Book Review: Love Me by Danger Slater

Summary:
I am awesome. I am the fucking awesomest awesome dude that ever was. I live on a hilltop in my castle made from 300 human skulls.  I sit on the roof and fight with Moon while wearing my Totally Authentic Viking Outfit I bought on ebay.  My tears are cancerous. No really. See how the animals that drink them keel over and die?  I surround my castle with a moat of blood and entrails where my crocoweilers live.  (They’re crocodiles cross-bred with rottweilers).  The thing is, I’m kind of lonely. So maybe I should go have some adventures around the world and do shit like invent Christianity? Yeah, that sounds like a plan.

Review:
This book is definitely intended for a narrow audience. But for that audience it is hilarious and awesome.  You have to love swearing, gross-out humor, complete zaniness, and have an ability to overlook certain discrepancies like the fact that Christianity did not originate in America and if the whole world was at nuclear war why is there suddenly a fully functional president in the White House?  I’m sure that all sounds crazy and bizarre because it is.  But it’s also hilarious.

It’s incredibly hard to describe and articulate just way such a zany book is awesome to read, so I’ll let a couple of quotes speak for themselves.

Three days later Jesus used his magic/zombie/God powers to come back from the dead. All the Romans were like, “No fucking way!” And Jesus was all like, “Fucking way, bro!” (location 662)

My heart, once again, whimpers. It gets all emo and grows an unattractive beard and starts writing bad poetry. My heart is looking very Cat Stevens. (location 1964)

I bind my novel in the hide of the now extinct Caspian tiger just so the publishers will know, Whoa, this dude is serious, and I mail it out. (location 529)

But it’s not just all zany humor.  Slater also demonstrates a clear understanding and knowledge of the rise of Western society and culture.  Passages periodically toss out allusions to not just pop culture and religious history, but also to parts of the Western Canon, such as Greek Mythology:

I welcome the unctuous numbness into my body. It offers me relief. I let the Charon of alcohol ferry me across the River Styx. I let it guide me deeper into Hell. (location 2879)

Underneath the humor and the allusions though what the book really is is a parable for anyone who ever searched for the meaning of life and wound up agnostic or atheist.  Parts of it truly speak to the experience of finding and losing religion. Of then investing yourself into other ideals that just don’t work out for you either until you’re left with the only solution, that life’s purpose is….

to exist in any way you see fit, plain and simple. (location 1391)

The one drawback to the novel is that this small indie press work needs an editor (or another editing swoop from Slater).  Although his writing itself is very good, there are a few misspelled words, typos, etc…. that, alas, interfere with the book’s good qualities.  Please listen to this reviewer and either do it yourself or find a friend to!  Your work is too good for such an easily fixed short-coming.

Overall this book is a delicious, zany, humorous parable of the agnostic/atheist journey through Western society in a search for the meaning of life.  If that sounds like it’d appeal to you and swearing and dick jokes don’t offend you, then I highly recommend it.

4 out of 5 stars

Source: Kindle copy from author in exchange for my honest review

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