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Slugs #1
Slugs
As the people of Merton bask in the summer heat, a new breed of slug is growing and multiplying. In the waist-high grass, in the dank, dark cellars they are acquiring new tastes, new cravings. For blood. For flesh. Human flesh...
208 pages, Unknown Binding
First published November 1, 1982
60 people are currently reading
2146 people want to read
About the author
Shaun Hutson
112 books534 followersBritish horror novelist, including horror and urban thriller novels.
His novella Slugs was made into a movie, although Hutson didn't like the movie. He also appeared in two horror movies himself.
Hutson is a Liverpool F.C. fan.
His novella Slugs was made into a movie, although Hutson didn't like the movie. He also appeared in two horror movies himself.
Hutson is a Liverpool F.C. fan.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 225 reviews
January 29, 2021
This is one of those books that, depending on how I rated, it could go anywhere on the five star spectrum. It's ridiculously bad, but at the same time, so over the top and silly that I enjoyed myself the entire time. I could give it a 5 based on pure entertainment, but based on some of the more dreadful aspects, I would find it quite difficult to live with myself afterwards. Honestly, the fact that I even finished/am reviewing this book...
This is a book about killer slugs. Not only are they killer slugs that are larger than average, but seemed to have acquired quite the intellect. BORDERLINE GENIUS KILLER SLUGS. There is a scene where a man tries to poison them, instead of consuming the poison, the book describes them watching him go back to his house... you may as well cue the ominous music, as you can just imagine them staring at him, plotting a way to invade his home and eat both him and his wife.
Yeah, it's that type of book. It's the literary equivalent of one of those 50s horror movies with killer animals (Not one of the good ones though, think more Attack of the Killer Shrews or The Giant Gila Monster), but given that it was written in the 80s, it takes a more slasher philosophy towards its victims, and describes their deaths in gruesome detail.
This does not bother me personally, but I do take some offense that the kindle version calls Hutson the Godfather of Gore... there is only one man who should receive that title, and Herschell Gordon Lewis had it long before Hutson could, and he earned it by doing something new at the time.
The writing is poor as to be expected, and it seems Hutson must really like the word cryptically. He uses it repeatedly in sentences where it is not the word I could even imagine choosing. For example, a group of people kill some slugs, but realize that it’s not the breeding ground.
‘Two hundred down, 20,000 to go’ he said cryptically.
How about sarcastically, ominously... truthfully? Plenty of other ways to describe that rather than a word that by dictionary definition means “mysterious or obscure.” I wouldn't even bother pointing this out normally, but he uses it enough times that I became annoyed. All I could think of was this:
So, all in all, is this a good novel? Hell no. Is it amusing? In the same way that I delight in Ed Wood's movies. Is it worth a read? That depends on your tolerance for squishy slugs, gore and the word cryptically. 3/5 stars... because how the hell does one rate this sort of thing?
This is a book about killer slugs. Not only are they killer slugs that are larger than average, but seemed to have acquired quite the intellect. BORDERLINE GENIUS KILLER SLUGS. There is a scene where a man tries to poison them, instead of consuming the poison, the book describes them watching him go back to his house... you may as well cue the ominous music, as you can just imagine them staring at him, plotting a way to invade his home and eat both him and his wife.
Yeah, it's that type of book. It's the literary equivalent of one of those 50s horror movies with killer animals (Not one of the good ones though, think more Attack of the Killer Shrews or The Giant Gila Monster), but given that it was written in the 80s, it takes a more slasher philosophy towards its victims, and describes their deaths in gruesome detail.
This does not bother me personally, but I do take some offense that the kindle version calls Hutson the Godfather of Gore... there is only one man who should receive that title, and Herschell Gordon Lewis had it long before Hutson could, and he earned it by doing something new at the time.
The writing is poor as to be expected, and it seems Hutson must really like the word cryptically. He uses it repeatedly in sentences where it is not the word I could even imagine choosing. For example, a group of people kill some slugs, but realize that it’s not the breeding ground.
‘Two hundred down, 20,000 to go’ he said cryptically.
How about sarcastically, ominously... truthfully? Plenty of other ways to describe that rather than a word that by dictionary definition means “mysterious or obscure.” I wouldn't even bother pointing this out normally, but he uses it enough times that I became annoyed. All I could think of was this:
So, all in all, is this a good novel? Hell no. Is it amusing? In the same way that I delight in Ed Wood's movies. Is it worth a read? That depends on your tolerance for squishy slugs, gore and the word cryptically. 3/5 stars... because how the hell does one rate this sort of thing?
June 5, 2022
Slugs may take the prize for the trashiest pulp horror I have read in a while and that is saying something. Where I live, we get slugs some 4 inches long and they can devour a tomato plant in hours; never liked the buggers, but never found them very scary either. But what if these slugs mutated somehow, became enormous and found a taste for human flesh? Further, what if they also had some sort of telepathy to guide them to their next meal? Well, then you get this novel by Huston.
That stated, this is a difficult book to review. On the one hand, this will never be considered anything other than 80s pulp horror, replete with the requisite sleazy sex scenes and body horror that animated the genre in that era. Slugs as a creature feature entertains at a popcorn level and I can definitely see this as a B-movie (and I take it there was a movie adaption).
On the other hand, this really is a trashy novel, full of plot holes and people making dubious decisions on par with a Laymon novel. Our protagonist, Brady, is a health inspector in a small town outside of London and one day, while observing an eviction notice with a bailiff, they find the rent offender mutilated and eaten in his flat. Brady notices some slime trails. Hum. A bit later, he finds some huge slugs in his yard while doing some gardening work; he takes a few of the beasts in a jar to the naturalist who runs the local museum. Could these slugs be killers with a taste for human flesh? The plot unfolds like a cheap lawnchair, punctuated by gruesome deaths by slug incidents to a variety of ne'er-do-wells introduced for the occasion before the fairly obvious denouement. It would be pretty easy to tear this novel apart at the seams, especially given that the seams hold together like the cheap paperback it is.
Nonetheless, this was a lot of fun in a campy way. If you can overlook the obvious flaws and take in the 80s sleaze ambiance you may enjoy this as much as I did. 3 slimy stars!!
That stated, this is a difficult book to review. On the one hand, this will never be considered anything other than 80s pulp horror, replete with the requisite sleazy sex scenes and body horror that animated the genre in that era. Slugs as a creature feature entertains at a popcorn level and I can definitely see this as a B-movie (and I take it there was a movie adaption).
On the other hand, this really is a trashy novel, full of plot holes and people making dubious decisions on par with a Laymon novel. Our protagonist, Brady, is a health inspector in a small town outside of London and one day, while observing an eviction notice with a bailiff, they find the rent offender mutilated and eaten in his flat. Brady notices some slime trails. Hum. A bit later, he finds some huge slugs in his yard while doing some gardening work; he takes a few of the beasts in a jar to the naturalist who runs the local museum. Could these slugs be killers with a taste for human flesh? The plot unfolds like a cheap lawnchair, punctuated by gruesome deaths by slug incidents to a variety of ne'er-do-wells introduced for the occasion before the fairly obvious denouement. It would be pretty easy to tear this novel apart at the seams, especially given that the seams hold together like the cheap paperback it is.
Nonetheless, this was a lot of fun in a campy way. If you can overlook the obvious flaws and take in the 80s sleaze ambiance you may enjoy this as much as I did. 3 slimy stars!!
January 20, 2020
This review first appeared on scifiandscary.com: https://www.scifiandscary.com/slugs-r...
Confession time before we start. As a teenager, Shaun Hutson was my favourite British horror author. More than Herbert, who I found a bit ploddy at times, his books had a violent energy that really appealed to me. They’re blatantly ludicrous, but so efficiently written that it’s easy to forget that. Hutson never takes himself to seriously, despite the horribly dark themes he often ends up exploring, which gives the books an appealing, b-movie vibe. Hutson is, I would suggest, the Lucio Fulci to Herbert’s George Romero. Probably not objectively as good, but so entertaining and engaging that it’s hard to say for sure. Like Guy N Smith, whose books have featured in this column already, he wrote under a number of pseudonyms and in a number of genres. He published war stories and westerns, as well as penning a novelisation of the movie ‘The Terminator’. Director James Cameron supposedly disliked it so much that he refused to let it be published in the US, although it did make it onto UK shelves. It’s great.
Hutson did in fact claim to have been inspired to take up writing after reading Smith’s ‘Night of the Crabs’, saying that if a book that bad could get published he figured he might as well give it a go. He also claims that many of his books took no more than a weekend to write, which feels like it’s probably a credible statement. The common theme in all his work is lots of sex and violence. In a few months I’ll be discussing his infamous novel ‘Chainsaw Terror’, but this instalment focusses on his first book, ‘Slugs’.
That one-word title tells you everything you need to know really. It promises something horribly disgusting and Hutson delivers. The plot is very similar to ‘The Rats’, mutated creatures attack humans in a series of horrific vignettes and an everyman hero takes them on. In this case the hero is a health inspector, and the slugs are even more of an improbable monster than the rats. Hutson realises this and is wonderfully creative with the gore. He does include a few scenes where people fall and then can’t get up for some reason as the slugs slowly advance on them, but also gives them some other tricks. The titular creatures secrete slime that sends anyone who eats it homicidally insane, and infect anyone who accidentally swallows a slug with worms that then burst out of their faces.
It’s fair to say that the gore in this book is ramped up to 11 and it’s all the more fun for it. Hutson rarely lets more than a few pages pass without someone dying and he describes every death with a gleeful aplomb. There’s boatloads of sex too, which may go someway to explaining why I liked his books so much as a teenager. His penchant for the word “cleft” to describe the female anatomy does grate a little after a while, though.
This was a book I remembered fondly, and my reread of it for this review proved that memory to be correct. Measured by normal literary criteria it’s not a good book. The plot is bonkers, the characters are wafer thin and it lacks any real message. Taken on its own terms, though, it’s a masterpiece. Vibrant, energetic, memorable and grimly inventive. I loved every oozing, bloody page.
Confession time before we start. As a teenager, Shaun Hutson was my favourite British horror author. More than Herbert, who I found a bit ploddy at times, his books had a violent energy that really appealed to me. They’re blatantly ludicrous, but so efficiently written that it’s easy to forget that. Hutson never takes himself to seriously, despite the horribly dark themes he often ends up exploring, which gives the books an appealing, b-movie vibe. Hutson is, I would suggest, the Lucio Fulci to Herbert’s George Romero. Probably not objectively as good, but so entertaining and engaging that it’s hard to say for sure. Like Guy N Smith, whose books have featured in this column already, he wrote under a number of pseudonyms and in a number of genres. He published war stories and westerns, as well as penning a novelisation of the movie ‘The Terminator’. Director James Cameron supposedly disliked it so much that he refused to let it be published in the US, although it did make it onto UK shelves. It’s great.
Hutson did in fact claim to have been inspired to take up writing after reading Smith’s ‘Night of the Crabs’, saying that if a book that bad could get published he figured he might as well give it a go. He also claims that many of his books took no more than a weekend to write, which feels like it’s probably a credible statement. The common theme in all his work is lots of sex and violence. In a few months I’ll be discussing his infamous novel ‘Chainsaw Terror’, but this instalment focusses on his first book, ‘Slugs’.
That one-word title tells you everything you need to know really. It promises something horribly disgusting and Hutson delivers. The plot is very similar to ‘The Rats’, mutated creatures attack humans in a series of horrific vignettes and an everyman hero takes them on. In this case the hero is a health inspector, and the slugs are even more of an improbable monster than the rats. Hutson realises this and is wonderfully creative with the gore. He does include a few scenes where people fall and then can’t get up for some reason as the slugs slowly advance on them, but also gives them some other tricks. The titular creatures secrete slime that sends anyone who eats it homicidally insane, and infect anyone who accidentally swallows a slug with worms that then burst out of their faces.
It’s fair to say that the gore in this book is ramped up to 11 and it’s all the more fun for it. Hutson rarely lets more than a few pages pass without someone dying and he describes every death with a gleeful aplomb. There’s boatloads of sex too, which may go someway to explaining why I liked his books so much as a teenager. His penchant for the word “cleft” to describe the female anatomy does grate a little after a while, though.
This was a book I remembered fondly, and my reread of it for this review proved that memory to be correct. Measured by normal literary criteria it’s not a good book. The plot is bonkers, the characters are wafer thin and it lacks any real message. Taken on its own terms, though, it’s a masterpiece. Vibrant, energetic, memorable and grimly inventive. I loved every oozing, bloody page.
July 10, 2016
When I was a kid I stole this book from my uncle and read it in one sitting, scared the crap out of me. It didn't teach me lesson though cos I then stole his VHS of The Thing and that gave me nightmares for weeks. :)
Not sure how well this book would work today, ya gotta have a fear of slimy things to appreciate it, no fear and you'll probably find this a dull read. Shaun Huston's writing style makes it easy to read and the book is short so give this one a go.
Not sure how well this book would work today, ya gotta have a fear of slimy things to appreciate it, no fear and you'll probably find this a dull read. Shaun Huston's writing style makes it easy to read and the book is short so give this one a go.
May 21, 2018
I really loved this nasty up to the point horror story on slugs. Reading the book is like watching a movie. You can see every details and can't put down the book until you have it finished. Fantastic find from the 80s, my first book from this author and a clear recommendation! I definitely haven't read the last book by Shaun Hutson!
January 21, 2016
This was a really good book. I fell out of routine a bit so it took me ages getting through it, but I'm glad that I stuck with it because it was well worth it.
The story itself was very good. The concept, oh god. The whole thought of the slugs.....
My skin was crawling the entire time I was reading!
Definitely worth checking out.
Highly recommend.
The story itself was very good. The concept, oh god. The whole thought of the slugs.....
My skin was crawling the entire time I was reading!
Definitely worth checking out.
Highly recommend.
June 9, 2023
As the people of Merton bask in the summer heat, a new breed of slug is growing and multiplying. In the waist-high grass, in the dank, dark cellars they are acquiring new tastes, new cravings. For blood. For flesh. Human flesh...
A fun and simple creature feature about man-eating slugs. It's very similar to The Rats by James Herbert, though I feel like the monsters and characters weren't quite as well developed. The gore and horror elements were surprisingly good at points and I enjoyed it for what it is. It's cheesy (or should I say slimy?) fun.
My rating: 2.5/5
A fun and simple creature feature about man-eating slugs. It's very similar to The Rats by James Herbert, though I feel like the monsters and characters weren't quite as well developed. The gore and horror elements were surprisingly good at points and I enjoyed it for what it is. It's cheesy (or should I say slimy?) fun.
My rating: 2.5/5
August 22, 2022
An underrated gem from the formative years of splatterpunk. Nasty, in-your-face, and entertaining as hell.
May 6, 2024
Una lectura entretenida, cumple con esa función, sin grandes pretensiones. Está bien escrito y es una historia muy fluida.
Me recordó mucho al libro "Las ratas" de Herbert.
Tiene momentos muy explícitos, grotescos y asquerosos en torno a las grandes babosas negras que acechan el pueblo. Creando escenas de ataques tan desesperantes como repugnantes.
Seremos testigos de como las babosas van afectando y transformando en muchos aspectos la rutina, tranquilidad, vida, salud y seguridad de todos.
Los personajes son funcionales y queda muy bien asi, no hay profundidad en ellos y es que tampoco es que se necesite en este tipo de tramas.
Me la he pasado muy bien leyendo este libro y es que si les gustan las historias de este estilo, splatterpunk con terror naturalista, deben darle su oportunidad, porque tiene acción y repulsivo desde el inicio.
Muchas y muy extremas muertes a manos de estos asquerosos animalitos.
Me entretuve de principio a fin.
Me recordó mucho al libro "Las ratas" de Herbert.
Tiene momentos muy explícitos, grotescos y asquerosos en torno a las grandes babosas negras que acechan el pueblo. Creando escenas de ataques tan desesperantes como repugnantes.
Seremos testigos de como las babosas van afectando y transformando en muchos aspectos la rutina, tranquilidad, vida, salud y seguridad de todos.
Los personajes son funcionales y queda muy bien asi, no hay profundidad en ellos y es que tampoco es que se necesite en este tipo de tramas.
Me la he pasado muy bien leyendo este libro y es que si les gustan las historias de este estilo, splatterpunk con terror naturalista, deben darle su oportunidad, porque tiene acción y repulsivo desde el inicio.
Muchas y muy extremas muertes a manos de estos asquerosos animalitos.
Me entretuve de principio a fin.
March 8, 2023
A disgusting tale about mutated slugs pining for human flesh and blood.
Not particularly well written; but engaging, entertaining and surprisingly suspenseful. This was a quick, fun read with some wonderfully gory, blood-splattered scenes.
Not particularly well written; but engaging, entertaining and surprisingly suspenseful. This was a quick, fun read with some wonderfully gory, blood-splattered scenes.
March 28, 2022
Creature feature horror novels are never supposed to be deep or meaningful, and Slugs doesn’t even try to deviate from those tropes. Instead it’s as simple as the title: killer slugs on the lose. It’s fast, to the point, and excels in pulpy gore and violence.
Yes this book is trash. Lowbrow fiction of the highest order, following along the same vein as fellow English horror author Guy N. Smith. But you know what? I don’t care because Slugs was an absolute blast to read.
Yes this book is trash. Lowbrow fiction of the highest order, following along the same vein as fellow English horror author Guy N. Smith. But you know what? I don’t care because Slugs was an absolute blast to read.
December 11, 2025
Ah, the 1970s…. I remember walking up to the corner store and buying novels from the spinning near the checkout counter. I would have been in middle school at the time and remember buying The Omen and other horror books. What I remember the most about 1970s horror was that anything could kill you. There was the shark, killer bees, killer house in Long Island, even killer garden plants. Slugs does not disappoint; a classic in its genre.
I have listened to many books since I got hit by a car almost five years ago. This, however, is the first book that I have actually read (and remembered). I think I am finally back
I have listened to many books since I got hit by a car almost five years ago. This, however, is the first book that I have actually read (and remembered). I think I am finally back
August 26, 2016
Slugs!!!
A great creature feature. My first Shaun Hutson book to read, and I loved it! Just follow the slimy trails for a creepy crawly good time full of B Movie type terror
A great creature feature. My first Shaun Hutson book to read, and I loved it! Just follow the slimy trails for a creepy crawly good time full of B Movie type terror
March 8, 2025
In a longer, better book, there would have been countless scenes with the main character imploring the bureaucratic city council to understand the danger the town was in as a result of the Slugs. We would have gotten fleshed out characters that we could learn to love or hate, and understood the complex connections between the townsfolk. But fuck all that! This is 200 pages of disgusting killer slug action, with stomach turning goop and gore, unnecessarily salacious sex scenes, and grisly deaths! It's as if Hutson read James Herbert's The Rats, and said "hold my pint of ale, bruv".
September 9, 2022
Slugs (Slugs #1) by Shaun Huston is completely ridiculous, but you know I couldn't put it down. Let's just say that it is *very* '80s horror and it's also very visual. My two main questions regarding the story: 1. Why didn't they use salt? & 2. Why didn't they just run away from the slow moving slugs before they had a chance to eat anyone? Finally, I just wanted to say that I just found out that there was a movie adaptation of this made in 1988 and it's currently on YouTube. I can say that I watched it shortly after finishing this and it is just as deranged!
August 16, 2021
There's only a few authors that can take a harmless non threatening thing like a gastropod and turn it into a bloody viscous killer. Shaun Hutson is one of them. I'm a big fan of animals/nature going on killer rampages, and this one hit the spot nicely.
A health inspector in a small community discovers that people are dying in horrendous ways. Their faces eaten away. Eyeballs popped out of skulls. All flesh torn from bone. He joins up with a museum curator and sewer worker to destroy them all. Which leads to a battle under the streets of the town. In-between all this though are made to order victims. A dirty home owner. A salesman with a big contract to close. A poor slow child's bunny and more. A real great time.
A health inspector in a small community discovers that people are dying in horrendous ways. Their faces eaten away. Eyeballs popped out of skulls. All flesh torn from bone. He joins up with a museum curator and sewer worker to destroy them all. Which leads to a battle under the streets of the town. In-between all this though are made to order victims. A dirty home owner. A salesman with a big contract to close. A poor slow child's bunny and more. A real great time.
January 20, 2017
He entrado al mundo de splatter grotesco del autor de culto Shaun Hutson con una de sus obras clave. Esta entretenida revisión del cliché de "naturaleza vs ser humano" tiene bastante fama por lo asquerosita que es y por su adaptación al cine en 1988, "Slugs, muerte viscosa", de nuestro inefable Juan Piquer Simón. Decir que la novela es bastante mejor que la película, hay más sexo, violencia y referencias a Iron Maiden (el grupo preferido de Hutson) para parar un tren. Se repite bastante, sus personajes son de cartón piedra y el final es abrupto y algo deus ex machina, pero tiene el encanto de la serie B de antaño.
April 11, 2021
3
EDIT: 4/11/21 - changing to a 3 from a 3.5 as the book has settled a bit. I liked it some. There's certainly a charm in reading about slugs with they central tooth fucking up the townsfolk, but not much happens, the story beats are lackluster, and I only really liked a supporting character out of the whole cast of characters. Hutson is great with description but here you can tell he was still stretching his legs.
"Mucoid"
EDIT: 4/11/21 - changing to a 3 from a 3.5 as the book has settled a bit. I liked it some. There's certainly a charm in reading about slugs with they central tooth fucking up the townsfolk, but not much happens, the story beats are lackluster, and I only really liked a supporting character out of the whole cast of characters. Hutson is great with description but here you can tell he was still stretching his legs.
"Mucoid"
May 17, 2019
It does exactly what it says on the tin: pure unadulterated fun. Begone, pretentious readers, there's nothing for you here.
July 5, 2019
Cuando comencé la lectura de Las babosas, me di cuenta de que estaba ante una prueba de fuego. Y es que, como amante del género de terror, hay una cuestión que me preocupaba. Las obras con alto componente de gore son especialmente disfrutables durante la adolescencia, pero con el paso del tiempo uno se va haciendo más "delicado" respecto a estas cuestiones, relegándolas a un concepto estético que, más allá de su intención de transgredir, no parece aportar demasiado a un género en el que actualmente prefiero un contenido más sutil. En otras palabras, bajo mi punto de vista el terror se encuentra en lo velado o sugerente antes que en lo explícito y evidente. Por todos estos motivos considero que el mérito de Shaun Hutson no es baladí en esta obra, ya que demuestra que mi percepción es incompleta al pretender devaluar este tipo de novelas.
Las babosas presenta una historia que puede resumirse en "babosas empiezan a comer carne, se convierten en plaga y amenazan la seguridad de Merton, pequeño municipio situado al sur de Londres". Con ello, tenemos una propuesta que evidentemente bebe del terror de las creature features que proliferaron en las décadas de los 40 y los 50, actualizándolas para introducir mayores dosis de "credibilidad" y, sobre todo, de truculencia con la que agitar los estómagos de los lectores.
La novela sigue una estructura que alterna el seguimiento al personaje central, Brady, con una serie de escenas con otros vecinos, en las que las babosas hacen de las suyas sin miramientos. Esta alternancia se acerca de alguna manera al subgénero del slasher y al mismo tiempo hace que la lectura resulte muy fluida y que el efecto de repetición no se acuse en exceso.
Una de las cosas que más me ha sorprendido de una lectura en la que supuestamente predomina la falta de pretensiones es el tiempo y esfuerzo que Hutson emplea en dotar de un trasfondo a casi todos los personajes que desfilan por el relato. Con esto, el autor demuestra un dominio en cuanto a diseño de personajes más propio de obras más ambiciosas. Sin embargo, tal vez aquí tengamos uno de los principales problemas de la novela, y es que el perfecto dibujo que Hutson hace de muchos personajes secundarios casi excede a la poca profundidad de Brady, el protagonista, quien queda apenas esbozado a través de unos cuantos pasajes. Pese a ello, es muy de agradecer la continua humanización de todos estos personajes secundarios cuyo final no suele ser muy halagüeño.
Las babosas presenta una historia que puede resumirse en "babosas empiezan a comer carne, se convierten en plaga y amenazan la seguridad de Merton, pequeño municipio situado al sur de Londres". Con ello, tenemos una propuesta que evidentemente bebe del terror de las creature features que proliferaron en las décadas de los 40 y los 50, actualizándolas para introducir mayores dosis de "credibilidad" y, sobre todo, de truculencia con la que agitar los estómagos de los lectores.
La novela sigue una estructura que alterna el seguimiento al personaje central, Brady, con una serie de escenas con otros vecinos, en las que las babosas hacen de las suyas sin miramientos. Esta alternancia se acerca de alguna manera al subgénero del slasher y al mismo tiempo hace que la lectura resulte muy fluida y que el efecto de repetición no se acuse en exceso.
Una de las cosas que más me ha sorprendido de una lectura en la que supuestamente predomina la falta de pretensiones es el tiempo y esfuerzo que Hutson emplea en dotar de un trasfondo a casi todos los personajes que desfilan por el relato. Con esto, el autor demuestra un dominio en cuanto a diseño de personajes más propio de obras más ambiciosas. Sin embargo, tal vez aquí tengamos uno de los principales problemas de la novela, y es que el perfecto dibujo que Hutson hace de muchos personajes secundarios casi excede a la poca profundidad de Brady, el protagonista, quien queda apenas esbozado a través de unos cuantos pasajes. Pese a ello, es muy de agradecer la continua humanización de todos estos personajes secundarios cuyo final no suele ser muy halagüeño.
September 26, 2020
This Garth Marenghi-esque novel treats the reader to a constant procession of unrelated and unlikeable characters who either meet a sticky end at the hands (or proboscises) of the slugs, or blindly never realise how close they came to a squelchy and bloody death.
Slugs makes no bones about positing women in ostensibly traditional roles. They cook dinner, they look after children, they take showers, enjoy a good natter, and are hysterically passionate about housework. They also get beaten by drunk husbands, miscarry in car crashes, turn barren, get cheated on, get used to cheat on others, constantly obsess about their own nipples and whether or not they're wearing a bra, start the day masturbating naked in front of a full length mirror, and get eaten alive, genitalia first.
"She slid further into her denims, allowing the seam to cut into her damp cleft [...] noting how her thin shirt made her hardened nipples even more prominent"
Seriously, why is she doing this? Because it's central to the plot? Because it has something to do with killer slugs? No! It's because her husband left her to raise a "slightly retarded" child all by herself, and since she's unable to exist without a man, she's getting all hot thinking about her neighbour, "a nice bloke...pity he was married."
When I picked up this book I was looking forward to what the cover boasted, some trashy "mind-shattering horror" punctuated by gore and tension. I suppose that was there, but given all the sexism and poor style choices that surrounded it, it wound up taking a back seat.
However, the mistakes and tropes were so persistent and absurd that reading them became almost like an act of friendly familiarity. It wasn't so much horror and suspense that kept me reading, but the bizarre desire to see just what ludicrous backstory, female-abuse or appalling conventions the book would throw out next.
Read it because it's shit.
Nick
xx
This book wins my unofficial award for best/worst simile ever. "Burst forth like diarhoettic excretion." Lovely.
Slugs makes no bones about positing women in ostensibly traditional roles. They cook dinner, they look after children, they take showers, enjoy a good natter, and are hysterically passionate about housework. They also get beaten by drunk husbands, miscarry in car crashes, turn barren, get cheated on, get used to cheat on others, constantly obsess about their own nipples and whether or not they're wearing a bra, start the day masturbating naked in front of a full length mirror, and get eaten alive, genitalia first.
"She slid further into her denims, allowing the seam to cut into her damp cleft [...] noting how her thin shirt made her hardened nipples even more prominent"
Seriously, why is she doing this? Because it's central to the plot? Because it has something to do with killer slugs? No! It's because her husband left her to raise a "slightly retarded" child all by herself, and since she's unable to exist without a man, she's getting all hot thinking about her neighbour, "a nice bloke...pity he was married."
When I picked up this book I was looking forward to what the cover boasted, some trashy "mind-shattering horror" punctuated by gore and tension. I suppose that was there, but given all the sexism and poor style choices that surrounded it, it wound up taking a back seat.
However, the mistakes and tropes were so persistent and absurd that reading them became almost like an act of friendly familiarity. It wasn't so much horror and suspense that kept me reading, but the bizarre desire to see just what ludicrous backstory, female-abuse or appalling conventions the book would throw out next.
Read it because it's shit.
Nick
xx
This book wins my unofficial award for best/worst simile ever. "Burst forth like diarhoettic excretion." Lovely.
August 29, 2020
Being devoured alive is a terrible way to go, so naturally there's an entire genre of horror devoted to animals going apeshit on folks who should be higher up on the food chain. Peter Benchley wasn't the first dude to write a book about nature culling the human population (he's pre-dated by the likes of Daphne Du Maurier's The Birds from 1953, and Stephen Gilbert's Ratman's Notebooks from 1969), but after Jaws hit the best-seller list in 1973, you couldn't stop the copycats. James Herbert was one of the first, pushing Rats on to British shelves in 1974, and from then, every species you cared to name was up for co-opting in the name of terror: dogs, cats, cockroaches, bears, bats, bees -- didn't matter. If it was alive and capable of consuming and/or destroying people, someone wrote a book about it doing just that.
Shaun Hutson arrived on the scene like the kid who got picked last for kickball. Other people had already penned stories about the bigger, nastier, and deadlier critters out there, but that wasn't about to stop Hutson. Oh no. He dove head-first into that barrel to scrape the bottom, and he came up both slimy and swinging with Slugs.
This book is exactly what you think it is: a story about murderous, poisonous, flesh-stripping, blood-drinking, shell-less terrestrial gastropods. They invade small town UK, crawling through the grass and slithering through the sewers in their relentless search for flesh, and when they do, read that first sentence again.
Slugs are about the goofiest would-be killers on the planet. They move with sloth-like speed, are completely unarmored, and can be murdered by common table salt. Nevertheless, Hutson manages to turn something preyed on by nearly everything else in the animal kingdom into a roiling, writhing, burrowing, slimy shit show of equal parts awful and hilarious.
This is not, by any stretch of the imagination, a "good" book. The characters are forgettable (seriously, 48 hours later and I can't even remember the protagonist's name), the plot is ludicrous, and the premise is absurd. Despite this, Hutson spun three hundred and sixty-eight gawddamn pages out of that one-word title, and once you start, you'll keep going, because you already knew what you were getting into from the cover.
Slugs is everything wrong (and thus, to me, everything right) with 80's creature-feature horror. It turned a common garden nuisance into the invertebrate equivalent of Michael Myers. It reads very much like the novelization of a direct-to-video horror flick, but in this case, the book spawned a terrible movie instead. No, trust me, you don't want to see it. Even Hutson thought it was awful.
You pick up a book like Slugs for one reason, and one reason only: to see how inventive the author can be when it comes to wholesale slaughter. As long as this is why you're reading Slugs, you'll be impressed at all the ways Hutson savages his characters. By the time the danger is presumed contained, you'll have seen beloved pets turned into liquid hamburger, genitals burrowed into, eyes destroyed, brains hemorrhaged, tongues chewed, grave robbers devoured, women consumed, children obliterated, and oh yeah, an enormous sewer explosion that should, by all rights, flood everyone's home with a flaming torrent of cascading shit.
It doesn't do this, but it should. Flaming torrents of cascading shit should be a problem for everyone, not just me after a trip to Long John Silver's. Hutson exercises better bowel control than I have. Good for him. Good for all of us, really.
Hutson ends Slugs on a cliffhanger, which allowed him to write its follow-up, Breeding Ground, a few years later. I haven't read it, but come on, it's "Man-Eating Slugs vs Humanity, Round Two!", and Hutson ran out of fucks to give roughly four pages into round one, so I can't imagine it's too high-brow for the likes of me.
Best Scene:
There is precisely one scene in Slugs that damn near made me unintentionally regurgitate my supper. One poor sod accidentally sucks down a slug with his salad, which causes him tremendous stomach pain at first, then later a literal splitting headache. See, it isn't bad enough that the slugs want to eat you. Said slugs also carry around a nasty-ass parasite called a schistosome in their blood stream, and these sons of bitches are designed to do one thing and one thing only: get into your bloodstream, lay eggs in your brain, then grow into worms which burrow out of their human host.
Through the eyeballs.
We watch this happen to our poor walking time bomb in the middle of his high-stakes business lunch, and the results are lovingly described right down to all the barfing everybody else does when they see this poor schlub cross over the rainbow bridge.
Now that I think about it, there's a lot of throwing up in Slugs. Way more hurling than I think I've ever read in any other horror novel. Shaun Hutson loves to make his characters toss their cookies, whether it's from witnessing gruesome events, or because they're crawling through a pit of chest-deep turd water in the local sewers. If you're prone to sympathetic technicolor yawns, Slugs is not the book for you.
Shaun Hutson arrived on the scene like the kid who got picked last for kickball. Other people had already penned stories about the bigger, nastier, and deadlier critters out there, but that wasn't about to stop Hutson. Oh no. He dove head-first into that barrel to scrape the bottom, and he came up both slimy and swinging with Slugs.
This book is exactly what you think it is: a story about murderous, poisonous, flesh-stripping, blood-drinking, shell-less terrestrial gastropods. They invade small town UK, crawling through the grass and slithering through the sewers in their relentless search for flesh, and when they do, read that first sentence again.
Slugs are about the goofiest would-be killers on the planet. They move with sloth-like speed, are completely unarmored, and can be murdered by common table salt. Nevertheless, Hutson manages to turn something preyed on by nearly everything else in the animal kingdom into a roiling, writhing, burrowing, slimy shit show of equal parts awful and hilarious.
This is not, by any stretch of the imagination, a "good" book. The characters are forgettable (seriously, 48 hours later and I can't even remember the protagonist's name), the plot is ludicrous, and the premise is absurd. Despite this, Hutson spun three hundred and sixty-eight gawddamn pages out of that one-word title, and once you start, you'll keep going, because you already knew what you were getting into from the cover.
Slugs is everything wrong (and thus, to me, everything right) with 80's creature-feature horror. It turned a common garden nuisance into the invertebrate equivalent of Michael Myers. It reads very much like the novelization of a direct-to-video horror flick, but in this case, the book spawned a terrible movie instead. No, trust me, you don't want to see it. Even Hutson thought it was awful.
You pick up a book like Slugs for one reason, and one reason only: to see how inventive the author can be when it comes to wholesale slaughter. As long as this is why you're reading Slugs, you'll be impressed at all the ways Hutson savages his characters. By the time the danger is presumed contained, you'll have seen beloved pets turned into liquid hamburger, genitals burrowed into, eyes destroyed, brains hemorrhaged, tongues chewed, grave robbers devoured, women consumed, children obliterated, and oh yeah, an enormous sewer explosion that should, by all rights, flood everyone's home with a flaming torrent of cascading shit.
It doesn't do this, but it should. Flaming torrents of cascading shit should be a problem for everyone, not just me after a trip to Long John Silver's. Hutson exercises better bowel control than I have. Good for him. Good for all of us, really.
Hutson ends Slugs on a cliffhanger, which allowed him to write its follow-up, Breeding Ground, a few years later. I haven't read it, but come on, it's "Man-Eating Slugs vs Humanity, Round Two!", and Hutson ran out of fucks to give roughly four pages into round one, so I can't imagine it's too high-brow for the likes of me.
Best Scene:
There is precisely one scene in Slugs that damn near made me unintentionally regurgitate my supper. One poor sod accidentally sucks down a slug with his salad, which causes him tremendous stomach pain at first, then later a literal splitting headache. See, it isn't bad enough that the slugs want to eat you. Said slugs also carry around a nasty-ass parasite called a schistosome in their blood stream, and these sons of bitches are designed to do one thing and one thing only: get into your bloodstream, lay eggs in your brain, then grow into worms which burrow out of their human host.
Through the eyeballs.
We watch this happen to our poor walking time bomb in the middle of his high-stakes business lunch, and the results are lovingly described right down to all the barfing everybody else does when they see this poor schlub cross over the rainbow bridge.
Now that I think about it, there's a lot of throwing up in Slugs. Way more hurling than I think I've ever read in any other horror novel. Shaun Hutson loves to make his characters toss their cookies, whether it's from witnessing gruesome events, or because they're crawling through a pit of chest-deep turd water in the local sewers. If you're prone to sympathetic technicolor yawns, Slugs is not the book for you.
November 8, 2020
Babosas grandes que comen gente, con episodios de sexo (entre personas, no entre moluscos) para animar la narración. Entretenida e intrascendente.
September 9, 2023
Trashy, cheesy, gory, and there’s flesh-eating slugs. What’s not to love?! 5 stars!
September 14, 2023
SLUGS.
Creature feature.
This book was great, taking a seemingly non-lethal animal and shooting it full of steroids, these slugs are big and mean and well, they have a hankering for human flesh!
It does what it says on the cover and delivers it well - ‘They slime, they ooze, they kill.’
I have questions, how do they move so fast, why not just walk away from the encroaching back mass of 1000 slugs, how they seem to instantly burrow into skin, how the police were never informed, how one council officer is able to achieve so much when I can never get someone on the phone when I want to talk about my council tax.
Shaun Hutson delivers a great story, but as is common with these horror books of this era, I’m finding the depictions of women and also sex scenes rather sickening in their writing - I understand this was the time, but I’m glad we no longer live in that time.
Believe it or not folks, women are just more than meat to be used by male writers, who appear to be trying to live out their fantasies - if I read about one more nipple being teased until it’s an erect, hard bud, or how someone played with her wet cleft between her legs - or even just a receptionist standing up and her breasts being her glory, her nipples becoming hard just at the presence of me… I think I’m going to throw the book at the wall!
Anyway, apart from that. I thoroughly enjoyed this… I have Breeding Ground on my shelf, the sequel, so will try and get to that before the end of the year!
Creature feature.
This book was great, taking a seemingly non-lethal animal and shooting it full of steroids, these slugs are big and mean and well, they have a hankering for human flesh!
It does what it says on the cover and delivers it well - ‘They slime, they ooze, they kill.’
I have questions, how do they move so fast, why not just walk away from the encroaching back mass of 1000 slugs, how they seem to instantly burrow into skin, how the police were never informed, how one council officer is able to achieve so much when I can never get someone on the phone when I want to talk about my council tax.
Shaun Hutson delivers a great story, but as is common with these horror books of this era, I’m finding the depictions of women and also sex scenes rather sickening in their writing - I understand this was the time, but I’m glad we no longer live in that time.
Believe it or not folks, women are just more than meat to be used by male writers, who appear to be trying to live out their fantasies - if I read about one more nipple being teased until it’s an erect, hard bud, or how someone played with her wet cleft between her legs - or even just a receptionist standing up and her breasts being her glory, her nipples becoming hard just at the presence of me… I think I’m going to throw the book at the wall!
Anyway, apart from that. I thoroughly enjoyed this… I have Breeding Ground on my shelf, the sequel, so will try and get to that before the end of the year!
September 1, 2021
So you don't think slugs could ever be scary right? Well this book is about to prove you wrong. I know that if I come across a slug anytime soon I will be screaming my head off and running far far away, and I don't ever run. As soon as you open the pages for this one the gruesomeness starts. There is one particular scene at the beginning that actually made me gag. I mean yes, it is similarly to all the other books written about animals at this time, but something in the way this has been written is so scary. And throughout it just feels like this is an impossible problem that will never get solved. I was so freaked out and stressed reading this. I don't generally read sequels as they never live up to the first, but so many people have recommended the second I think I will give it a go. Honestly pick this one up and read that first chapter.
November 6, 2016
Slugs oozing out of dark, dank basements, driven by an insatiable thirst for human blood, an overpowering crazing for warm flesh. Slugs - boring into human bodies, attacking the soft, internal organs, eating their victims alive from within.
This is just the kind of story I enjoy! Slugs. Man-eating slugs! It was as awesome as it sounds! Total creature feature B-movie wonderfulness! <3 Seriously love it. It was a lot of fun reading this story. The only thing I didn't like is that a slug ate a pet bunny though. BOO!
This is just the kind of story I enjoy! Slugs. Man-eating slugs! It was as awesome as it sounds! Total creature feature B-movie wonderfulness! <3 Seriously love it. It was a lot of fun reading this story. The only thing I didn't like is that a slug ate a pet bunny though. BOO!
October 11, 2014
Lectura rápida, adictiva, directa y fácil de seguir. Si John Carpenter escribiera un libro, sería muy parecido a este.
Babosas asesinas, con dientes y una longitud impropia. ¡Tapemos todos los agujeros de casa para que no entren!
Babosas asesinas, con dientes y una longitud impropia. ¡Tapemos todos los agujeros de casa para que no entren!
March 9, 2017
1. Gross out horror - meh.
2. Why did they never try salt?
3. Antibiotics don't work for a virus.
2. Why did they never try salt?
3. Antibiotics don't work for a virus.
September 22, 2025
2,75 ⭐️ Het is geen hoogstaande horror, maar dat had ik ook niet verwacht. Ik verwachtte een gruwelijke, gory, vermakelijke horror zonder al te veel diepgang en dat is precies wat ik kreeg! Extraatje waren de beschrijvingen van vrouwelijke lichamen op plekken waar dat totaal niet nodig was. Deze male gaze in 80’s horror was ik even vergeten. Maar ik heb ervan genoten (van het verhaal, niet de male gaze)👌🏼 Kijk ik nu anders naar naaktslakken? Nee. Het blijven voor mij gore, slijmerige dingen waar ik met een grote (hele grote) boog omheen loop. Raad ik dit boek aan? Ja. Als je in de stemming bent om een vies boek te lezen die een paar uurtjes vermaak biedt, dan raad ik deze zeker aan 😌
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