I’ve been thinking about doing a post on Brian Evenson for quite a while. I read Last Days about 3 years ago and thoroughly enjoyed it. It’s more of a thriller than a horror novel, but it’s about a cult who like to amputate their own body parts. Cool! It’s quite messed up. Although I’ve definitely forgotten most of the plot, I have not forgotten how much I enjoyed reading it.

The next thing I read by Evenson was Altmann’s Tongue, his first collection of short stories. I read this shortly after finishing Last Rites. Part of its appeal was that I had heard the contents were so extreme that it led to the author having to leave his job at a Mormon university. In truth, I remember almost nothing about this collection. I can’t say I was overly impressed, and I didn’t read anything else by Evenson for a while.

In December I read Father of Lies. I had seen this one described as a more straight forward horror novel than Evenson’s other books. It is truly fucked. It’s about a paedophile priest who is either insane or possessed by the Devil. I read it in an evening, and it almost pains me to admit that I really enjoyed it. It’s a horrid book, real feel-bad fiction. It was so unpleasant that I picked up and read another book by Evenson a few days after finishing it.

The Warren is more of a science fiction novel than the ones mentioned above, but it’s gloomy existential science fiction rather than Star Wars or the likes. This was another book that took me less than a day to read and has encouraged me to venture outside the realms of straight horror recently. It’s definitely worth a read if you’re interested in contemplating the limitations of identity and what it means to be a person.

So Brian Evenson has also written novels for movie and video game franchises under the pen name B.K. Evenson. I presume this is about separating his “literary” work from the more commercial stuff that he writes. I have no real interest in this books about video games, but after searching my local library’s database for audiobooks by Evenson, I found Feral.

Feral is a collaboration Evenson did with James DeMonaco, the author and director of The Purge movies. I haven’t seen any of those films, but I have a general idea of what they’re about. When you think about it, a story of violent survivalist action/adventure put through the filter of a literary author with a penchant for nastiness could turn out very well. I am happy to say that Feral pulls it off quite successfully.

A pandemic hits the world and turns all men into fast zombies that really hate women. After 3 years, only a few small armoured settlements of women are left. Allie is a scout in one of these settlements, and she spends her days looting abandoned stores for food and goods while dodging, incapacitating and sometimes kidnapping the feral male zombies. She rides around on a motorbike and carries guns and machetes and is basically a total badass. Things get worrying when she notices that there are far more males skulking around her territory than usual. To complicate matters further, one of these males doesn’t seem to be infected.

This is not the kind of horror I usually enjoy. The most similar thing I’ve read was probably Brian Keene’s The Complex, a novel that I wanted to like but struggled to enjoy. Feral was better though. I don’t know the story behind it, but given DeMonaco’s work in film, I assume this was originally an idea for a movie. I think it would work well as a movie, but I understand that the zombie film market was probably oversaturated in the years prior to 2017 when it came out. Also, I can see how the pandemic element to the book may have discouraged studios from considering the idea in the few years after it was released.

Feral is definitely more typical of the horror genre than Evenson’s other works, but it was fast paced and entertaining. I quite liked it. I don’t know if I’ll discuss them here, but I am quite certain I will read more of Evenson’s books in the future.