Reviewed by Carissa

TITLE:  Clipped

AUTHOR:  Devon McCormack

PUBLISHER:  Wilde City Press

LENGTH:  189 pages

BLURB: Though mortals have been convinced that God cares about their souls, nothing could be further from the truth. He created the world as a gift for his lover, Satan. But when Satan left him, he decided to end what he saw as his most grotesque creation.

Satan and his army of demons are man’s only hope…

The demon Kinzer and his lover, Janka, have been sent by Satan to spy on The Raze, a gang of rogue demons who are working with God to bring about Armageddon. When someone exposes their true allegiances, the Raze clips Kinzer’s wings and murders Janka. Kinzer manages to escape. He tracks down Satan’s allies to warn them about a mole in their midst when he learns that they’ve located the Antichrist—a powerful weapon that could prevent the apocalypse. Now, he’s on a mission to protect the Antichrist and avenge his lover’s death.

REVIEW:  

Warning: This book, and consequently this review, deals with issues of rape, dubious consent, and graphic violence.  If you do not wish to read about such subjects, it is probably best that you give this review (and probably this book) as miss. Thanks.

This book is about the fallen (demon) Kinzer, and his friends, as they struggle to warn the other Fallen about the Raze (the Almighty’s ground force, I guess) and their attempts to wipe out the Fallen and jumpstart Armageddon.  Kid (a human that Kinzer rescues from whore house) gets pulled into the immortal mess, as well as Maggie, who may or may not be carrying the Antichrist (who is apparently a good guy).  Faced with the death of his lover, and the danger to his brothers-in-arms, Kinzer can only hope that they are in time to save not only Hell but humanity as well.

Ok…wow…to say that I did not enjoy this book would be an understatement.  It was like a bad action movie mixed with an even worse porno, with only briefs moments of lucidity.  The characters were two-dimensional (and that is being generous) and the plot consisted of highly-unlikely scenarios brought on by the stupidity of just about every character.

I did not connect with anyone in this book, with the exception of Maggie in that brief moment when she was talking about her past church–and that was over in a page and a half.  Kinzarhardly acts like he just witnessed the death of the love of his life.  Kid simply seems to exist to have sex, Treycore to be an asshole, and Dedrus to act like a 13 year old girl who just found out that no, Justin Bieber is not going to marry her.  In fact, for a bunch of immortals, they all seem to act like teenagers.  I’m guessing that if you have been around since before the foundation of the world, and spent a vast portion of that as soldiers in an ongoing war, you would know that it might be wise to keep it in your pants until you were out of immediate danger–or at least until you had some goddamn lube.

And god save me, the sex in this book–which was quite substantial since what wasn’t action sequences was basically free-for-all fucking–was at best nauseating.  Like, I was actually worried I was going to throw up.  Dub-con, non-con, and rape can be used effectively in a story.  It can make the story better.  It can also make your reader want to tear out their eyes and throw them across the room.  I’ll give you three guesses which of those this book was.  Almost every action of sex in this book was at best of dubious consent, if not outright rape.  There are multiple instances of a character screaming “No!” or “Stop!” and trying to crawl away from the other dude, only to have them pin them back down and penetrate them again.  And had this violence been portrayed in just about any other light than porn, I think I might have handled it.  But dear god, rape is not sexy.

Though, even if I could get past the non-consent of participants, the fucking unbelievability of the sexual acts itself was just ridiculous.  Ok…I am pretty sure no one want to get fucked by a twenty-inch penis, especially one so thick you can’t get your hands around it.  And even if you enjoyed the fuck out of it, you do not just jump up after it is done and go on a day-long hike.  And you do not, hours later, decide to do it all again, even though you are literally bleeding even before the penetration begins.  And you sure as hell don’t want to do it without at least a truckful of lube.  And spitting into your hand once is not enough fucking lube for a normal penis, let alone the two-by-four you plan on shoving up someone else’s ass.

And, for Christ’s sake, after having a knife shoved up your ass you do not just go and buy waffles without even bothering to see to the injury.

Not to mention that whole scene where we got to see the molestation of Kid when he was a child, in flashback.

Oh look…there are those nauseous feelings again. How lovely.

It didn’t help that the plot of this book was just too damn ridiculous.  The villains were over the top, the good guys were prone to idiotic decisions, and no one, fucking no one was acting their age.  I may, I admit, have an issue with immortal beings acting like oversexed teens all the time.  I think if you go through the hassle of creating someone that old, you should at least make them feel like it.

And the “twists” at the end…. One, if you want us to care about a character death, if it probably best to have made the character worth missing, at some point leading up to that death.  And two, for the love of all things entertaining, throwing in a soap-opera spin at the last moment did not make me want to read book two in this series (if there ever is one) it just pissed me off because I just read 150+ pages of horribly written porn/action sequences, and the least, and I do mean the very least, you can do is give me some fucking closer.

I do not normally give such low ratings on books.  But this one I could not stomach.  Maybe someone, somewhere finds this kind of thing thrilling/titillating, but that is not, nor will it ever be, me.

RATING: 

BUY LINKS: 

Wilde City

Amazon