MURDERLAND PART I

ISBN-10: 1439200815

ISBN-13: 978-1439200810

first review by Adam Armstrong

9.13.09

Entertainment that we are not too far from.

Serial Killers are now America’s main form of entertainment. In “Safe Zones,” killers can run amuck in competition with each other. An entire culture is built up around the killers including news coverage and award shows. Only one guy, Jeremy Jenkins, isn’t into the culture, in fact he hates it. The strange thing about Jeremy, he is the greatest serial killer of all time. Only he’s not competing. He is killing for a reason. The Dark Ones are invading earth, or are they? Jeremy thinks that he has covered his tracks well but you can’t hide things from those that love you forever.

Cook takes our fascination with serial killers and celebrities and combines them. Of course, this has been done with Oliver Stone’s Natural Born Killers and the original members of the band Marilyn Manson were named after a celebrity and serial killer. However Cook takes the killings as something that is expected, accepted, and certain killers are rooted for. We get to see Jeremy from his perspective as well as the perspective of his killer instinct. My only criticism about the book was that there is a lot of repetition. It was stylistically important; we were looking through the eyes of someone who wasn’t all that stable.

Worth the read, especially for the internal monologue of Jeremy throughout the book.

4.5 out of 5

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Second review by Ty Schwamberger

09.30.2009

Murderland – H8 by Garrett Cook and published by Evil Nerd Empire, is set in a futuristic time when killing innocent people has become all the rage. People love to not only watch the news of when a new killing takes place, but cheers the killers on by idolizing them in print and film.

Jeremy Jenkins lives a life of secrecy. He hates what the world has become; a world ruled by the Dark Ones, who try to infiltrate innocents by impregnating them with their kind to do their bidding. At the same time, Jeremy has to face his own moral values as he wanders the streets at night in search of his next victim – not to become a famous killer that’s in the news, but to save mankind from the Dark Ones that are spreading their putrid seed across the land. Deep down, Jeremy knows it’s wrong to kill innocent people but figures if other people are doing it to be famous and he is only doing it to save mankind and not to enhance his own lifestyle, then it’s an ok to do. Up through the end of the novella, Jeremy struggles against himself and the ever-growing voice that’s inside his head.

Not having read anything by Garrett Cook before, it took me awhile to become comfortable with his writing style. At first, I wasn’t quite sure if Cook always writes in this style or if it is just congruent to the story itself. Either way, as I progressed through the novella, I was pleasantly surprised by his use of words, his characters and how they interacted in the futuristic world that he set them in.

It looks like Murderland II: Life During Wartime was just released and I’ll be on the lookout where I can pick-up the next part in this series…and I’m sure I’ll enjoy it just as much as the first.