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Body After Body
In this long novella inspired by the Mountain Goats & John Vanderslice concept EP Moon Colony Bloodbath, three indentured, memory-wiped laborers at a crumbling storage facility make some unexpected discoveries about the genetically engineered mutant bodies they tend each day. Sex, drugs, violence, cannibalism, psychic powers, a catgirl (sort of)…BODY AFTER BODY is the lurid, dreamlike, amoral queer/trans sci-fi trash literature at least four or five people have been waiting for.
232 pages, ebook
First published October 11, 2020
2 people are currently reading
306 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
November 6, 2020
This was such a delightful read.
I've already read Page's other novella, Corrupted Vessles, and really enjoyed it and just the description for this one made me excited to pick it up.
All the main characters were richly sketched, the plot goes at a good clip but it doesn't feel rushed. There are wonderfully visceral descriptions and lots of body horror (I love body horror so that was especially fun).
Really recommend this if you're looking for some really interesting sci-fi that's gorey and original and that has plenty of depth despite the short length.
I've already read Page's other novella, Corrupted Vessles, and really enjoyed it and just the description for this one made me excited to pick it up.
All the main characters were richly sketched, the plot goes at a good clip but it doesn't feel rushed. There are wonderfully visceral descriptions and lots of body horror (I love body horror so that was especially fun).
Really recommend this if you're looking for some really interesting sci-fi that's gorey and original and that has plenty of depth despite the short length.
April 24, 2024
This compact tale, combining elements of science fiction, eco-horror, and body horror, fuses the grotesque with the erotic. It is a story of exploitation, resistance, and liberation, a phantasmical exploration of psychosexual revulsion and erotic bliss and the points of inflection at which the former may cross into the latter. And it is a meditation on identity—where our genders begin and end, how our worth must never be as picayune as our dollar value, the way in which each of us is human via other humans—and how a rejection of solidarity in favour of dogged egoism may invite one’s own destruction.
I review the novella at greater length on Medium (un-paywalled link).
I review the novella at greater length on Medium (un-paywalled link).
January 26, 2025
little gem
July 25, 2023
This was a really excellent sci-fi/horror novella, but extremely difficult to review due to both its experimental writing style and provocative nature.
I would warn any prospective readers that any content warnings you can think of probably apply to this book - including violence, death, sexual content, body horror (lots), cannibalism and medical- and gender-related trauma.
Body After Body is a self-published science fiction novella which is based on the concept album Moon Colony Bloodbath by John Darnielle and John Vanderslice. I haven't listened to the album, but was recommended the book as a little-read but excellent speculative fiction piece, and I didn't find myself missing out out due to a lack of context. The book definitely stands on its own.
Body After Body is set in a future earth in which climate disaster has left earth much less habitable, and the rich and powerful live on the Moon, on Mars and on satellites orbiting the dying planet. Medical care has become trivial due to the availability of lab-grown tissues and medicines, but this too is available only to the richest in society. Poorer people can be given all necessary and desired medical care of they sign up to have their memories erased, and to tend one of the earth-based laboratories which grow the organs needed for treatment of off-world patients. The novel is set in one of these facilities, with mind-wiped protagonists navigating the crumbling facility they look after and their own identities as conditions in the lab steadily become more untenable.
In many ways this is a classic science fiction fable, with the conceit of the narrative becoming obvious long before it is revealed in the text. However this seems to me more like a deliberate narrative device, serving to make the horror more horrific, and the eventual climax of the story and collapse of the facility feel even more inevitable. The characters are relatable despite their brainwashed states and the sometimes awful things they do, the writing style is beautiful and experimental, and the themes explored are both relevant to the state of the world as the story was written, and personally-relevant to myself. I have rarely come across a speculative fiction book that made me feel quite so seen, and addressed contemporary issues while remaining an engaging story in its own right.
I would highly recommend this book if you are trans, queer, interested in highly-relevant science fiction and have an extremely strong stomach. It was wonderful and horrible, and it will be in my thoughts for a long time.
I would warn any prospective readers that any content warnings you can think of probably apply to this book - including violence, death, sexual content, body horror (lots), cannibalism and medical- and gender-related trauma.
Body After Body is a self-published science fiction novella which is based on the concept album Moon Colony Bloodbath by John Darnielle and John Vanderslice. I haven't listened to the album, but was recommended the book as a little-read but excellent speculative fiction piece, and I didn't find myself missing out out due to a lack of context. The book definitely stands on its own.
Body After Body is set in a future earth in which climate disaster has left earth much less habitable, and the rich and powerful live on the Moon, on Mars and on satellites orbiting the dying planet. Medical care has become trivial due to the availability of lab-grown tissues and medicines, but this too is available only to the richest in society. Poorer people can be given all necessary and desired medical care of they sign up to have their memories erased, and to tend one of the earth-based laboratories which grow the organs needed for treatment of off-world patients. The novel is set in one of these facilities, with mind-wiped protagonists navigating the crumbling facility they look after and their own identities as conditions in the lab steadily become more untenable.
In many ways this is a classic science fiction fable, with the conceit of the narrative becoming obvious long before it is revealed in the text. However this seems to me more like a deliberate narrative device, serving to make the horror more horrific, and the eventual climax of the story and collapse of the facility feel even more inevitable. The characters are relatable despite their brainwashed states and the sometimes awful things they do, the writing style is beautiful and experimental, and the themes explored are both relevant to the state of the world as the story was written, and personally-relevant to myself. I have rarely come across a speculative fiction book that made me feel quite so seen, and addressed contemporary issues while remaining an engaging story in its own right.
I would highly recommend this book if you are trans, queer, interested in highly-relevant science fiction and have an extremely strong stomach. It was wonderful and horrible, and it will be in my thoughts for a long time.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
May 15, 2023
What a fantastically horrifying read! In such a short time, you're introduced to vividly complex characters and a freaky bio-engineered dystopia where bodies are grown and harvested for parts. While it's mostly a character-focused story, the world has the perfect amount of detail to understand it without bogging down the pace. It moves quickly, not wasting any words as you're taken from mind to mind as they slowly melt together and create one beautiful symphony.
This book will absolutely not be for everyone (as body horror rarely is); it's incredibly graphic, potentially triggering, and just undeniably weird. But it sure was for me.
This book will absolutely not be for everyone (as body horror rarely is); it's incredibly graphic, potentially triggering, and just undeniably weird. But it sure was for me.
November 30, 2024
Fantasy and Sci-Fi bingo 2024
2.4: Self Published
Hard mode: Less then 100 reviews on goodreads.
4.5 (rounded up as I always do for small/indie books)
I'm writing this review in English, even though I always post in Portuguese, because it's only fair. Body After Body is a magnificent work of insanity, and if my voice can add one more echo of approval to this mysterious and unknown gem, then here is my voice adding to the hivemind.
This book is a homage for The Mountain Goats concept album "Moon Colony Bloodbath", which I heard after finding myself entranced by this book, and I believe the title already gives us some indication for where this book might be going. I'm quite fond of The Mountain Goats, and "No Children" was a very important music for me during some hard moments. It's a song filled with rage and hatred, and so is this book.
In a facility, weird corpses are harvested for their organs. People sell their work in trade of medical operations: be then life saving or sex transition (which are not also life saving?). There's so deliciously twisted loss of identity going on, with all being reduced to Jennys or Johns, but it's also subverted effortlessly, with every individual being identified by an adjetive next to their name. It's a system that quickly grabs your attention, and never let's go, because Briar Ripley is an expert in making me entranced and uncomfortable.
Because this is a weird book. It's erotic, it's horrific, it's sometimes bordering the pornographic, it's gross and disgusting and marvelous. It's been long since I've been so taken by something so unexpectedly, since I've let myself get anxious and shivering while reading something. Body After Body manages to unsettle and amaze.
I think the first half is perfect. Sure, it's vulgar and weird and so filled with genderfuckery that will probably scare most readers. But for me it pulled me in, and I ravaged this thing in a day. The second half, while also excellent, delving deep into the characters and their relationships with themselves, left yearning for some of the bubbling tension I was filled during the build-up. While the transformation one of the characters undergo is powerful and well crafted, it didn't explode in the catharsis I was expecting, left me missing the more subtle terror.
I love how the "inhuman" PoV are truly inhuman, I'm getting quite tired of perspective shifts to alien entities that communicate exactly like the prose of the rest of the work, and Body After Body gives us not only one, but two amazing experimental pieces of writing, both when the mind of Odd Jenny fractures, therefore the prose is literary split in the middle of the page; and when one other character (who I shall not spoil), talks in a alien, weird, fascinating but still deep down human way. It's a true lesson on how to craft experimental pieces that enhance the themes and archetypes of the characters.
It's one of my best reads of the year, and I need to recommend it. Probably the best horror sci-fi I've ever heard. It's intimate, it's horrifying, it's queer as fuck; and it's a entrancing masterpiece.
2.4: Self Published
Hard mode: Less then 100 reviews on goodreads.
4.5 (rounded up as I always do for small/indie books)
I'm writing this review in English, even though I always post in Portuguese, because it's only fair. Body After Body is a magnificent work of insanity, and if my voice can add one more echo of approval to this mysterious and unknown gem, then here is my voice adding to the hivemind.
This book is a homage for The Mountain Goats concept album "Moon Colony Bloodbath", which I heard after finding myself entranced by this book, and I believe the title already gives us some indication for where this book might be going. I'm quite fond of The Mountain Goats, and "No Children" was a very important music for me during some hard moments. It's a song filled with rage and hatred, and so is this book.
In a facility, weird corpses are harvested for their organs. People sell their work in trade of medical operations: be then life saving or sex transition (which are not also life saving?). There's so deliciously twisted loss of identity going on, with all being reduced to Jennys or Johns, but it's also subverted effortlessly, with every individual being identified by an adjetive next to their name. It's a system that quickly grabs your attention, and never let's go, because Briar Ripley is an expert in making me entranced and uncomfortable.
Because this is a weird book. It's erotic, it's horrific, it's sometimes bordering the pornographic, it's gross and disgusting and marvelous. It's been long since I've been so taken by something so unexpectedly, since I've let myself get anxious and shivering while reading something. Body After Body manages to unsettle and amaze.
I think the first half is perfect. Sure, it's vulgar and weird and so filled with genderfuckery that will probably scare most readers. But for me it pulled me in, and I ravaged this thing in a day. The second half, while also excellent, delving deep into the characters and their relationships with themselves, left yearning for some of the bubbling tension I was filled during the build-up. While the transformation one of the characters undergo is powerful and well crafted, it didn't explode in the catharsis I was expecting, left me missing the more subtle terror.
I love how the "inhuman" PoV are truly inhuman, I'm getting quite tired of perspective shifts to alien entities that communicate exactly like the prose of the rest of the work, and Body After Body gives us not only one, but two amazing experimental pieces of writing, both when the mind of Odd Jenny fractures, therefore the prose is literary split in the middle of the page; and when one other character (who I shall not spoil), talks in a alien, weird, fascinating but still deep down human way. It's a true lesson on how to craft experimental pieces that enhance the themes and archetypes of the characters.
It's one of my best reads of the year, and I need to recommend it. Probably the best horror sci-fi I've ever heard. It's intimate, it's horrifying, it's queer as fuck; and it's a entrancing masterpiece.
April 27, 2023
Holy shit what a wild ride!!! This book would be hard to suggest to people because you'd have to know they're cool with body horror, because wow does this book describe some horrific things.
I guess I understand why no mainstream place would publish this, but it's still a real shame because it's a wonderful book. It doesn't have all the answers I would have liked, especially about the bodies, but you still get a satisfying amount of information to solve most of the mystery surrounding the station.
I highly suggest if you aren't a bigot who hates trans people, enjoy graphic horror, and are interested in moral quandries of sentience! The author sells it on their itch.io page. It's pay what you want but it's worth paying the suggested price for it.
My one complaint is I don't like vaginas being described as cunts. Call a person a cunt? Absolutely. But say you have a cunt? Gives me the icks lol. That's just a personal preference and didn't stop me from loving this!
I guess I understand why no mainstream place would publish this, but it's still a real shame because it's a wonderful book. It doesn't have all the answers I would have liked, especially about the bodies, but you still get a satisfying amount of information to solve most of the mystery surrounding the station.
I highly suggest if you aren't a bigot who hates trans people, enjoy graphic horror, and are interested in moral quandries of sentience! The author sells it on their itch.io page. It's pay what you want but it's worth paying the suggested price for it.
My one complaint is I don't like vaginas being described as cunts. Call a person a cunt? Absolutely. But say you have a cunt? Gives me the icks lol. That's just a personal preference and didn't stop me from loving this!
December 2, 2024
Fans of Octavia Butler can find home in this juicy, gory, terror-stricken saga about the monstrosity that society has made transgender people out to be. Incredible read, bonus points for being free PDF download online.
April 6, 2025
9/10
psychosis inducing but really addictive
psychosis inducing but really addictive
August 17, 2025
Dystopian body horror meets queer erotica meets cannibalistic drug trip?!? Wow.
January 8, 2025
ADOR, SUCH A GEM<3
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews