“Let’s start here: I think it’s pretty safe to ignore reviews concerned about the misogyny of the writing.
I, as much as anyone, understand the need to find something to write about in a Goodreads review. But I think this is where I hit the wall on these things. It takes me back to college, my English degree, when you could always, if all else failed, decide something in a book meant something sexual.
If the sort of loving attention Playground pays to grossing you out with a grandma’s snatch was present in a book about, I don’t know, a college professor solving mysteries in the Vatican, sure, it’d be really super weird and definitely warrant discussion.
But let’s just pretend Playground is a book where a bunch of kids are put into a playground filled with sadistic, murderous traps designed by AN ACTUAL NAZI. Like a fresh outta Berlin in the 40’s Nazi, an Operation Paperclip guy who, instead of taking us to the Moon, created Saw-like traps for kids and incorporated them into playground equipment. And let’s just say these kids are cut, bruised, burned, and mangled in VIVID detail. Let’s just say that’s what this book was.
I ask you, in this book, is an extremely uncharitable description of a vagina out of place?
Maybe it’s just me. When a kid uses another kid’s corpse as a surfboard, surfing down a wave of gore, the ability to consider whether the book passes The Bechdel Test has left my body.
I mean, yes, it’s misogynistic. It should be. It’s cruel, it’s disgusting, it’s hateful in many ways. That’s this book’s vibe.
I guess Aron Beauregard can decide if he wants to apologize to the subset of splatterpunk readers who thought they were in for a gruesome child murder spree without all that pesky gross-out sex stuff getting in the way.
Let’s talk about the book.
Playground is…interesting.
The writing didn’t hit for me. I think there are some word uses here that don’t work, and at times I felt like the book was overwritten, maybe the author using heady vocabulary to lend the book more cred. Nowhere near a deal killer for me, I just think the book doesn’t need it, I’m very aware of what I’m reading, and the occasional dressing up of the language added a clashing flavor for me.
BUT, Playground is different. It’s original. It kept me engaged, and I read it inside of a week, which is pretty quick for me on a book this length.
There’s a push/pull of reading indie work, and it’s true of Playground. It’s not as polished, some sentence-level work would improve it. But on the other hand, you get something that you aren’t going to see in publications from a big publishing house.
You have to just accept that the books are imperfect, but unique. If you’re willing to trade those two aspects for each other, you’re ready to read true indies, and you’ll enjoy them.
If not, please just stop reading indie books, or at least stop reviewing them. We get it, you’re smart, you’re great at spelling. We’re all impressed.
I wouldn’t recommend this for everyone, but for the gorehound who likes scary movies that are rough around the edges but have a bit of a different flavor, this’ll work for you.
I also want to commend the book because I think it’s one of those books that bring people around to reading. Every so often, something finds a cult following, and I think those sorts of books bring atypical readers to books now and then, which is very cool.
Last thing: We can probably all chill out on attributing the horrors of the book to the author’s real life. Someone can have HORRIFIC thoughts and be a great person IRL. I mean, if you were going to do something terrible and murderous, why would you write a book about it first? You’d be burying yourself before you’d even done the crime.
Y’all have strong Gary Lightfoot energy with that shit.
Oh, you don’t know who that is? That’s the dude who is 100% certain Stephen King killed John Lennon, and he drives around a big ol’ van with “evidence” painted all over the sides.
In fact, I tried to find horror authors who’ve killed people in real life…and I found one, kinda. He co-wrote a graphic novel and killed someone in a fashion reminiscent of the comic.
And you fuckers, you’ve inflated the price of that book, so it can’t be had for less than a couple hundred bucks.
Considering the GIGANTIC number of horror novels published every year, we’ve got one? Almost like there’s no correlation between writing fucked-up shit and doing fucked-up shit.
Anyway, I don’t know, how about you spend your energy hounding actors who portray bad guys in movies. “Oh, he did such a good job, he MUST be fucked up.”
Or Stephen Gamell, the guy who drew all those Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark illustraitons.
Or R.L. Stine! Guy must be a monster to scare so many children!
Or just grow up and recognize that creating fiction is fine, even if it crosses the boundary of your personal taste.”