(Perhaps a novella-length work?)Īs a much better example of Jon Bassoff's writing style, I'd look to his first novel, CORROSION. I understood what was happening in the novel, but I honestly felt that this would have been conveyed much better through a shorter work-as many of the excess scenes ultimately detracted from the central concept. The chaotic, random scenes were simply too distracting.
After about 40%, I'm sorry to say that I had begun to lose interest in what I felt was the central storyline. There are clues throughout the novel as to its purpose however, I felt that many of the scenes and sudden changes came off as being just "too much" to get these points across. For those that believe in the concept of hell, I imagine this town was based upon it. You immediately get that there is something wrong here.in fact, the entire town is wrong. What we have here is a very surreal trip to Factory Town, where Russel Carver is trying to locate a missing girl, Alana. This is a really tough novel for me to review without giving away the entire plot of the story. I received Factory Town from Darkfuse & Netgalley in exchange for an honest review and that’s what you’ve got. This is my personnel opinion and reflects the feelings I had as I got further into the story. I was massively disappointed and still feel quite strongly about it now. There’s loads more of that sort of stuff as Carver flits back to his childhood and gets drilled through the head along the way but sorry to say, at the end of the day this story was just too weird and totally mad. I thought I was losing my sanity never mind the bloke in the story.
I was seriously lost at this point.Īnother one was when he eventually gets inside the main factory of Factory Town, hot on the trail of Alana and discovers a passage in the depths of the place, he descends a ladder that goes on forever and comes out in a valley where the sun is just rising.
#Factory town fish crack#
They then crawl through a crack in the wall and come out in, wait for it, suburbia, back to his street and his house. There was several Alice in Wonderland moments as Russell whose insomnia ridden fragmented memory chances upon a woman he recognises, turns out be his wife and they meet on top of a building as a bunch of people commit mass suicide by hurling themselves off it. You see this town was built by the worst of the worst, the murderers, the rapists and the pedophiles and it must die with them. The gist of the story is that the city is run by someone called the cowboy, whose edict is too kill all the children, so that this town of scum can die with this generation. It soon became apparent that this trip involved various random encounters with various random people and a tale that spends more time going sideward, backward, in fact any direction except forward. The story follows Russell Carver, seemingly new in Factory Town as he searches for Alana, his daughter, in a town of sin, a town of madness and a town of debauchery.
He is a connoisseur of tequila, hot sauces, psychobilly music, and flea-bag motels.įirst off, I was really looking forward to this, I thought Corrosion was fantastic and recommended it to several friends, even voted for it in the Darkfuse reader’s awards.įirst thoughts I had to agree with the surreal voyage bit, only problem, it just got weirder and weirder to the point where 40% in I’d lost all hope and just batted out to the end, which couldn't come quick enough. For his day job, Bassoff teaches high school English where he is known by students and faculty alike as the deranged writer guy. His work has also been featured several times in New York Magazine.
Cosby (Razorblade Tears), Ramsey Campbell (The Hungry Moon), Tom Piccirilli (Last Kind Words), and Marcus Sakey (Brilliance Trilogy). His novels have been lauded by authors like Craig Johnson (Longmire series), James Grady (Six Days of the Condor), Rob Hart (The Warehouse), Paul Trembley (A Headful of Ghosts), S.A. He also wrote the screenplay for Bizarre Love Triangle, which was named semi-finalist at the New York Cinematography Awards and a finalist at the Seattle Film Festival for best short film. His psycho-noir novel, The Disassembled Man, has been adapted for the big screen with a filming date set to begin within the next hundred years. His mountain gothic novel, Corrosion, has been translated in French and German and was nominated for the Grand Prix de Litterature Policiere, France’s biggest crime fiction award. Jon Bassoff is the author of nine novels.
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