Evil

by Wol-vriey

The Evil began the week before Sylvia Stewart's 30th birthday.

Cathy Higgins died.

The Bargainer resurrected Cathy . . . for a price.

The price? Cathy's father Ronan had to plant some seeds for him.

But these were no ordinary seeds the Bargainer gave to Ronan Higgins. These were seeds from seeds which required human flesh as both soil and fertilizer.

And meanwhile, the unsuspecting Sylvia Stewart went ahead with the plans for her birthday party, which was to be held on Ronan Higgins' sunflower farm . . .

Genres: Horror

211 pages, Kindle Edition

Published March 31, 2019

About the author

Wol-vriey writes eXXXtreme horror fiction, and also some surrealist stuff.

To date, he has published over forty novels in both genres.

His horror novels include: EnterPAINment, LGBT, The Virgin, Marriage, Women, Nightmare Fuel 1 & 2, Haunted House XXX 1 & 2, and How To Succeed in Life.

On the surrealist side of things, he is the author of Vegan Zombie Apocalypse, Vegan Vampire Vaginas, Vagina Mundi, and the disturbing and unsettling Dr. Orgasm.

Reviews

[Janie · Rating 4 out of 5]

On our Spinning Earth, resuscitation from death comes with a diabolical price. A grieving father makes a deal with The Bargainer, an giant entity from the Static Earth below ours. To bring his daughter back to life from an unfortunate accident, Ronan Higgins is given some seeds to plant. These seeds are not to be planted in the earth, however.

Fertilized by human remains and blood, the resulting growths are twisted and hungry, feeding through mouths formed close to their roots. Tentacular limbs rip prey to pieces while demonic entities capture humans as fodder. Escape seems impossible for those seeking to survive the carnage that takes place at an isolated farm. Smothered in blue goo, flames and plenty of bodily fluids, this warped adventure is sure to please those seeking an entertaining night of bizarre horror.

[Hanaa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wol-vriey has written such distinct work as

Meat suitcase
Chainsaw Cop Corpse
Vegan Vampire Vaginas
Dr. Orgasm
Brainchew
Big Trouble in Little Ass
Vagina Mundi; and of course
Brainchew 2: Out of their heads

With iconic work such as the ones presented, it is hard to deny Wol-vriey when he approaches you to review another one of his books. However, he said this one is more traditionally horror (read: mainstream horror) and less of a Bizarro leaning. I said, “get out of here with that pussy shit” But in reality, I said, “I would be happy to review anything you send me.” And indeed, I was happy to review anything by the amazing Wol-vriey.

If you are one of the uninitiated, Wol-vriey is an always-author of the weird, bizarre, and truly strange. I suppose it’s mostly torture porn, splatterpunk, horror with a creative twist, drug-fuelled…God, I don’t know. But it’s definitely Bizarro. A book that captured my heart was Vegan Vampire Vaginas. I didn’t know the full volume of what I was getting into, until the blowjob scene ended, then I knew…. I knew it wouldn’t be like anything else I have read. And it blew me away. He topped every other unimaginable sentence and experience with another sentence that was so unbelievable and crazy that I truly believed nothing could top it. AND IT DID. EVERY TIME.

Bizarro is a genre near and dear to my heart. It is an experience that must be had. If you don’t have interest in doing drugs, perhaps picking up Bizarro would best suit you. It is a good reference point to what certain trips and holes must feel like for people who enjoy the occasional or oft drug experience.

This time, Wol-vriey offered me one of his newer works, entitled Evil. This time it is a more on route to a traditional horror, although I don’t know if it is to appeal to wider audience or if he wanted to scratch an itch he had. It does remind me of the bibliography of Edward Lee. He had written a great range of literature from dark fantasy, horror, bizarro, to splatterpunk.

Part bargaining tale, part resurrection tale, part classic hillbilly slasher, this book has great entertainment value. Although many would claim there isn’t any merit in books like this, I would argue that there is. At the very least you have authors who dare to use their out-of-the-box imagination to weave a story that give you laughs, winces, and plenty of blood. Not the merit of a Dostoevsky novel, but the level of a horror that doesn’t take itself too seriously. You can tell Wol-vriey had a lot of fun writing this.

My contention with this novel is that Wol-vriey intended this book not to be bizarro, but instead, a mainstream horror, which I don’t think it completely is. It checks all of the boxes of what you think a mainstream horror might contain, but the execution is still in the bizarro/splatterpunk genre. It is so over-the-top, overly sexual, explicit on every level imaginable, and most mainstream horror doesn’t rely too heavily on that.

Most horror novels in the mainstream tend to have more atmosphere and tone heavy books. There is more grit, there is more nuanced gore. You can argue with me about that, but that’s what I’ve noticed in the mainstream horror genre. There might be that one scene where everything gets coo-coo bananas but that’s the climax, and everything from thereon is much more tame in comparison. I think in the mind of Wol-vriey, he wants to out-do himself after every scene, which there is nothing wrong with that. It’s just not mainstream horror in my eyes. It is entertaining as all hell, like an 80s horror novel on steroids. It is very b-horror movie from the 80s but gone wild.

My technical issues with the book:

Pacing. The book started to gain some traction in chapters but then quickly ended to explore what another character was doing, which took me out of the story. Besides that, I would argue this book, although only 200 pages, could be cut a bit so the story could be tighter.

Typos. I don’t know if Wol-vriey edits his own work (which is fine), but there are several typos and awkward phrasing that could have been cut or reworded.

The intention. I have mentioned this one above, but I still hold the opinion quite strongly. It was not a mainstream horror book. Sure, it had the qualities of some classic horror stories (bargaining and resurrection), but overall, it was not done in the same manner as so many mainstream books that rely more on building the world and the characters so the tone and atmosphere, along with how the characters behave get under your skin. Wol-vriey does quite the opposite; he lays everything on the table without hesitation. I love the gusto and moxy, but those are things I heavily associate with Bizarro. I don’t want to make Wol-vriey feel like he didn’t deliver with this novel, but I think some restraint and reliance on tone and atmosphere…character building…culture…set-up might improve his future mainstream horror endeavors. But I love his work as Bizarro.

All together this was fun with high entertainment value, but not without its issues. **Video review to come**

[Lisa Lee · Rating 5 out of 5]

Evil by Wol-vriey is full-on extreme horror/Splatterpunk sure to tickle your taste for depravity and offend every sensibility you might possess. The story flows and moves so well it’s like a bloody movie scene full of carnage you can’t look away from.

This “deal with the devil” story is brash, brutal, and completely irreverent. Wol-vriey’s characters are colorful and vivid, and his sequences are unapologetically graphic. It is a relentless read sure to please the most discerning Splatterpunk aficionado.

A Five-Star read for those who like their extreme horror demonic with a side of twisted splatter.

And yes, the creepy cover art is totally apropos.

[Sharon Leung · Rating 5 out of 5]

Evil and gory

A great read. Full of blood and gore and topped with a bucket full of evil. This book was packed with excitement. Full of capturing twists that had you gripped awaiting to find yet more evil and grotesque happenings. Thoroughly enjoyed, definitely not for the faint of heart or easily offended. But a nice easy pleasant read to get your teeth stuck in to. Definitely recommend.

[Mike · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed the book. It is a dark and twisted story with a lot of sex and violence involved. The concept (I’ll be vague to not give any spoilers)is basically a man loses his daughter,makes a pact with an evil entity,gets his daughter back but not everything is the same.He also has to do some thing’s that are evil to hold up his side of the deal. The main evil entity,the bargainer,is a character I really liked. One of the issues I had was wanting to know more about him and the place he’s from but a sequel would take care of that,not a deal breaker in Horror since leaving some to the imagination is always a good idea. It was short,some characters didn’t fully develop but all in all it was a good read, and didn’t take a long time to finish. I’d recommend this book to anyone who is a horror fan,and reading the reviews,some liked it and others didn’t,but that usually ends up due to our tastes. This is an adult novel,not for those who enjoy a PG type of story,so if that’s your style you like,pass or proceed with caution.

[Ash · Rating 4 out of 5]

Disclaimer: I was sent a copy of this in ebook format directly from the author in return for a rating/review.

I really quite enjoyed this one, it's the sort of horror enjoy reading the most. The story is not particularly in-depth nor fleshed out, but it's a fun read that'll keep you entertained for a while. At 202 pages it is quite a short read, and only a couple of characters were fleshed out. Some of the others could have done with more backstory and involvement.

There's a lot of drugs, sex, depravity, violence and demons in this book, and I love that. I would compare this book to some of Edward Lee's books.

Definitely worth a read

[Steven · Rating 2 out of 5]

So Wol-vriey was a nice enough bloke to provide me with a free copy of this here bookie-wook in exchange for an honest review. Just thought I'd get that out of the way first and foremost. Now does that mean I'm going to go easy on it?

No.

Take a look at my reviews and you'll find that I'm critical even of books I like. So with that said, let's jump into it.

The set-up for EVIL is pretty bog standard. Ronan Higgins's daughter Cathy has just died from a pickaxe to the back of the head. On his drive back into town to report her accidental death, Ronan comes across the Bargainer, a Faustian-style bloke who just screams: STRANGER DANGER! The Bargainer offers to bring Cathy back from the dead in exchange for a little favour. All he has to do is plant some seeds on his farm.

And as you'd expect, shit goes sour, body parts start flying and things get bloody and gory. Except not as quickly as you'd think.

You know what I was thinking of when I was reading this book? Phantasm, that old 1979 horror movie by Don Coscarelli, because both that film and this book have some parallels. A standard horror plot that suddenly goes right off the rails into Coo-Coo Lala Land territory. Phantasm introduces elements of Sci-Fi and Cosmic Horror, while EVIL introduces elements of Bizarro Fiction and Transgressive Fiction. Both feature an antagonist in the form of a Tall Man whose minions carry out his work for him/it. Both feature gruesome transformations and dripping gobs of off-colour blood. Both throw their stories to the sidelines in exchange for balls-to-the-wall sheer craziness.
And if nothing else, when the craziness gets going in EVIL Wol-vriey revels in it. We have dismemberments, enough blood to fill a septic tank, disgusting mutations, gross sex, insanity, enough violence to make Patrick Bateman pitch a tent and carnivorous plants with human teeth. So for the most part, this was what kept me going throughout the story. The sheer lunacy of what I was reading kept my eyes glued to the page.

But as I kept reading a number of things really dragged the whole experience down for me. For starters, this book needed at least a couple trips back to the editor. Like IMMEDIATELY. The first warning signal came with a formatting issue with the PDF edition (think it was the PDF edition?) of the book. The formatting of some of the text at the beginning of chapters was skewiff. The second warning signal came when I found a couple of typos early on and another later when a chapter devoted to one character suddenly changed her name for a sentence. Whoops.
And what the hell does VARTY mean?
Seriously, I looked all over and couldn't find what that word was meant to mean.

Then I started reading the dialogues. The characters of this book have a serious case of TLAWS - Talking Like A Writer Syndrome - a condition that I am determined as all buggery to shove into public consciousness. The characters have this weird stilted way of talking, where they feel less like characters and more like mouthpieces for the writer. Overuse of similes, needlessly complicated phrases/sentences, moments where the action stops so the characters can talk for far longer than is necessary.
This didn't just affect the dialogue either. The story itself was littered with odd word choices which felt like someone browsing a thesaurus. Here's a few of my favourites:

"....she pondered an oddity."
You mean she thought of something?

"The boom of the monsters' deconstruction echoed across the pond surface...."
The monsters aren't an academic setpiece.

"Synergistic genital motion....."
I like this one. Sounds like a new genre of music. Like a music album by some 80's New Wave Band taking cues from the Kama Sutra.

And this isn't just limited to a few pages. This is consistent all throughout the book. So as a result, action setpieces slow to a crawl, character moments drag out longer than they need to and the narrative as a whole feels like a drag. And that for me was a major problem. Because the gory bits got bogged down not by blood but by words.

The characters also suffer from this overuse of TLAWS. Since they all use the same sort of over-flowery dialogue, their personalities get lost in the shuffle. A lot of the information we might have got about the characters from the way they spoke wasn't there because they all talked the same. And what little we got of their characters wasn't exactly the most compelling.
Ronan - The farmer and one of two main villains of the story, Ronan is basically a monster all but from the get-go. We get a little of his character at the beginning but from the moment we're told he's snapped, he gleefully commits to acting like a horny homicidal loon.
Cathy - Ronan's resurrected daughter and the second of our villains, Cathy is a little inconsistent. After she's brought back, she gleefully commits to the blood and violence, except for some reason with Ben, one of the other characters, whom she develops an affection for. Considering that bar that, she's as batshit bonkers as her dad, it feels like a hollow attempt at sympathy.
Sylvia - The birthday girl whose party kicks off the insanity. After her initial intro though, Sylvia kind of just gets thrown to a wayside. She's probably the most sympathetic character if only because she's the one who isn't a total arsewipe.
Ben - A low-end drug stoolie who gets caught, thrown in a ditch near Ronan's farm. Beyond being a victim, he doesn't offer much to the story. His death is particuarly gruesome so he has that going for him.
The Couples - Ben, Michael, Sharon and Vanna make up these two couples and like Ben, their ultimate goal is to be meat for the grinder. The thing about all of these characters is that none of them are worth giving two tugs of a dead dog's dick about. The shit they get up to behind each other's backs makes them all look like shitbags who are deserving of zero sympathy. It also means any shock factor to the deaths is shot to hell, because I didn't care if they died.
Amy Fox - Introduced early in the story as a throwaway character only to come back late into the plot, Amy the badass coke-snorting bitch that she is, only seems to come back to pad out the storyline.
The Bargainer - Our man behind the scenes, the Bargainer is probably the most interesting character if only because the snippets of information we get about him make him far more compelling than our resident autopsy volunteers. If only his backstory wasn't spelled out for us in a single chapter.

And that I think is one of the last problems with this book. What information we do get about the characters is relegated to throwaway chapters than infodump their lives right into our laps. Confused as to why Ronan sees Sharon as his favourite porn star? You won't be a chapter later when its all spelled out for you. Confused as to the Tall Man's origins? You won't be a chapter later when its all spelled out for you. What this means is, the plot has to stop so a character's backstory can be explored instead of organically spaced out across the narrative.

Now having whinged myself into an accordion over all of this, let me point out the following thing and I'm going to make this very crystal clear:

I DO NOT THINK THAT WOL-VRIEY IS A BAD WRITER.

Wol-vriey isnt't like William Massa or Simon R. Green, two writers whom I would put in the column of "Writers who don't give a shit about the craft". Despite all the issues I have with EVIL, I do see a genuine appreciation for writing and earnest attempts to make something distinct and unique. The horror sequences are creative and gruesome. The violence when it lets go is visceral and nasty. There are moments when some of the flowery prose does feel appropo.

But for all of that earnest determination is a book that seriously needed more time to cook. A better implementation of pacing, less flowery prose, characters with their own distinct personalities and a few more rounds with an editor to weed out the typos and strange use of words.

Sorry Wol-vriey. Can't recommend this one. Doesn't mean I'm not game to try some of your other work. Chainsaw Cop Corpse is on my list. Maybe that one will work out better.

[Tessa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Evil is basically a bizzaro about a man who lost his daughter and the extent he went through to bring her back. Cathy’s death happened very early into the book, which meant a majority of the story focused on the aftermath of her death, including her resurrection and what Ronan had to do to fulfil his end of the bargain to bring Cathy back.

Prior to reading this I actually had a 2-3months hiatus from reading/reviewing. Any efforts to read then was half-hearted and never completed. Life has just been so busy for me and it was nice that this was the first book since then that I’ve sat myself down to read 😁

For me, this was a quick and easy read. Some parts I really enjoyed, giggling at the morbid jokes that Wol-vriey is so good at. I remember sending my friend a snapshot of the paragraph where Ben couldn’t fall over to the floor because his third appendage was so long and thick that it acted as a tripod stand. To which my friend immediately replied: “Wol-vriey?” Hahaha

And then there was the part where Vanni and Sharon were unknowingly made into stars of homemade videos. The exchange between the and Ronan was hilarious. You can only trust Wol-vriey to think of something this cheeky ;).

Readers who’ve read a few of his books will also realize that there are shared characters spanning across his books. I may not have spotted all but I do remember Kim, the video surveillance expert whom I’ve first came across in Wet Bones. I dig these little nuggets of familiarity!

In short, this book was fun. But if I were to be impartial, it’s a 3 for me. Sure the writing was enjoyable, but content wise it was not as exciting or unique as his other books like Vegan Zombie Apocalypse, Girls Are Not Smiling, to name a few.

[Shannon Gardner · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mr. Wol-vriey has done it again boys and girls, giving us a look into pure evil. He does evil so well it’s amazing. You won’t look at Sunflower fields the same way again. Great character building and backstories. The cover art is fantastic. The description of the monsters and the Bargainer is spot on, you feel like you are in the farm fields with everyone else. But avoid this man in black standing in the middle of the road, avoid him at all costs. Or you may be sorry. Or you may be tempted to stop, talk, and listen to the DEVIL in black. Don’t make the same mistake that this farmer and his daughter did. If you see this man, he’s 8-9 feet tall or taller, skinny, wearing all black including a black cowboy hat. Run, run as fast and as far as you can, and never look back. You do not want to come across the Bargainer, these monsters, the Underboss. and the Demon Plants. There are some fun “easter eggs” from books in the past. Great twists and turns, and a fantastic ending, opening up many more books with the Bargainer and Static Earth!!!

[Lucas den Braven · Rating 4 out of 5]

A man called Ronan loses his daughter in a bizarre accident. When going to town to report the death, he is stopped by an exceptionally long man, The Bargainer. The bargainer offers him a deal, he will give his daughter back life, if Ronan will plant some seeds for him. Seeds that need very bizarre tending. Ronan takes the deal and after that the horrors begin.

If you are looking for literature and character development, this book is not for you. If you are looking for a horror story, with a lot of sex, shock and gore, it definitely is.

Wol-Vriey does in this book, what he does more often. Horror with a bizarre side; but also written with humor. PArts of the book shock and disgust, but you'll always want to read on and on. Is that not what good horror is supposed to do? I loved the book and finished it really quick. an enjoyable read once again.

Mr. Wol-Vriey sent me a copy of the book in exchange for a fair review.

[Fawaaz · Rating 2 out of 5]

The story was good but some parts put me off like all the sex. Most of it are weird scenes. I'm not sure what to make of this book. Its weird like it can be a fettish to some people. But its a good read if you like slashers.

[April Taylor · Rating 4 out of 5]

A bloody, gory, masterpiece. And for those that read everything that this author writes; the fixer has a brother!!!!!!!!