For a book called Hell’s Titties, there was a surprisingly nonexistent amount of titties in here. A few tight t-shirt and nudie magazine references, but that was it. By the sound of the premise and the title alone, I was expecting a spectacular splatterpunk with tons of childish, vulgar humor, nudity, depraved sexual acts, and violence galore. So I got the humor and some violence, but nothing else. For a story taking place in Hell’s Titties with two braindead hillbillies that accidentally summon a giant demon cockroach, named Zabor…again…it seemed very promising. But I finished the story feeling like I just read a Simon McHardy book for pre-teens. Now I thought Floyd and Bucky had some tremendous exchanges, and were the highlight of the story. The humor was great, but the story needed more to keep it going. It was very dialogue heavy, which dragged at times, and Zabor didn’t showcase all that much. The image of a giant cockroach masturbating to a dirty magazine onto a pentagram was a great visual. And so much could have been done with an antagonist like that, but the story just leaned into vulgarity and humor too much, sacrificing everything else in the process. By no means do I think this was a bad story, and it had a lot going for it. But when I finish a good book, I like to remember all the great things it had, rather than all the missed opportunities. This, unfortunately, fell into the latter category.
A tome - nay a ballad - for our times, unique in both scope and near-poetic medium of thrilling excitement enunciated in dulcet tones and subtle metaphor worthy to stand with the poetry of old.
The bucolic atmosphere will entrance with its exquisite saga of two brash and earthy protagonists cast in the mold of operatic heroes and operatic heroism, playing out a tale of greed and love and duty and striving for the unattainable eidolon of ideals, while grounded in the workaday world. The virtues of persistence and the wisdom of renunciation are all fully encapsulated in an intricate mélange of words that mate and birth and bring forth imagery painted across the virgin canvas of the reader's mind in a whole of narrative bliss.
Our brace of churlish yet endearing swain experience the supernal that comes to incarnation via the most base of media and generative substance, to walk the earth and encounter humanity at the only points wherein such outre splendor can: through the procreative and digestive acts, all the while bringing forth the full gamut of human failing sand temptations in an enactment of storytelling ideals owing to sources as varied and intricate as Faust and Homer's Iliad in its ambition and melodic idiom and colloquery. Real life meets the shining exemplar for a pair of latter-day troubadors.
(pause)
(looks up at what's been written)
Okay, what's this book about? Look and the cover. Look at the title. THE HELL YOU THINK THIS BOOK'S ABOUT?
Cover? Title? They ain't lying. So read the damn book and laugh your ass off!
Whaaaat? A collaboration between two of my favourite authors – Robert Bevan and Steve Wetherell? Shut up and take my money!
Or more accurately shut up and take my Kindle Unlimited payment in about 8 week’s time. But still, how could I resist. Hell’s Titties, a small town nestled between the “twin peaks” of East and West Tittie in the Appalachian Mountains, is the unwitting town sitting atop an ancient evil.
The heroes of the story, Bucky and Floyd are a couple of lifelong slackers living in a trailer where their retirement plans hinge on growing weed and a stash of nudie mags dating back to the 70s. Bucky, slightly more ambitious from Floyd is determined to climb the ranks of Texaco and make something of himself, the reasons why a bit ambiguous. Bucky alludes to it at one point and I don’t think ever fully explained… but maybe it’s just something for future books?
Anyway, in a comical series of events Floyd accidentally and correctly perform an ancient ritual that school kids of the area have been using to get laid for decades to summon a demon.
From out of the toilet bowl crawls a cockroach demon which takes, among other things, a particular liking to the nudie mag that brought it into being. Being out of their league, demon-hunting wise, they recruit a few others into helping them. An ex-girlfriend of Floyd’s (Rainn) who owns the occult book shop, Zelda, a Velma-esque girl who takes an instant liking to Bucky, along with a few others that round out this newly formed Scooby gang.
Actually, if I had to summarise the book in one sentence, it’d be “How Scooby Doo could have been if it were written for adults and had more dirty jokes.“
Together armed only with super soakers half-filled with bug spray they hunt the demon to capture it for fame and fortune. Of course, a bumbling troop of slackers and stoners will always stuff things up, and the authors do not disappoint.
I thought the story was very well written for a collaboration. The writing styles were consistent and for the most part I couldn’t tell who had written which parts. A few moments had me thinking “yep, that’s a Bevan bit,” or “that’s a Steve turn of phrase,” but generally it read as if a single author had written it.
I look forward to more of Bucky and Floyd as they hunt down more demons in future books.
Kindle Unlimited, don't read a lot of this type thing really, but saw Robert Bevan's name.
Nestled between two peaks in the foothills of the southern Appalachian Mountains, a quiet town sits upon an evil as old as the hills themselves.Bucky Wallace longs to break free and see the world outside of Hell's Titties, but the town isn't ready to let him go.
According to the end notes, according to ancient legend leaving a review makes the reviewer immune to demon possession, just passing that on. Might want to read and review some of the Critical Failures books too, just to be on the safe side.
One of those books that I saw on Amazon and was curious, so I decided why not. Glad I did because it was so funny. Kind of reminds me of some shenanigans that would happen in the small town I'm from. If you're into senseless humor, I can't recommend this enough.
I admit to being a sucker for books set in the Appalachians so I gave it a shot. I gave up at 15% through the book. I do not recall a pair of protagonists so unsympathetic as these two. The first couple of chapters seem like a poorly run RPG (Call of Chulthu universe) as fan fiction. Avoid it.
What a vulgar, disgusting, Hilarious, enrapturing piece of fiction. It's a redneck X-filesesque adventure set in a backwater town. So totally worth the read, a fun short read.