 4 out of 5]

this book is like if a very ‘literary’ Reek of Putrefaction-era Carcass + Cedric Bixler-Zavala-bizarro hybrid wrote short stories influenced by surreal supernatural body horror, occultic hentai, and lots of butt + poopy stuff. all written with an impressively robust, poetically demented vocabulary. Pretty danged wild imo.

[Plumb · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not really my thing, though I did sometimes find a passage that I thought was interesting. Often surreal, always disgusting, well written for what it is.

[Nathan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not sure how to rate this. It was interesting and repulsive.