Customer Reviews

The Southeast Asian Book of the Dead

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

...you might already be dead.

Goodness; this book is amazing in how relentless it is. It's like fighting Muhammed Ali: you keep getting whacked, and it's painful as all get-out, but you're honored to be there in the ring with him at all.

All of the brutality in Shields' work, when all is said and done, actually delivers a life-AFFIRMING message. The writing is so honest and informed; you really get the idea that this man who has been through such hell has walked out of it with wisdom that few of us are going to get on our own. Plus, he's somehow kept his sense of humor.

A major, MAJOR piece of work.

For brutality, intensity and stomach pulling honesty the rest of the world just wishes it could match Bill Shields. Huddle in bed with this book and thank creation that your worst nightmares don't come close to his reality. S-E A BoTD is Shields at his Vietnam induced best.

Shields' book takes you to places most readers and writers don't want to travel to: the elephant grass deep within our unconscious, where all the horror lurks, unseen. Also, Cunis' cover is utterly striking, a graphic metaphor for the terror within.

Shields' work is like a well-chewed bone from Hell that shatters the plate of a reader's eyes.

Let the day perish wherein I was born, and the night in which it was said There is a man child conceived. Let that day be darkness; let not god regard it from above, neither let the light shine up it. Let Darkness and the shadow of death stain it; let a cloud dwell up on it; let the balckness of the day terrify it. BILL IS DARKER THAN THE BOOK OF JOB.

Bill Shields has been passing himself off as a former Navy SEAL for a number of years. Obviously, the publishers don't care that he is a liar. His name is in the Hall of Shame at VeriSEAL.org and will remain there. Our specialty is uncloaking those who claim to be members of our Special Operations Forces who never earned the right.

I could care less whether Bill Shields was
a "real" Navy SEAL or not. He's a real writer,
and that's all I need to know. When the fist
of his words is clenched around my neck, I can
barely breathe. When I'm finished reading
one of his books, I never forget it. I'm not
buying a Navy SEAL, I'm buying poetry.
The poetry is so real it makes me dizzy.
Is that really rocket science???

Shields has been outed as a phony. I became interested in his work after reading an interview with Henry Rollins (who publishes Shields's books) that mentioned Shields being a former SEAL who went on missions of the "darkest horror" in Vietnam, like decapitating entire villages and putting their heads on pikes. Then I found out Shields was a fraud. Somebody should put his head on a pike, and maybe Rollins's too for not vetting the guy before agreeing to publish his nonsense. Lying about having served is bad enough, but fabricating atrocities like the aforementioned is just appalling. And no, he's not a great writer. Once his work has been stripped of its reality, it's pure junk.