The Black Farm

Contemporary New England author Elias Weatherow started his horror-writing career with online short fiction, and his popularity blossomed as he produced several well-received novels. His masterwork to date is The Black Farm, and I can honestly say that I’ve never read anything quite like it.

Dig the premise:

Nick (our narrator) and Jess are a severely-depressed couple who decide to commit suicide together in one of the grimmest Chapter One openers you’ll ever read. The tragic couple swallows a fistful of pills each and dies in each other’s arms. And then their adventure begins.

Nick awakens, not in heaven or hell, but in a horrific purgatory reserved for suicides. It’s called The Black Farm, and it’s a terrifying place filled with aggressive rotting slugs and a variety of disgusting, murderous creatures. If they kill you, you are simply reincarnated back at The Black Farm to be haunted, hunted and abused for an eternity.

The administrator of The Black Farm is a disgusting, corpulent creature called The Pig. The only way out of The Black Farm is to allow yourself to be eaten by The Pig which allows you to move onto another realm that may be better or worse than the farm. Tough choice.

For his part, Nick chooses to try to survive the horrors of this dark fantasy hellscape in hopes of reuniting with Jess and somehow protecting her in a way that he was unable to on Earth. Over time, the novel adopts the story arc of a men’s-adventure paperback of the 1970s in a dark fantasy setting with Nick on an armed mission to save a damsel in distress from an army of bad guys.

The author is a vivid extreme horror writer who set this novel in a dark fantasy otherworld allowing him to spread his creative and perverse wings. The world-building is simply fantastic. The violence and gore are indeed extreme. Torture scenes are bookended by bone-crunching fight scenes and non-stop action.

If you can handle some stomach-turning scenes, you’re bound to appreciate The Black Farm. The author has also written a sequel, which I will one day read and review. First, I need some earthbound violent adventures before I partake in more of The Pig’s nightmare world. Highly recommended.

Buy a copy of this book HERE.