By Wrath James White
Deadite Press
Review by: Ronnie Tucker
Review posted 08/05/2011
His Pain is a book about pain, but thankfully it's not painful to read. The book begins with a new born baby who is diagnosed with a rare condition which means every sensation results in severe pain. Rather than euthanasia the parents keep the child in a manufactured world to keep him safe from every sensation and be as pain free as possible. Eventually the mother hires a yoga master who can help the child focus his pain and convert it to pleasure. And if you've read Clive Barkers Hellraiser you'll know that no good comes of pleasure and pain! Parts of His Pain remind me of Barkers Books of Blood stories. Back when he wrote good stuff.
The book starts off quite slow. It's necessary set up, but I felt it was a bit too wordy. Everything was explained to us word by word. The letter the mother writes to the yoga master is verbatim as is his speech on TV (which is what gets the mother interested in him). If things like that had been suggested to us then we'd have gotten to the action much quicker. And we'd have more room for even more action! Win win methinks.
It's once the yoga master teaches the boy to convert pain to pleasure that the real fun begins. There's top class hookers, incest, emo chicks, murder, gore... the list goes on, and all in the second half of the story!
It's a short story, at 88 pages, but it's well written and doesn't beat about the bush when it comes to sex and controversy. It takes a good writer to write about sex (and incest) without turning it into either a cringefest or a Mills & Boon romance.
If you want a quick short story with graphic depictions of sex and gore then this will fit the bill very nicely!
