Cows

It feels like all this nastiness is there just for the sake of being nasty. Though, in some places, it actually helps develop the character and feels justified

Hmm this was a little hard for me to wrap my head around. I definitely knew what I was getting myself into and as someone who's generally desensitised to anything a horror book has to offer, I thought it'd be a great way to sort of limit test myself. So I picked up the book to see how much it could unsettle/disgust/scare me. While it definitely grossed me the fuck out and deeply unnerved me, it kind of plateaued around the halfway mark. You would think that the Hagbeast and Cripps's murder would serve as the story's climax, but the fact that the book kept on going for another 100 pages was so confusing to me. Like what else could happen to my man Steven?? And then the cows started talking, and then the urban cows started unionising, and then Steven had sex with a cow, it was all just a hotchpotch of words and plotlines that, instead of unsettling me, the whole thing just bored me to death. So kudos to Stokoe for making me gag and almost purge in the first 100 pages, that was genuinely peak splatterpunk. But also fuck you for making me trudge through a wall of words that ultimately made for an unsatisfying story and reading experience–and dare I say a waste of my time too. Also, limit test results: SCAT HORROR IS NOT FOR ME...

Just no

Was there a good character building AND a deeper meaning here? Absolutely. Was it also just fucking gross? Yeah. On the fence with this one lmao