DEADWEIGHT [Paperback]

Robert Devereaux (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 6, 2008

The literary pinnacle of splatterpunk horror, Robert Devereaux's Deadweight, re-released, combines scenes of viciousness and unrelenting depravity with the sensitive portrayal of a victimized woman who triumphs over the abusive husband she has sent to his grave and inadvertently resurrected.

Product Details

• Paperback: 208 pages
• Publisher: Booklocker.com, Inc. (March 6, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1601454414
• ISBN-13: 978-1601454416
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.5 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,750,818 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Author of Slaughterhouse High, Deadweight, Santa Steps Out, Santa Claus Conquers the Homophobes, A Flight of Storks and Angels, and others. www.robertdevereaux.com has the full story. I've lived in a multitude of places. And I've had the good fortune to have published five or six novels and a few dozen short stories.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars DEADWEIGHT, October 15, 2010

A Kid's Review

This review is from: DEADWEIGHT (Paperback)

DEADWEIGHT

I enjoyed this book very much, and plan to keep it. The plot is great, this book is very hard to put down, so I read way into the night. Is there a part two?. More Books Like This One.

2 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Plenty of gore, but not much else., June 4, 2006

By 

Jose Jones - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Deadweight (Mass Market Paperback)

In her blurb for the book, Poppy Z. Brite says that Devereaux's work turns her on. I'm curious if she includes "Deadweight" in that statement, since all but one of the sex scenes here feature violent rapes (including an incestuous one) and women are painted as sex- and abuse-starved subhumans.

"Deadweight" is the story of an abused wife who, unable to take it anymore, kills her husband. She ends up marrying the lawyer who kept her out of jail, but still pines for the brute who knocked her around. She visits his grave daily. This woman, Karin, has the power to bring things back from the dead. While reviving the flowers she puts on her murdered husband's grave, she accidentally brings him back to life (along with his dog, who happens to be buried beside him).

The first problem Devereaux runs into is that he creates an utterly unsympathetic heroine. Though her former husband, Danny, beat her and treated her horribly, she whines and complains that her new husband, Frank, isn't as exciting, isn't as much fun, isn't as good in the bedroom. She shuns Frank, the man who kept her from going to jail for killing Danny, for Danny's gravesite, where she coos apologies to him. The truth is, Karin is so annoying that we actually want Danny to rise from the dead and do away with her. Basically, she's getting what she asked for -- Danny back in her life.

In fact, Devereaux actually makes Danny, the killer, a more sympathetic figure. He was a lousy human being when he was alive, but it's Karin's cavalier and irresponsible use of her special power that brings him back (nothing he asked for or wanted) and with this return to life comes an inability to control his worst urges. So not only does she cluelessly fool with life and death, but she makes him worse than he ever was.

If this novel is any indication, Devereaux has a low opinion of women. Besides Karin mewling over the guy who beat her, you have a cheating-spouse neighbor who sleeps with everyone and everything and has no interests outside of sex, and in one of the most bizarre scenes I've ever read, Danny, fresh from the grave, breaks into a house and kills a man, and his wife is first pleased, and then so turned on by Danny -- who's covered in dirt and blood -- that she tries to seduce him.

The second problem is that once Danny busts out of his grave, the book is nonstop violence from then on. Danny moves from one person to the next and kills each one brutally. The violence becomes mind-numbing. I actually like this sort of fiction -- intense and vile images of horror -- but after a while, as Danny moves from victim to victim, it all feels a bit rote and perfunctory.

Having said all that, I was expecting a cheap, gory horror novel, and that's basically what I got, so I guess I shouldn't complain too much. I think Devereaux had the basic ingredients for a better novel, though. "Deadweight" was, however, fast-paced, easy to speed through, and as violent as advertised.

So if you don't mind an anemic plot, and are looking for nothing else but to sit back and enjoy blood and gore, you'd probably enjoy "Deadweight."

6 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The greatest, goriest, resurrection story ever!, September 24, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Deadweight (Mass Market Paperback)

It's too bad [e-mail] was so way off on his review of the brilliant DEADWEIGHT. I hope his unkind words don't scare off potential readers from what is certainly one of the better horror novels of the 1990s. Robert Devereaux's DEADWEIGHT, clearly the best of the Dell Abyss line of "cutting-edge" horror books, is the kind of novel that takes your breath away. It could be labelled "splatterpunk" because of its scenes of outrageous sex and grue, and yet it could also be called a story of hope. The exquisite writing (Devereaux's playful and beautifully precise language lends a poetic irony to the gruesome events within) seduces us into Karin's story of revival. The jaw-droppingly horrible struggle that Karin must endure on the way to that revival is almost physically painful for the reader, but Karin's psychological victory at book's end is rendered all the more exciting. Please read this book! It's the first and possibly greatest book (so far) by an author destined for infamy!