"My favorite in the DEPRAVED series."--Brian Keene, author of The Rising
The world’s most dangerous woman is back. In DEPRAVED 4, Jessica Sloan awakes from a coma only to find herself facing the most dangerous adversaries to ever cross her path. A sinister organization hopes to recruit her as an assassin while a hulking monster in human form named Vic Manzetti goes on a brutal and audacious rampage. All the while, an old enemy lurks in the background, eager to explore the furthest reaches of sadism and depravity. All are set to collide in an explosion of carnage in the final chapter of Bryan Smith’s infamous saga.
Bryan Smith is the Splatterpunk Award-winning author of more than forty horror and crime books, including 68 Kill, the cult classic Depraved and its sequels, as well as The Killing Kind, Slowly We Rot, The Freakshow, and many more. Bestselling horror author Brian Keene called Slowly We Rot, "The best zombie novel I've ever read."
68 Kill was adapted into a motion picture directed by Trent Haaga and starring Matthew Gray Gubler of the long-running CBS series Criminal Minds. 68 Kill won the Midnighters Award at the SXSW film festival in 2017 and was released to wide acclaim, including positive reviews in The New York Times and Bloody Disgusting.
Bryan also co-scripted an original Harley Quinn story for the House of Horrors anthology from DC Comics. He has worked with renowned horror publishers in both the mass market and small press spheres, including Leisure Books, Samhain Publishing, Grindhouse Press, Death’s Head Press, and more. His works are available wherever books are sold, with select titles also available in German and Italian.
DEPRAVED is not for everyone, but for fans of extreme horror, full of action and debauchery, DEPRAVED is for you and DEPRAVED 4 may have the most vile character of the entire series. All four books are great but I would say DEPRAVED 4 is definitely in my Top 2 of the series and very well may be my favorite of this entire series.
I was excited to read this book and was even more excited to see how this series would end, but I've got to be honest with myself and admit that I wasn't all that happy with this book once it was all said and done.
By the end of Depraved 3 I was under the impression that this series was developing into a never-ending saga where each entry gets more pulpy, more over the top and more contrived than the one before it (similar to Brian Keene's "The Lost Level" series). I was totally fine with that and I was excited to see where the series would go next, so I was surprised to hear that Bryan Smith intended this book to be the final entry in the series and would end Jessica Sloans story for good.
I understand an authors need to want to tie all loose ends in an ongoing story and move onto other things, but I just felt like this book forced an abrupt ending to the series and it just didn't feel natural at all.
There were alot of GREAT scenes with the main antagonist of the story and I loved every second we got to spend with him, but every other scene without him in it just felt like we were going through the motions with filler content meant to lead us to a neat ending so the author could finally be finished with this tale.
Overall I still love the series, and even though the book was still great by most standards, this one just felt as if it were lacking a bit compared to the other 3 books.
Love all of the Depraved series and this was no exception. Think I like the setting of the others more but the nasty vile characters and crazy insane situations where all still here. Plus I think Vic might be my favourite character in the whole series lol.
It is fair to assume that anybody reading this will have at least a passing familiarity with the Bryan Smith’s Depraved series, given we are reviewing the fourth book in the series. The original is one of Smith’s best-loved works and, over ten years later with the newly published ‘Depraved 4’, he is sadly wrapping up the story of extreme horrors best-loved anti-heroes, Jessica Sloan.
The Depraved series has enjoyed an eclectic mix of settings so far, with the cannibalistic backwoods of the original through to the ultra-violent, all-female prison of the third in the series, Smith has kept the series fresh and exciting with each new entry, and changes things up again for Jessica in the fourth and final book in the series.
When we re-join Jessica, she has awoken from a coma following the events of book three, and finds herself in the hands of a sinister organisation that hope to use her formidable skills for their own nefarious ends. No sooner has she began her recovery, then she finds herself embroiled in her most dangerous adventure yet, where she will cross paths with clones, serial killers, and some old friends from her past.
A title like Depraved sets a high expectation for mayhem and gore, and fans of the series won’t be disappointed on that count. While this fourth instalment doesn’t have one memorable gross-out scene to match, say, the barbeque scene in book 2, you will feel suitably dirty after reading this. We also get some new characters, including one of the most reprehensible that Smith has ever committed to paper. Vic Manzetti begins as something of a joke early on in proceedings but goes on to steal the show, and it’s his scenes that really earn the book its title. Nobody writes grindhouse inspired pulp horror insanity like Bryan Smith and this book is certainly not one for the quiet horror crowd.
The book does have one major flaw, in that it woefully underuses Jessica. It is odd, looking back, to note how little she features in the story and how ineffectual her role ultimately is in how things unfold. She is given very little to do, and her time in the organization is overshadowed by the far more interesting side story of Vic. While everything ties up nicely at the end, I couldn’t help but feel it wasn’t the high note you would like such an iconic character in extreme horror to go out on and I found her journey in this last chapter to be a little disappointing.
This may not be the strongest entry in the Depraved series, and it may be sad to see Jessica’s story come to an end, but you can be guaranteed a good time with anything Smith writes, and Depraved 4 is no exception to the rule. While it suffers as a comparison to the other books in such an excellent and consistent series, this is a solid and entertaining read in its own right. 3 Stars
I have been a long time fan of this book series so imagine my surprise when there was a book 4. This book picks up right after the horrors of prison 13. This book finds Jessica being recruited by another entity. This book is graphic and gory. If you have a weak stomach this isn’t the book for you. Bryan Smith great writing.
I didn't love this one. It was okay but I found it slow in parts. If I'm honest I was thinking it would be a 3 star book for a large part of it but I did like the ending and gave it an extra star.
Taking place after events of Depraved 3, Jessica Sloan awakens to find herself in yet another unthinkable and horror mess. Only this time recruited by a sinister shadowy organization looking for her special talents in killing. And an even more deadly threat looms large along with an old adversary. Will she survive all this bloodshed? Read it and find out! No one writes depraved bloody horror fiction like Bryan Smith! One of the best and one of my favorites for years.
“You have just been taken out of a medically induced coma. Today is your first day fully awake in just shy of an entire year....”
Waking up alone and isolated, confused and missing key points of her recovery period, Jessica Sloan finds herself staring into an empty world, except she is once more the star of. After losing a year of her life to a medically induced coma to allow her mangled body to recover, she’s delighted to find no long lasting damages physically or mentally. With her recovery snowballing faster and faster then anything a modern day sciences could of predicted, it would appear the talented assassin for hire could be back at full capacity within the weeks. Yet as she opened her eyes to the reality she’s once again trapped, she finds newer abilities to be at her disposal, things of luxury she figured were long gone since she executed her father years prior. Gaining trust within the new organization, she uses her sexuality to turn heads of her guards, and is kept alley in the darkness about Ms. Wickman’s survival from The same plane crash. On the other side of the facility, Evelyn Wickman finds herself slowly falling for Jessika, the robotic copy of her former escape partner from Prison 13. She’s slowly falling in love with her, and as the replica believes every lie she’s told, she truly is thinking she’s the real, living, breathing person. After a horrific flogging incident one night, her privileges of Jessika are revoked, and she uses every bit of her new found powers to convince a room of powerful men and engineers to grant her full rights again. Meanwhile the real Jessica is regaining her strength, another madman is taking to the streets. Victor (Vic) Manzetti takes a sickeningly sense of pleasure from harming others, male or female, or never mattered in his sadistic mind. Growing slowly more and more out of line, his employer Dr. Max Randolph sees little Options but to have him killed. Hiring Dennis Carlyle to do his dirty work, he lies the trap of his secretaries murder on him, granting Wickman a chance out of the spotlight of suspicion. However he’s finding himself captured and tormented as fellow victim Tempest (Alias Lizzie Bonesaw; a wanted murderer) watched as suspended from a chained harness. As he turns his hungry eyes on a new victim, Ariella Richardson, his luck will fall flat as she knocks him unconscious with a lamp. Now as she frees those trapped in his basement of nightmares, the they sadistically torture him with his own tools. As the trio find a heightened sexual awakening to the horror, it would be Jessica with a bullet to his old mothers head that’ll set them free. Now as they all walk away from the nightmare, nobody’s future is clear any longer.
You’re not fake. You’re just a different kind of real.
“You’re right. I’m a killer. I’ve got a lot of dead bodies under my belt. But I promise you I’m just as good at fucking.”
She’d rather kill herself, then disappoint the woman she loved.
I guess this is where we finally say goodbye to Jessica. What a journey she had. This one felt much different to the previous 3 books and I'm not honestly sure if I enjoyed it as much, if enjoy is the right word. It was still a decent read but I can't say I'm particularly sad to reach the end of this series. I do however look forward to reading more of this author's offerings.
In usual Bryan Smith fashion, he leaves it open for the potential of another book. Which im sure will happen, ive loved this series since the first book. Was stoked when it came out because it was up in the air from Depraved 3, i was very happy with the result here. Loved it!
This was quite a few notches below its predecessors. Dragged too much, especially the parts about Vic Manzetti. I'd rather re-read Depraved 3 and get my rocks off on the women-in-prison scenario.
Three books in, she's gone through hell and back. She's also given people hell. Sometimes deserved. Sometimes not. If you've gone through her journey to this point, you're going to want to see how it turns out.
When we left her, she escaped her Nazi prison but was shot down, descending in her whirly-bird into a hole in the ground. A teaser promised her in the center of the earth. In pure pulp/exploitation style, the follow up ignores what was promised at the end of the prior book. I mean, Mole People/CHUDs vs Jessica Sloan would have been awesome, but oh well. Maybe Depraved 5, Mr. Smith? Think about it.
Jessica wakes up and finally feels the results of her prior adventures. It's a hard life she's lived and it's finally catching up. She learns it's worse than she even thought. She's been in a coma for an extended time and is once again held within the walls of a powerful secret society. She has no choice but to accept their terms as she works to gain strength. But we know it's never far from her mind that she needs to take advantage of any opportunity that arises to get her freedom, no matter who or what stands in her way.
A few other characters from Prison 13 show up as well. And new characters all fall into the exact molds that we expect. Men are behemoths, serial killers, raping guards or hitmen. Women are bombshell nympho knockouts who can crush a man's head with her thighs. No cliché goes un-clichéd and the book is all the better for it.
Look - we've had three, in my opinion, excellent books to this point. There's a feeling of "been there, done that" here due to this. Honestly, it's tough to tell if it's the weakest of the books or if it just has the unfortunate reality of high expectations. But - while admitting it's probably the weak point of the series, most series would kill for a weak point this strong. This is fun yet gross; freaky yet silly; depraved but rarely mean-spirited; it's a journey worth the ride and if you've gone through the prior 3 books, this is a fine companion piece, even if it won't feel like it's moved the template forward.
4.25 maybe. It's my review though, so it's rounding up to 5. This is a fine addition to one of the best extreme horror series. If you've read the prior 3, what are you waiting for? Finish it up already. If you haven't read any, start at the beginning, of course.
The series was getting progressively more insane so I was hoping that the final installment would deliver on some of the earlier promises. It did not.
There are TONS of dropped plot threads and it was made very clear with the ending of #3 that the author did not have a plan or intend on actually following up teasers. Book #3 ends with them falling into the center of the earth and says "Coming one of these days...maybe... Depraved 4: at the core of the earth". This was the most obvious example of the lack of planning or at least lack of caring about the series.
What happend to the witch who resurrected the zombies? Would have been cool to follow her story. The ghosts and voodoo vibe from the first one is gone. Wickman is a 150 year old superpowered monster...for some reason. Would love to learn more about that. The two shadow organizations running the world are Nazis and a sex doll manufactuer...
I don't hate the concept of ever-devolving insanity. I've seen it done right in books like "What Happend to Lori" and "The Rodger huntington Saga".
Overall, I was just really let down and wish I had stoped at #3.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Hands down one of the BEST series/books I have ever read. I’m a huge extreme horror fan. For example, I love the likes of Jon Athan and Sam West, to name a few. Bryan Smith is now up there with my favorite horror authors. I couldn’t put these books down!! The 3rd was my absolute favorite but they’re all excellent. There is really good solid character development and a great continued story line that is fresh and exciting! I also really love that Bryan has a good amount of lgbtq characters in his book. Definitely 10 out of 10. Not for the squeamish. I can’t wait to read the rest of his books. I have just started House of Blood and the excellent writing continues. I would love for him to do more series! It would also be interesting to do a back story book on the Warden.
Well, thats the main story over, only Depraved Halloween to read next and i hope ita a good one because this series went too far left field for my liking, not a bad read by any means i liken it to the tv series Prison Break, amazing first season, not bad second season but kinda lost its way in terms of tone I feel. Shout out to Uptown Horror Reviews. I didnt hate it after going into it abit more openminded but the first two books were best.
As a whole this is fairly fun series, jist because i didn't enjoy the turn in tone doesn't mean others wont so if you like it gory, sadistic and dark this is the series for you.
The final book in this series was great in its vile and gory setting especially the basement and the unexpected mother. But I was disappointed because the main character Jessica was not the same as she was in the first 3. She was docile almost giving up. She was disappointing in the least. And don't get me started on the former warden turned with supernatural strength, I just didn't get why she needed to be so strong and full of hate.
I felt that the story didn't focus enough on the main character Jessica Sloan, and it followed the story of Vic with Jessica as a side character. Would have liked to have a more fleshed out story based on the mind cloning aspect (Cyberpunk 2077 anyone?) Good pacing and never had a full moment though.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
This is hands down one of the best series I've read in a while. I was hooked from book one on. The story began and then it changed. And each time I thought I knew what would happen, the story evolved again. It was a disturbing rollercoaster ride and I loved every second.
If you don’t think these books keep ramping up then you’re sick in the head, these are beautifully orchestrated all the moreso for an apparent better direction every book AKA better decadent depravity that would make even a serial killer take a second glance XD
Absolutely loved the characters and insanity every step of the way!!!
What a ride!! This has all you need. A good story, plot and characters. Think James Bond meets the future and add in depravity, blood , gore and torture and there you have it!
Exactly what one can expect from Extreme Dark Genres. I have to say though, I’ve become attached to the character of Jessica Sloan and truly want to see her win any encounter.
I’ll admit it I couldn’t put any of the books down and was thoroughly surprised at how everything came together and ended at a conclusion I can live with without wanting to read another part of the story. All four were excellent.
I fucking love this series so much, and I'm obsessed with Jessica Sloan! That's the review. 5/5 savage skulls ☠️ I'm jumping right into Depraved Halloween now!