It's prom night in the Demented States of America. A place where schools are built with secret passageways, rebellious teens get zippers installed in their mouths and genitals, and once a year, on that special night, one couple is slaughtered and the bits of their bodies are kept as souvenirs. But something's gone terribly wrong at Corundum High, where the secret killer is claiming a far higher body count than usual . . . Slaughterhouse High is Robert Devereaux's slicing satire of sex, death, and public education.
Slaughterhouse High
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"A major talent!" - POPPY Z. BRITE
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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.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
By Buckeye Nick
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
This was my first book I have read by Robert Devereaux and it certainly won't be my last. This book makes going to the prom more of a survival than just the awkward times and the are we going to do it afterwards. This takes a alternate united states where it's big entertainment and a right f passage to witness and survive the slasher of prom. However this year's prom is a bit different because the slasher this year has different plans not only does it want the designated couple, but it wants others as well. Devereaux's Demented Stated of America lives up to it's name by giving you several surreal descriptions of his America. This is a sick and twisted fun ride into demented fun and mayhem!!!
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
Robert Devereaux, <strong>Slaughterhouse High</strong> (Deadite Press, 2010)
There is no way I can turn in an unbiased review of this book. I've been a BobDev fan for over twenty years now, ever since Dell's short-lived, unreasonably fantastic Abyss line released his first novel, <em>Deadweight</em>, in the nineties. At the time, it was the most extreme thing I'd ever read. (And it stayed that way for almost ten years, until I was hit with the double-barrelled attack of Matthew Stokoe's <em>Cows</em> and Charlee Jacob's <em>Haunter</em> in 2003; it's still a good solid third.) And as time went on, Devereaux's books got, well more nuts. So when the bizarro movement started co-opting authors, he was a pretty natural fit. Enter Bob's first novel for nasty upstarts Deadite Press: <em>Slaughterhouse High</em>. (Side note: Deadite are also in the process of re-releasing Devereaux's old stuff. So if you never got a chance to read the brilliant, scurrilous <em>Santa Steps Out</em>, you have the chance again!) It's got all the charm, and I use that term loosely, of the classic Devereaux canon, the kinds of way-off details that make for good bizarro fiction, and more than enough gore to satisfy all your cannibalistic urges. In short, how can you possibly go wrong?
Set in an alternate-universe USA known as the Demented States of America, where the President is a wooden puppet (and a Committee to Assassinate the President is a celebrated cabinet department) and a pair of high school students is slaughtered every year at each high school's prom, <em>Slaughterhouse High</em> takes place over the course of prom night at Corundum High School, a pimple on the backside of the nothing town of Corundum, Kansas. But this is no ordinary prom night in Corundum: as a gesture of defiance, the prom committee have chosen the Ice Ghoul as a theme for the first time since it was used twenty years before, on the night principal Futzy Buttweiler's daughter Kitty was a member of the slaughtered couple. Futzy is not a happy camper. And neither is someone else--someone who decides to murder the Designated Slasher, take his place, and start piling up far more bodies than the school is prepared to deal with.
If this were a fifties mystery film, I can just imagine the trailer as the music swells each time we're introduced to a character who might, just might, be the killer, with big text at the top of the screen: IS IT...? And that's how Devereaux sets it up: as we meet each progressively more unhinged character who just might be the killer, more red herrings start flying, until we're thrashing around in a blizzard of scales. A lesser author might use this as a way to cloud a lack of plot or less than mastery over the elements of the core mystery. Not so Devereaux, who manages to keep both on a tight leash while acting rather like the alpha monkey in the monkey house, flinging poo and satire at American society, eighties slasher flicks, the entire state of Kansas, prom culture, the Tupperware corporation (by the by: a chance aside at one point in the book makes me think that if Devereaux is going to continue on in this universe, we need a book about the rise of the Futter family and their Kitchen Storage Container empire), sexual mores, body modification, and, well, pretty much anything else you can think of. It's funny stuff, but it's the darkest kind of funny--much uglier than the comedy in <em>Santa Steps Out</em>. I get the feeling Devereaux almost wanted to play this one as a straight horror novel. If you're not sure whether you're supposed to be laughing at the satire, well, by cracky, that's the best kind, no?
My only real qualm with the book is that sometimes the pace flags (usually when we move away from the prom and focus on the doings at the top of the political food chain). But that never happens for long, and we get back to the action quickly enough that it should be a minor niggle at best for most readers. Established Devreaux fans will want to pick this one up posthaste; I'd suggest new folks get themselves converted with <em>Deadweight</em> or <em>Caliban and Other Tales</em> before diving into this one. But you'll want to pick it up eventually. *** ˝
There is no way I can turn in an unbiased review of this book. I've been a BobDev fan for over twenty years now, ever since Dell's short-lived, unreasonably fantastic Abyss line released his first novel, <em>Deadweight</em>, in the nineties. At the time, it was the most extreme thing I'd ever read. (And it stayed that way for almost ten years, until I was hit with the double-barrelled attack of Matthew Stokoe's <em>Cows</em> and Charlee Jacob's <em>Haunter</em> in 2003; it's still a good solid third.) And as time went on, Devereaux's books got, well more nuts. So when the bizarro movement started co-opting authors, he was a pretty natural fit. Enter Bob's first novel for nasty upstarts Deadite Press: <em>Slaughterhouse High</em>. (Side note: Deadite are also in the process of re-releasing Devereaux's old stuff. So if you never got a chance to read the brilliant, scurrilous <em>Santa Steps Out</em>, you have the chance again!) It's got all the charm, and I use that term loosely, of the classic Devereaux canon, the kinds of way-off details that make for good bizarro fiction, and more than enough gore to satisfy all your cannibalistic urges. In short, how can you possibly go wrong?
Set in an alternate-universe USA known as the Demented States of America, where the President is a wooden puppet (and a Committee to Assassinate the President is a celebrated cabinet department) and a pair of high school students is slaughtered every year at each high school's prom, <em>Slaughterhouse High</em> takes place over the course of prom night at Corundum High School, a pimple on the backside of the nothing town of Corundum, Kansas. But this is no ordinary prom night in Corundum: as a gesture of defiance, the prom committee have chosen the Ice Ghoul as a theme for the first time since it was used twenty years before, on the night principal Futzy Buttweiler's daughter Kitty was a member of the slaughtered couple. Futzy is not a happy camper. And neither is someone else--someone who decides to murder the Designated Slasher, take his place, and start piling up far more bodies than the school is prepared to deal with.
If this were a fifties mystery film, I can just imagine the trailer as the music swells each time we're introduced to a character who might, just might, be the killer, with big text at the top of the screen: IS IT...? And that's how Devereaux sets it up: as we meet each progressively more unhinged character who just might be the killer, more red herrings start flying, until we're thrashing around in a blizzard of scales. A lesser author might use this as a way to cloud a lack of plot or less than mastery over the elements of the core mystery. Not so Devereaux, who manages to keep both on a tight leash while acting rather like the alpha monkey in the monkey house, flinging poo and satire at American society, eighties slasher flicks, the entire state of Kansas, prom culture, the Tupperware corporation (by the by: a chance aside at one point in the book makes me think that if Devereaux is going to continue on in this universe, we need a book about the rise of the Futter family and their Kitchen Storage Container empire), sexual mores, body modification, and, well, pretty much anything else you can think of. It's funny stuff, but it's the darkest kind of funny--much uglier than the comedy in <em>Santa Steps Out</em>. I get the feeling Devereaux almost wanted to play this one as a straight horror novel. If you're not sure whether you're supposed to be laughing at the satire, well, by cracky, that's the best kind, no?
My only real qualm with the book is that sometimes the pace flags (usually when we move away from the prom and focus on the doings at the top of the political food chain). But that never happens for long, and we get back to the action quickly enough that it should be a minor niggle at best for most readers. Established Devreaux fans will want to pick this one up posthaste; I'd suggest new folks get themselves converted with <em>Deadweight</em> or <em>Caliban and Other Tales</em> before diving into this one. But you'll want to pick it up eventually. *** ˝
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
By moof3r
Format:Paperback
I'll have to give this one 3.5/5. I have read one of Robert's books before (Santa Steps Out) and thought it was great, disturbing, and screwed up. Just up my alley. While I get the same with Slaughterhouse High in the way of disturbing and screwed up, it just fell a little short for me. I'm not sure if it was the pacing of the book, the literary prose in which it was written, or what, but it was a slow moving book for me, that had my mind wandering a little. While the disturbing and gory aspect was there (teachers killing students, ear lobes that have to be covered up because they are sexual objects, zippers for mouths and genitalia on students), it didn't fulfill my expectations.
Most Recent Customer Reviews
4.0 out of 5 stars
This Ain't Your Grandma's Prom
Prom Night is very special in the Demented States of America. Every prom across the country ritualistically slaughters and mutilates one of the teenaged prom couples. Read more
Published 12 months ago by Sarah A. Shaw
3.0 out of 5 stars
Interesting
"Slaughterhouse High" is an interesting book, giving the reader a glimpse into an alternate universe where violence is institutionalized and the culture is sado-masochistic. Read more
Published 18 months ago by G. Shirer
4.0 out of 5 stars
prom night blenderized with David Lynch
Robert Devereaux know to some readers for his Santa Steps Out, wanders into 80's cliches and rams them into an allegory for the ineffectual government action that has endured for... Read more
Published 23 months ago by gothbear666
5.0 out of 5 stars
Like a David Cronenberg made sequel to Friday the 13th
"Slaughterhouse High" is the kind of book I love to read - sexy, strange, and cover to cover splatter. Read more
Published on December 14, 2010 by Bob Chaplin
5.0 out of 5 stars
Slasher Gore Tale Set in Surreal Alternate Universe
This is an amazing book. It is very original. Very unique. I haven't read anything like it before. Fans of bizarro should take note, as well as fans of extreme horror. Read more
Published on December 14, 2010 by Captain Satan
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