Regardless of your thoughts concerning zombies, motorcycle gangs, atomic wastelands, and the apocalypse, you'd be hard pressed to find an author as downright talented and under-the-rader as Tim Curran. Is his fare for everyone? No. I'd argue that most of his novels and novellas are for very few (or the one of us brave enough to admit how twisted we are) and while this is a shame (I would like to see what he could be capable of with a more tame and mass market variety story), there is no denying the hidden wonder that is Mr. Curran.
I've read almost all of Curran's books (minus "Skin Medicine" and his cowboy novels) and aside from "Dead Sea", "Cannibal Corpse" is probably his best work. And that is saying a lot. After all this was the same guy who wrote the insanely epic, 666 page "Resurrection" and "Biohazard", not to mention the "Hive Series" and a ton of shorts and novellas. It's always a high mark to try and beat previous attempts, but Curran delivers and "Cannibal Corpse" is yet another insane story to add to his already massively enjoyable library.
Where Curran shines is his never ending ability to find new ways to describe things, usually in words and ways that would make even the most hardened stomached coroner cringe. You can open up this novel, place your finger down, and pretty much come across any number of paragraphs that are both disgusting and oddly beautiful. I'll save you the trouble and just find one for you myself, so sit back and enjoy Curran's talent of the grotesque:
"He walked out into the labe and there was a zombie standing amongst the wreckage, a woman...or something that with the general form of a woman, a pulping, bioplasmic, gangrenous, fleshrot mass of female anatomy that was glistening and dripping, alive with the swollen vermicular motion of dozens of glossy green hoses that snaked out from between her legs and pulsed from her belly like slit bowels. They erupted from her tits, filled her mouth and eye sockets and grew out of her head in creeping, pulsating ropes like the snakes of medusa. They were parasitic and jelly slimed, a peristaltic crawling mass with tiny barbed mouths that pissed a cabbage-green milk as they infested the hobbling necrotic husk of liquescent decay."
See what I'm talking about? And that is just one of many (and I mean MANY) examples within these pages. Curran is a modern day Shakespeare of descriptive horror. Find me anyone who can write such detailed work of gruesomeness and I swear, I'll give you something. Like a dollar maybe.
If the gross descriptions don't do it for you, then maybe the general storyline will. I hate giving away too much in my reviews, so let's just keep it simple and say it's about a motorcycle gang taking on a world populated by zombies and worms that fall from the sky. Really, that's the basic premise. Sounds kind of silly I know, but Curran (and maybe Carlton Mellick III) are the only is the only author capable of not only coming up with such a crazy idea, but executing it as well. And execute he does! Like "Biohazard", Curran sure knows how to craft up a horrifying post-apocalyptic world. There's zombies, worms, mutants, explosions, and enough violence to keep any jaded fane (like myself) sated and occupied. Curran even makes us somehow root for the main character, Slaughter, even though he is murderer, thief, and a motorbike thug. The only thing that held me back from finishing the book was work and my commitments to other, less guilty pleasure novels.
So why not 5 stars then if I loved this one so much? Well, even though I enjoyed the story and how well it moved along, I have to admit, I wasn't a huge fan of the "Leviathan" thing. I guess it kind of worked into the general story and in retrospect it made sense, but as in most of his novels, Curran has to have some cosmic reasoning or side story dealing with demons or spiritual beings to make the story make sense. You could almost call it his "Dues ex Machina" of sorts. I wish that just once he would write a book that didn't include these bizarre reasons for things, kind of like his novella "The Underdwelling".
However, all in all, it's hard to argue that "Cannibal Corpse M/C" is not a great read. It's a guilty pleasure, grindhouse, pulp-y sort of novel. One that doesn't take a lot of thinking or asks too many questions. I've said before in another review of Tim's works, "it's a shame that the guy isn't more recognized and praised." And I still feel that today. The guy can write a mean book and I wouldn't have it any other way,