Customer Reviews

DEADWEIGHT

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

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.

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."

It's too bad scottjp@cris.com 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!

Deadweight doesn't offer much in the way of suspense... It has no character development whatsoever, opting instead to concentrate on endless sequences of sex, torture and gore and in all, is a distasteful study of degradation towards women... Not to mention the absurdity of the subplot about the lead "heroine" who has the ability to revive wilted flowers, hence the explanation for the resurrection of her long buried husband and his equally blood-thirsty dog. It's definitely not for the squeamish but if your stomach can handle it, then more than likely, it's your interest that won't be able to.

I have had this book for a long time and finally got around to reading it. The other reviewers were all accurate in some respects. This book will only appeal to certain people - those who enjoy the "Splatterpunk" school of writing. I was actually interested at the beginning, but the second half of the book was so awful, I ended up skimming just to get the general idea without having to read all the gory details. I think this story could have been told better with more character development and less torture and blood. I can't believe I'm admitting to this, but this is the first time I have ever thrown a book away.

Every day Karin visits her husband Danny's grave, the husband she killed when his abuse finally became too much. But her mourning has awakened a spark in Danny, and now he's coming back, fueled by a penchant for explosive violence and a thirst for revenge.
It may not sound like much, but it's pretty well done - for the first half or so. The descriptions of Danny's return to the land of the living are particularly, er, realistic (that is to say, it is shown convincingly, how you might expect it to happen.) But once he's freed from his earthly prison, the book goes downhill. The author seems mainly concerned with having Danny continually one-up himself in his rampage of murder and torture, and everything else falls by the wayside. As graphic and over the top as these scenes are, they are really kind of dull. The characters have no depth: the only hint we are given as to why Karin is the way she is comes in a brief prologue of her as a child. We are told a few t! imes that Danny had a bit of goodness somewhere inside him, but we never see any evidence, so it's inexplicable to the reader that Karin would have any positive feelings for the man at all. The other characters are throwaways. None are likeable.
It's not hard to see why Poppy Z. Brite raves about Devereaux's writing on the cover. They both share a fondness for mindless gore at the expense of plot and characterization. If you found her awful 'Exquisite Corpse' to your liking, you may wish to seek this one out. Otherwise, don't bother.