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Ego Homini Lupus
Joan is wed without a dowry to a knight without a household. In the cold and dark of 12th-century Northumbria she struggles under the burden of life as his servant and wife, mother to his children, keeper of his hall, and tanner of the wolf pelts he must render to the king in tax each summer.
Alone at the end of the world with her husband and his cruel, mercurial sister-in-law, Joan gradually descends into a netherworld of filth and madness as the demands of her new life crush her mind beneath their weight.
Alone at the end of the world with her husband and his cruel, mercurial sister-in-law, Joan gradually descends into a netherworld of filth and madness as the demands of her new life crush her mind beneath their weight.
ebook
First published January 1, 2019
About the author
Gretchen Felker-Martin
16 books1,087 followersGRETCHEN FELKER-MARTIN is a Massachusetts-based horror author and film critic. Her debut novel, Manhunt, was named the #1 Best Book of 2022 by Vulture, and one of the Best Horror Novels of 2022 by Esquire, Library Journal, and Paste. You can follow her work on Twitter and read her fiction and film criticism on Patreon and in TIME, The Outline, Nylon, Polygon, and more.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 38 reviews
September 9, 2021
I try not to look at online speculative fiction controversies too much but I've undeniably found a lot of promising authors from doing so. I really enjoyed Felker-Martin's opinions and found her insights really refreshing, touching on some things I've not heard many people talk about.
Tom Horstmann's cover art grabbed me, one of my favorite cover arts I've seen in recent years. This is the first time I've read a digital book of any real length, usually physical books take my priority but so far a digital copy on Gumroad is the only option.
I guess this is folk horror (in 12th-century Northumbria). It goes through different modes of horror: grueling traumatic real life horror (in the home and on the battlefield), extreme gore/body horror and supernatural horror, much of it on a small scale, sometimes eerie in a down to earth way but several scenes take it to the level of a very grand Zdzisław Beksiński painting. You get a good feel for the main setting because there's so much richly textured description of Joan's daily work.
The characters and structure are brilliant. There were a few scenes that really stopped me in my tracks when I realized what was happening, usually something harrowing or deeply sad or both; one or two scenes got my eyes filling up, on the edge of crying.
I had to look up a lot of period terminology and it even got me looking up how high chickens can fly.
Even some of the really glowing reviews are underselling how good this is, I'm sorry I'm underselling it, but it's already among my favorite horror stories and I think it should be looked back on as a classic of its time, I hope that even horror fans not used to this level of sex and violence will not be dismissive. Publishers should be fighting to get the first paper version of it (hopefully with the original cover, it won't be easily topped), get in there!
Looking forward to her other books.
Tom Horstmann's cover art grabbed me, one of my favorite cover arts I've seen in recent years. This is the first time I've read a digital book of any real length, usually physical books take my priority but so far a digital copy on Gumroad is the only option.
I guess this is folk horror (in 12th-century Northumbria). It goes through different modes of horror: grueling traumatic real life horror (in the home and on the battlefield), extreme gore/body horror and supernatural horror, much of it on a small scale, sometimes eerie in a down to earth way but several scenes take it to the level of a very grand Zdzisław Beksiński painting. You get a good feel for the main setting because there's so much richly textured description of Joan's daily work.
The characters and structure are brilliant. There were a few scenes that really stopped me in my tracks when I realized what was happening, usually something harrowing or deeply sad or both; one or two scenes got my eyes filling up, on the edge of crying.
I had to look up a lot of period terminology and it even got me looking up how high chickens can fly.
Even some of the really glowing reviews are underselling how good this is, I'm sorry I'm underselling it, but it's already among my favorite horror stories and I think it should be looked back on as a classic of its time, I hope that even horror fans not used to this level of sex and violence will not be dismissive. Publishers should be fighting to get the first paper version of it (hopefully with the original cover, it won't be easily topped), get in there!
Looking forward to her other books.
December 11, 2019
This novel is what I always hope for and very rarely *get* when I pick up a work of fiction labeled "splatterpunk" (though I have no idea if the author would ever label herself as such): it contains myriad kinds of extreme violence, transgressive sex, rape/incest, and grostesque bodily degradation, yes. It also contains myriad kinds of extremely creative and disturbing supernatural body horror, yes. But it juxtaposes these elements with a keen, precise authorial eye for beauty and poetic detail; I never got the sense that Felker-Martin was trying to shock or gross out her readers for some sort of edgier-than-thou cred, but to actually *horrify* them into a state of fascination, or even awe, wherein they might become receptive to her novel's complex, difficult, and important points about cycles of abuse and trauma and about the ways in which patriarchal societies punish insufficiently "manly" men, and *all* women. I think this is one of the bleakest, darkest, most misanthropic horror novels I've read recently, but I would also categorize it as one of the most radically empathetic; it's strange how those things can go together so easily. Much as Felker-Martin uses her descriptive prose style to keep the reader absorbed even when part of them recoils from *what* she's describing, she skillfully juggles different character perspectives in such a way that a reader cannot disengage their emotions from any given player to write them off as simply "evil" or "an abuser", nor forget or justify the violence they do and the torments they inflict upon others. So much of this story deals in the violence and abuse that violence and abuse beget, and I think many authors struggle to depict that kind of cycle without pulling punches. Not so Ms. Martin.
A great deal of EGO HOMINI LUPUS seems to be about addressing the question of how much free will a person can have when constrained by societal violence, interpersonal violence, their own faulty body, the effects of trauma on the psyche, and so on. What if we're all doomed to harm and be harmed forever, the only respite complete nihilistic obliteration? It's not a fun question, but it's an important human question, and I think ideally that's what horror is about: asking the important human questions that aren't fun, that are uncomfortable and, well, *scary*.
As a final note, I am not an expert on medieval Anglo-Norman (?) culture, at all, so this should be taken with a large grain of salt, but: personally I found the historical setting of the novel convincing and immersive. It seemed like it was quite well-researched. It's not just a chintzy backdrop for the Clive Barkerian cults and monsters and the character drama, nor do any of the characters have notably anachronistic 21st century opinions and attitudes, nor is anybody eating potatoes and tomatoes with forks, etc. (Can you tell I've had some underwhelming experiences with historical/medieval SFF/horror in the past? I have!)
As a final final note: This is *not* a werewolf novel (except *maybe* in the most expansive possible definition of the term). You should read it anyway, if all of the above intrigues you; just don't do what I did and spend the first half of the book partly waiting for a big Werewolf Reveal, because it won't happen and you'll feel very silly when you realize your mistake.
A great deal of EGO HOMINI LUPUS seems to be about addressing the question of how much free will a person can have when constrained by societal violence, interpersonal violence, their own faulty body, the effects of trauma on the psyche, and so on. What if we're all doomed to harm and be harmed forever, the only respite complete nihilistic obliteration? It's not a fun question, but it's an important human question, and I think ideally that's what horror is about: asking the important human questions that aren't fun, that are uncomfortable and, well, *scary*.
As a final note, I am not an expert on medieval Anglo-Norman (?) culture, at all, so this should be taken with a large grain of salt, but: personally I found the historical setting of the novel convincing and immersive. It seemed like it was quite well-researched. It's not just a chintzy backdrop for the Clive Barkerian cults and monsters and the character drama, nor do any of the characters have notably anachronistic 21st century opinions and attitudes, nor is anybody eating potatoes and tomatoes with forks, etc. (Can you tell I've had some underwhelming experiences with historical/medieval SFF/horror in the past? I have!)
As a final final note: This is *not* a werewolf novel (except *maybe* in the most expansive possible definition of the term). You should read it anyway, if all of the above intrigues you; just don't do what I did and spend the first half of the book partly waiting for a big Werewolf Reveal, because it won't happen and you'll feel very silly when you realize your mistake.
May 4, 2022
4 stars--I really liked it, though I'd hesitate to recommend it to anyone. Content warnings for everything.
This book is a medieval horror novel that wallows in filth--most of it literal. It's a book where everyone abuses their power--nobility over lesser men, men over women, and everyone over animals. No one is treated well, and all the pain and stench are vividly described; sometimes it's difficult to read. It's a fever dream of horror, with an occult touch. The plot is fragmented and nightmarish, descriptions are awash in bodily fluids, and no one is happy. Still, I couldn't look away, and the author gave me some sympathy for some really awful people. No one is good--but everyone has moments of beauty. (Plus, there's monsters--the human kind, the animal kind, and the supernatural kind.)
This book is a medieval horror novel that wallows in filth--most of it literal. It's a book where everyone abuses their power--nobility over lesser men, men over women, and everyone over animals. No one is treated well, and all the pain and stench are vividly described; sometimes it's difficult to read. It's a fever dream of horror, with an occult touch. The plot is fragmented and nightmarish, descriptions are awash in bodily fluids, and no one is happy. Still, I couldn't look away, and the author gave me some sympathy for some really awful people. No one is good--but everyone has moments of beauty. (Plus, there's monsters--the human kind, the animal kind, and the supernatural kind.)
February 9, 2019
I tore through the 532 page pdf of this in like two days. It made my skin crawl and was deeply upsetting at parts (in terms of horror, Felker-Martin's descriptions of brutal battle scenes are practically nothing compared to her depiction of Joan's daily life and the tense terror of the occult scenes) and it was SO GOOD.
June 10, 2022
This book wasn’t 100% My Thing, hence the -1 star! But it’s absolutely someone else’s 5-star thing, and the writing, storytelling, and attention to historical context are impeccable. There are some resemblances here to gothic/haunted house stories, which were interesting to notice — I’d never read a gothic novel so deeply steeped in explicit and fairly unrelenting gore/body horror, nor one in this particular time period.
Recommended for people who like grotesque stuff on the level of “The Black Farm” but actually need and appreciate good quality writing.
Recommended for people who like grotesque stuff on the level of “The Black Farm” but actually need and appreciate good quality writing.
June 12, 2021
I hate writing reviews but this book is so fucking good it made me excited to read again after not reading much for several years. If you like jarring, unnerving, stunningly beautiful art that leaves you feeling a little sick to your stomach and glad you read it this is the shit. Thanks to Gretchen Felker-Martin for making beautiful filth <3
January 19, 2023
This was the literary equivalent of putting little rocks into your shoes and going on a suffer-pilgrimage, and I guess I must be a slut for suffering, because damn if I didn’t walk every step. Fellow literary suffer sluts, seekers of a great medieval pain porneaux, look no more. A wise friend of mine once said long long ago (this is a paraphrase now), but if you strip away everything, all our toys and reason and language and blah blah, there is only ever two things of any importance: could I fuck her (him)? Could they beat me up (I beat them up)? EGO HOMINI LUPUS presents a world where yes, these are the only questions of any consequence and every sentence is ruled by them. More broadly, it is an examination of evil—if we live like animals, and are animals, are we absolved of evil? Because evil is a child of reason—without reasons, actions, even the most transgressive of actions, are valueless.
A most simple understanding of evil may be the existence of a demonic spirit that has come to inhabit our body (and Felker-Martin’s story explores this in depth with echte supernatural horror details). A more modern understanding may be that evil is a lack of moral agency due to a cycle of abuse and poverty (and EGO probes into this as well, this is a world of husbands and masters. There are no winners, only perpetual losers (generally women) and not-yet losers, men waiting to be humiliated by a bigger man, once he comes around). But I believe the most powerful manifestation of evil is not a bogeyman spirit/Christian concept of a demon—nor the dull cycle of abuse that perpetuates because victims eventually grow into what they fear and hate**,—but an utter inability to find, seek, and provide joy. A vacuum of joy. Which renders life unbearable.
Yes, the pages of this book are filled with every hue of violence you can imagine. I don’t normally read horror, so I don’t know how much of that was an adherence to some boundary of the genre, and how much of it was this particular author’s artistic choice. In the description for the novel, the author says nobody is spared, and boy, she was not joking. So I say this not as a complaint! It was right there, up front, and I was welcome to stop reading at any point. But I did not. What kept me reading? I couldn’t help but feel that despite the gratuitous violence and graphic assault (scenes which were many times cartoonishly (if poetically) extra)—the author had some deep connection to these people, and despite the countless humiliations they were marched through, I could feel a visceral pulse in the book that herded towards life, even as every page, sentence and letter, seemed pointed towards death. I needed to follow it to the very end and I’m glad that I did. In a sense, it was interesting to find something so teeming with life (even if it only existed to be slaughtered somehow). I enjoyed Felker-Martin’s prose and found her style horrifically beautiful. There were multiple what the fuck did I just read moments, that I found terribly satisfying.
**If I had to critique the book’s theme of evil, it is perhaps that I couldn’t figure out what the author was trying to say (if anything) about the utter lack of joy. We accept that abuse happens because the abused grow into what they ran from—but not all abused people become abusers. And many people who have created great bad are also capable of creating great good. (I cannot speak for any other person, but I personally morally –prefer- a person who is capable of big good and bad, over a person who is a dull sinkhole of nothing evil—but also nothing good.) So I come back to the feeling that the greatest theme of –evil- for me seemed not the obvious dripping drooling filth of every page and how every character was predator and preyed upon—it was how no character seemed capable of even a spark of joy, or to bring it to another. Why doesn’t he/she do this? Or that? They asked (very rarely)—but not—what can I do? (the very very few connections in the book seemed always to people who were impossible, and thus self-sabotage-y.) At the very very end, Joan experiences a climactic Joy as she releases herself completely to the Darkness. (And the general state of people being DTF no matter how awful their conditions/mental/physical state was, was not lost on me :D) Perhaps that is the point? I’m not sure. I hesitate to automatically subscribe deep meaning to –suffering- and –ugliness- any more than I would to –beauty- and –levity-. That being said, I had to respect this book’s enormous middle finger to the idea of moderation in all things. Definitely looking forward to reading more by this author!
A most simple understanding of evil may be the existence of a demonic spirit that has come to inhabit our body (and Felker-Martin’s story explores this in depth with echte supernatural horror details). A more modern understanding may be that evil is a lack of moral agency due to a cycle of abuse and poverty (and EGO probes into this as well, this is a world of husbands and masters. There are no winners, only perpetual losers (generally women) and not-yet losers, men waiting to be humiliated by a bigger man, once he comes around). But I believe the most powerful manifestation of evil is not a bogeyman spirit/Christian concept of a demon—nor the dull cycle of abuse that perpetuates because victims eventually grow into what they fear and hate**,—but an utter inability to find, seek, and provide joy. A vacuum of joy. Which renders life unbearable.
Yes, the pages of this book are filled with every hue of violence you can imagine. I don’t normally read horror, so I don’t know how much of that was an adherence to some boundary of the genre, and how much of it was this particular author’s artistic choice. In the description for the novel, the author says nobody is spared, and boy, she was not joking. So I say this not as a complaint! It was right there, up front, and I was welcome to stop reading at any point. But I did not. What kept me reading? I couldn’t help but feel that despite the gratuitous violence and graphic assault (scenes which were many times cartoonishly (if poetically) extra)—the author had some deep connection to these people, and despite the countless humiliations they were marched through, I could feel a visceral pulse in the book that herded towards life, even as every page, sentence and letter, seemed pointed towards death. I needed to follow it to the very end and I’m glad that I did. In a sense, it was interesting to find something so teeming with life (even if it only existed to be slaughtered somehow). I enjoyed Felker-Martin’s prose and found her style horrifically beautiful. There were multiple what the fuck did I just read moments, that I found terribly satisfying.
**If I had to critique the book’s theme of evil, it is perhaps that I couldn’t figure out what the author was trying to say (if anything) about the utter lack of joy. We accept that abuse happens because the abused grow into what they ran from—but not all abused people become abusers. And many people who have created great bad are also capable of creating great good. (I cannot speak for any other person, but I personally morally –prefer- a person who is capable of big good and bad, over a person who is a dull sinkhole of nothing evil—but also nothing good.) So I come back to the feeling that the greatest theme of –evil- for me seemed not the obvious dripping drooling filth of every page and how every character was predator and preyed upon—it was how no character seemed capable of even a spark of joy, or to bring it to another. Why doesn’t he/she do this? Or that? They asked (very rarely)—but not—what can I do? (the very very few connections in the book seemed always to people who were impossible, and thus self-sabotage-y.) At the very very end, Joan experiences a climactic Joy as she releases herself completely to the Darkness. (And the general state of people being DTF no matter how awful their conditions/mental/physical state was, was not lost on me :D) Perhaps that is the point? I’m not sure. I hesitate to automatically subscribe deep meaning to –suffering- and –ugliness- any more than I would to –beauty- and –levity-. That being said, I had to respect this book’s enormous middle finger to the idea of moderation in all things. Definitely looking forward to reading more by this author!
December 17, 2021
CW:
As far as horror goes, I'm about as far from a slouch when it comes to scares as one could be - a cursory glance at my userpage is enough to prove this, I was raised on the genre and have been a horror devotee since I was barely out of my diapers, and not much really gets to me anymore, supernatural or not. But "Ego Homini Lupus" I can safely say is probably the only work of horror fiction I've read this year that actually made me squirm on my couch and make it difficult for me to ball my hands into fists just because of how relentlessly, unrepentantly brutal it is without cease. The biggest criticism I could see being made of this book is that it's just gore and distortions of the flesh in some fashion or another stacked side by side without relent, that its shock value eclipses anything beyond surface level it could say. But I think this is an erroneous oversimplification of a novel that's both thematically and viscerally rich, one whose worst horrors lie not even in its more cerebral terrors but something far more intimate - domesticity, and the catastrophic effects this concept has wrought upon innocent people - especially women - for centuries in the way it is manifested under patriarchal institutions of power.
There is nothing normal about Joan's "normal life", yet she exists in a society where her enslavement and the physical and mental violence and dehumanization inflicted upon her are completely unchallenged and uncritically accepted, normalized by hegemonic modes of power that are enforced by the ruling class that weaponize these concepts and thus indoctrinate the disenfranchised below them into accepting their own slavery. The most upsetting violence in "Ego Homini Lupus" are not the grotesque bodily manglings or the visceral brutality of medieval combat (though these also warrant their own paragraph), but rather violence that has been institutionalized in the home (or "home", really, given the weight behind that word). Joan's life is nothing *but* her slavery, daily cleaning and trudging through filth and backbreaking work and upkeep at the service of a man (who himself is also a trauma victim poisoned by patriarchal power structures) who regards her not as a lover but as a servant, and this book works its way under the skin to remind the reader that this was how life, and marriage, was, and for millions (perhaps billions) of women, it still is. Take the first scene in the curing house; though the florid descriptions of the act of skinning the wolf corpse are vivid and stomach-churning, the dread is potentiated not only by the physical horror but by the anticipation and gut-twisting horror of what's going to happen to Joan if she fails.
Throughout every chapter I was thoroughly placed in Joan's head, stewing in her mire of fear, resentment and loathing of the life she has been given and the shackles imposed upon her by deeply embedded patriarchal values. Online, there's a worrying presence of those who seem quick to dismiss "imperfect" trauma victims like Joan, because people don't want to reckon with the fact that people who have been harmed can themselves be flawed, imperfect people, and Felker-Martin's deeply textured and internal characterization of Joan directly affronts this toxic mindset with just how richly detailed and understandable every aspect of her is, even when she is in the throes of her darkest thoughts and impulses. How could one expect perfection out of someone who has been deeply imposed upon by looming institutional violence? Is it that difficult to empathize with a person who has been brutalized by forces beyond their control that serve as nothing more than destructive forces to consolidate power for those with no interest in improving the lives of others or the health of communities?
It's thru this understanding of enforced societal violence and trauma that the grotesquely and relentlessly vivid imagery becomes necessary to bolstering these themes. Felker-Martin seems to have a strong fascination with the physical body and almost every conceivable way it can bend and break. Each act of violence is described with florid and imagistic fervor. Every pustule, boil, and perversion of flesh is given focus; every breaking of skin, every smashed skull, every broken limb and scrap of shattered bone given intense and almost microscopic levels of detail. A broken cheek feels like a layer of hot sheet ice; flowers bloom beneath the red nerves of a sliced-off face. The sickening intimacy and poetic flourishes with which these acts are described lend a sense of otherworldly surrealism to the violence, acting like roots that tie the emotional depth of the domestic horror and the fear-of-unknown of the supernatural folk horror together brilliantly and it almost serves to feel like it is Joan setting up a wall between reality and the unreal as she attempts to reckon with her life. I wonder if Felker-Martin took any inspiration from visual (and also mostly medieval) art for this novel; at its best the imagery here feels as grotesquely lush as a Bosch painting or as one other reviewer said a Beksiński piece. Work of a shock jock this is not, as someone purely focused on being disgusting would not write with the level of vivid prose and attention to poetic detail that Felker-Martin does.
The ending, with as little spoilers as possible, is also of note. Is it delirium from a mind fatigued beneath the weight of both institutional and supernatural horrors or is it reality? Is it one of transcendence beyond hegemonized slavery or one of mind-shattering cosmic menace? The answers are unclear and I appreciated the open-endedness to the conclusion of Joan's story. One may very well interpret the climax in either direction, and both would feel like proper thematic directions to take given the nature of this story and its themes.
It's not a perfect work - there are some instances of meandering plot points that kind of trail off and wisp away, but with some editorial dusting-off they could easily be patched. Felker-Martin is a writer who gets under the skin and bone to expose hard truths, as all the most effective horror does, and from reading this effort I am sure her voice can only continue to become more and more interesting and refined, seeing as she only has a few works under her name to date. If you can stomach the depravity, this is a work highly worth a read, and I think it has something for all kinds of horror fans; social horror, gorehound horror, cosmicism and supernaturalism all congealed into one stunningly nerve-twisting and well considered volume. I look forward to more, even if I'll probably have to pace myself with this kind of beautifully written hell.
"I'm dead, she thought sometimes. I'm already dead and my body is rotting. What happens when you die is that you get to feel your body rot."
As far as horror goes, I'm about as far from a slouch when it comes to scares as one could be - a cursory glance at my userpage is enough to prove this, I was raised on the genre and have been a horror devotee since I was barely out of my diapers, and not much really gets to me anymore, supernatural or not. But "Ego Homini Lupus" I can safely say is probably the only work of horror fiction I've read this year that actually made me squirm on my couch and make it difficult for me to ball my hands into fists just because of how relentlessly, unrepentantly brutal it is without cease. The biggest criticism I could see being made of this book is that it's just gore and distortions of the flesh in some fashion or another stacked side by side without relent, that its shock value eclipses anything beyond surface level it could say. But I think this is an erroneous oversimplification of a novel that's both thematically and viscerally rich, one whose worst horrors lie not even in its more cerebral terrors but something far more intimate - domesticity, and the catastrophic effects this concept has wrought upon innocent people - especially women - for centuries in the way it is manifested under patriarchal institutions of power.
There is nothing normal about Joan's "normal life", yet she exists in a society where her enslavement and the physical and mental violence and dehumanization inflicted upon her are completely unchallenged and uncritically accepted, normalized by hegemonic modes of power that are enforced by the ruling class that weaponize these concepts and thus indoctrinate the disenfranchised below them into accepting their own slavery. The most upsetting violence in "Ego Homini Lupus" are not the grotesque bodily manglings or the visceral brutality of medieval combat (though these also warrant their own paragraph), but rather violence that has been institutionalized in the home (or "home", really, given the weight behind that word). Joan's life is nothing *but* her slavery, daily cleaning and trudging through filth and backbreaking work and upkeep at the service of a man (who himself is also a trauma victim poisoned by patriarchal power structures) who regards her not as a lover but as a servant, and this book works its way under the skin to remind the reader that this was how life, and marriage, was, and for millions (perhaps billions) of women, it still is. Take the first scene in the curing house; though the florid descriptions of the act of skinning the wolf corpse are vivid and stomach-churning, the dread is potentiated not only by the physical horror but by the anticipation and gut-twisting horror of what's going to happen to Joan if she fails.
Throughout every chapter I was thoroughly placed in Joan's head, stewing in her mire of fear, resentment and loathing of the life she has been given and the shackles imposed upon her by deeply embedded patriarchal values. Online, there's a worrying presence of those who seem quick to dismiss "imperfect" trauma victims like Joan, because people don't want to reckon with the fact that people who have been harmed can themselves be flawed, imperfect people, and Felker-Martin's deeply textured and internal characterization of Joan directly affronts this toxic mindset with just how richly detailed and understandable every aspect of her is, even when she is in the throes of her darkest thoughts and impulses. How could one expect perfection out of someone who has been deeply imposed upon by looming institutional violence? Is it that difficult to empathize with a person who has been brutalized by forces beyond their control that serve as nothing more than destructive forces to consolidate power for those with no interest in improving the lives of others or the health of communities?
It's thru this understanding of enforced societal violence and trauma that the grotesquely and relentlessly vivid imagery becomes necessary to bolstering these themes. Felker-Martin seems to have a strong fascination with the physical body and almost every conceivable way it can bend and break. Each act of violence is described with florid and imagistic fervor. Every pustule, boil, and perversion of flesh is given focus; every breaking of skin, every smashed skull, every broken limb and scrap of shattered bone given intense and almost microscopic levels of detail. A broken cheek feels like a layer of hot sheet ice; flowers bloom beneath the red nerves of a sliced-off face. The sickening intimacy and poetic flourishes with which these acts are described lend a sense of otherworldly surrealism to the violence, acting like roots that tie the emotional depth of the domestic horror and the fear-of-unknown of the supernatural folk horror together brilliantly and it almost serves to feel like it is Joan setting up a wall between reality and the unreal as she attempts to reckon with her life. I wonder if Felker-Martin took any inspiration from visual (and also mostly medieval) art for this novel; at its best the imagery here feels as grotesquely lush as a Bosch painting or as one other reviewer said a Beksiński piece. Work of a shock jock this is not, as someone purely focused on being disgusting would not write with the level of vivid prose and attention to poetic detail that Felker-Martin does.
The ending, with as little spoilers as possible, is also of note. Is it delirium from a mind fatigued beneath the weight of both institutional and supernatural horrors or is it reality? Is it one of transcendence beyond hegemonized slavery or one of mind-shattering cosmic menace? The answers are unclear and I appreciated the open-endedness to the conclusion of Joan's story. One may very well interpret the climax in either direction, and both would feel like proper thematic directions to take given the nature of this story and its themes.
It's not a perfect work - there are some instances of meandering plot points that kind of trail off and wisp away, but with some editorial dusting-off they could easily be patched. Felker-Martin is a writer who gets under the skin and bone to expose hard truths, as all the most effective horror does, and from reading this effort I am sure her voice can only continue to become more and more interesting and refined, seeing as she only has a few works under her name to date. If you can stomach the depravity, this is a work highly worth a read, and I think it has something for all kinds of horror fans; social horror, gorehound horror, cosmicism and supernaturalism all congealed into one stunningly nerve-twisting and well considered volume. I look forward to more, even if I'll probably have to pace myself with this kind of beautifully written hell.
"I'm dead, she thought sometimes. I'm already dead and my body is rotting. What happens when you die is that you get to feel your body rot."
April 9, 2020
I’m not really in the habit of writing book reviews, but I feel strongly about this one. I’ve read Ms. Felker-Martin’s other books, DREADNOUGHT and NO END WILL BE FOUND, and enjoyed them very much, but this is the one that really got under my skin in the best way. I admit there were a few times where I found myself a little lost, but i think part of it was because I read on digital, which is more difficult for me than print, and because I plowed through it in one sitting. Regardless, the writing is so vivid and engrossing, I was content to get lost in it.
The writing is definitely one of the chief strengths of this book. Ms. Felker-Martin’s prose is super evocative, full of rich sensory detail and as beautiful as it is horrifying. EGO HOMINI LUPUS touches on a lot of deeply disturbing subjects (trigger warning: literally everything) that I don’t think a writer with a lesser sensitivity to language could have pulled off in a way that didn’t seem puerile.
At the core, I think it’s the sensitivity that impressed me so much about the novel, not just for language, but for the characters too. It’s easy for a writer or reader to create empathy for a character who is good, or flawed but with a secret heart of gold, but the characters in this story are deeply wounded, capable of immense cruelty; that Ms. Felker-Martin manages to create a sense of empathy in the reader for these people most would be inclined to condemn outright is a feat. The book is extremely bleak, but the compassion and tenderness the characters were written with left me feeling strangely comforted.
The writing is definitely one of the chief strengths of this book. Ms. Felker-Martin’s prose is super evocative, full of rich sensory detail and as beautiful as it is horrifying. EGO HOMINI LUPUS touches on a lot of deeply disturbing subjects (trigger warning: literally everything) that I don’t think a writer with a lesser sensitivity to language could have pulled off in a way that didn’t seem puerile.
At the core, I think it’s the sensitivity that impressed me so much about the novel, not just for language, but for the characters too. It’s easy for a writer or reader to create empathy for a character who is good, or flawed but with a secret heart of gold, but the characters in this story are deeply wounded, capable of immense cruelty; that Ms. Felker-Martin manages to create a sense of empathy in the reader for these people most would be inclined to condemn outright is a feat. The book is extremely bleak, but the compassion and tenderness the characters were written with left me feeling strangely comforted.
October 28, 2020
She's a dense volume, you should know that first. A metric fuckton of filthy things happen in this book and they do not cease, not once, there is no rest, march on christian soldiers and good luck to you all. But the fact I could get nearly to the end and still be absolutely floored by certain events is remarkable. Mind-bending gore sprays out of this work with the speed of liquid fecal distress but at no point did my senses dull to it. On the contrary, even the tamer moments gave me discomfort. Tame, of course, being of relatively no value as a descriptor until you have entered this world because the grand majority of literary horror resembles Casper the friendly fucking ghost in comparison.
Our way through this world is first and foremost through the most base and physical. It is always jarring for a contemporary person to be constantly confronted with physical sensations, especially if unpleasant. Most of our experience of today's world, especially our art, is unbodied, nonmaterial - welcome to digital living, isn't it marvelous. I am always slightly terrified when I consider a time prior to my medications: not just painkillers, but the things that keep the chemicals in my body from killing me. I am also fortunate enough to, for the most part, choose what sensations my body has to experience. If wanted, I can dull them with relative ease. Avoid them entirely, or seek out specific ones without too much hassle. This is a very new condition for humans, this level of control over our bodies (even if it is still not entire or complete or even sufficient in most cases, because We Live in a Society, etc.).
All this is to say that I feel like historical work should be more horrifying in general. It should remind us of how different The Body is in prior times, how our consideration of its limits and its extremes has completely changed to the point where our modern experience would be alien in comparison. In this case, the writer takes complete advantage of the time period and it is perfection. Maybe I am just a sadist without a thesis, but I am of the mindset that in the same way the digital world is fucking up our mental states, living in constant brutality like this work presents would create psyches that are absolutely dependent on certain kinds of brutality. There are moments in this book where I feel like Rohaise is the sanest person here. After all, and I think the work does a fantastic job of constantly confronting us with this question - what is the fucking point of being a moral and rule-abiding person in this kind of world? Why bother? How has ethical behavior served anyone in the text? Spoiler: it does not serve them well. The one character who seems to be even vaguely moving in the direction of an alignment we might call "good" (or at least "looking out in a practical manner for their loved one which I suppose is the bare minimum we can expect") is snuffed out very early, and when we come across them again, it's one of the more horrifying descriptions of humans remains that I've read and been forced to picture, jesus fuck. There is no moralizing with pain and pleasure. That would be a pointless exercise. If there is anything here that can be distributed and "wielded" based on specific decisions and actions, it is power, and yet that power subverts its own potential time and time again. Consumption becomes empowerment, overcoming the limitations of the physical shell leads to an undoing which in itself leads to an unleashing of potential that becomes an ecstatic revelation. And it's all so very fragile, which is both terrifying and freeing.
My only gripe, which is not a gripe so much as it is a sense of deflation, is the similarity in the voices when it comes to switching perspectives. A certain character is suddenly revealed to be full of immense and fascinating power - I feel like there was a potential there to have their perception of the world/their portrayal via their POV sections just go absolutely apeshit. I don't see any of this sameness as done "incorrectly" - just that there was so much potential there and I would have loved to see it pushed even further. But in a work that is already bringing us into the realm of the Ecstatic multiple times, I suppose asking for More is kind of petty.
I've already recommended the book having finished it less than 24 hours ago, and I couldn't even recommend Anne Serre's latest collection. Yet here I am, like, you've GOT to read this fucking thing, you will tear through it, wow is it ever something.
Our way through this world is first and foremost through the most base and physical. It is always jarring for a contemporary person to be constantly confronted with physical sensations, especially if unpleasant. Most of our experience of today's world, especially our art, is unbodied, nonmaterial - welcome to digital living, isn't it marvelous. I am always slightly terrified when I consider a time prior to my medications: not just painkillers, but the things that keep the chemicals in my body from killing me. I am also fortunate enough to, for the most part, choose what sensations my body has to experience. If wanted, I can dull them with relative ease. Avoid them entirely, or seek out specific ones without too much hassle. This is a very new condition for humans, this level of control over our bodies (even if it is still not entire or complete or even sufficient in most cases, because We Live in a Society, etc.).
All this is to say that I feel like historical work should be more horrifying in general. It should remind us of how different The Body is in prior times, how our consideration of its limits and its extremes has completely changed to the point where our modern experience would be alien in comparison. In this case, the writer takes complete advantage of the time period and it is perfection. Maybe I am just a sadist without a thesis, but I am of the mindset that in the same way the digital world is fucking up our mental states, living in constant brutality like this work presents would create psyches that are absolutely dependent on certain kinds of brutality. There are moments in this book where I feel like Rohaise is the sanest person here. After all, and I think the work does a fantastic job of constantly confronting us with this question - what is the fucking point of being a moral and rule-abiding person in this kind of world? Why bother? How has ethical behavior served anyone in the text? Spoiler: it does not serve them well. The one character who seems to be even vaguely moving in the direction of an alignment we might call "good" (or at least "looking out in a practical manner for their loved one which I suppose is the bare minimum we can expect") is snuffed out very early, and when we come across them again, it's one of the more horrifying descriptions of humans remains that I've read and been forced to picture, jesus fuck. There is no moralizing with pain and pleasure. That would be a pointless exercise. If there is anything here that can be distributed and "wielded" based on specific decisions and actions, it is power, and yet that power subverts its own potential time and time again. Consumption becomes empowerment, overcoming the limitations of the physical shell leads to an undoing which in itself leads to an unleashing of potential that becomes an ecstatic revelation. And it's all so very fragile, which is both terrifying and freeing.
My only gripe, which is not a gripe so much as it is a sense of deflation, is the similarity in the voices when it comes to switching perspectives. A certain character is suddenly revealed to be full of immense and fascinating power - I feel like there was a potential there to have their perception of the world/their portrayal via their POV sections just go absolutely apeshit. I don't see any of this sameness as done "incorrectly" - just that there was so much potential there and I would have loved to see it pushed even further. But in a work that is already bringing us into the realm of the Ecstatic multiple times, I suppose asking for More is kind of petty.
I've already recommended the book having finished it less than 24 hours ago, and I couldn't even recommend Anne Serre's latest collection. Yet here I am, like, you've GOT to read this fucking thing, you will tear through it, wow is it ever something.
August 18, 2022
This book’s second chapter opens with a graphic description of a mother nonconsensually fisting her daughter.
Should I go on from there? Should I write a long essay about the Game of Thronesification of medieval fantasy and how it plays into age-old tropes about the violent Middle Ages? Should I flash my own expertise in medieval studies and medievalisms? Should I engage with the scene that is a barely concealed rewrite of Sansa being presented to Cersei at Winterfell and break open its constituent parts in terms of how the modern person encounters the medieval? Should I talk about the tropes of medieval sexual assault, the reality of medieval sexual assault, and the different iterations of misogyny threading through each? Should I pull out my Old French and my Late Old English and make them fight to the death about the Anglo-Norman nomenclature here?
What’s the point? The problems here are inexorably connected to the setting and genre, yes, but those choices don’t make the errors inherent. This book is bad because it doesn’t know what it’s doing with its aesthetic vileness. That makes it uninteresting.
I have no problems with gore. I like splatterpunk well enough. Cows by Matthew Stokoe is a bit scatological for my tastes, but I understand it; I enjoy the prose. I can read a Jack Ketchum novel and shut my brain off for the duration. I am firmly of the opinion that the discursive branches of Twitter that refuse to engage with queerness and violence unless it is condemned in the terms a first-grader would understand is part of a process of sneaky conservatism installing itself into well-meaning leftist communities. I understand the special relationship a transgender author might have with body horror and gore and sexual trauma.
So. I wanted to like Ego Homini Lupus. Medieval gore horror written by a trans author. That’s delicious, in the abstract.
The prose is decent, in sentences. In paragraphs it’s not. The dialogue is a few steps away from prithee and what ho. Rohaise refers to arranging the gang-rape of her brother as “a jest on [him].” Every page, and on some pages every paragraph, has some new fetid description: pus, phlegm, rot, flies, blood, excrement. There’s hotly described mother-daughter incest (this is separate from the mother-daughter fisting), gorgings, gore, depravity, gluttony, and just about nothing else.
A lot of gory horror revels in its own transgression. I can’t even get a sense of naughty delight out of this because it’s boring. It is an unrelenting slog of revulsion and disgust, with no tempering. There’s no contrast, so it can't be shocking. There’s no horror, because what horror can exist that pushes past the base volume of 100% Fucked Up? There are no characters here, only the subjects and objects of filth. Joan’s inner monologue is supposed to be violent and frantic, but it has all the spark of Anastasia Steele’s Inner Goddess. Joan’s mother joylessly masturbates to Christ at church, while her new sister-in-law Rohaise masturbates fruitlessly to the memory of her dead lover. There is nothing to make this horror because all of it is horrible, seemingly pointlessly.
There is also the problem that nothing happens, very slowly. 114 pages in and Joan skins her first wolf. The preceding pages she mostly vomits, hates everyone, and sleeps with her brother. This is overdescribed in plodding detail.
There is a plot here, somewhere. Loosely it’s about Joan, the dowry-less daughter of an impoverished noble, being married off to the effete homosexual Arséne, another impoverished noble who maintains his relationship with the king by handing over wolf pelts. (One considers wolf pelts vs, say, squirrel pelts in the general medieval economy and refrains from commenting.) Arséne has a bastard daughter named Sophie and a sadistic stepsister named Rohaise. Joan is abused and worked to the bone by Arséne, terrorized by Rohaise, troubled by her unwanted daughter Merienne, and seized with rage towards Sophie. And that’s it. Terrible things happen to Joan. Rohaise appears every so often to be dreadful and hedonistic. Joan's role as the object of filth and violence shifts to other characters seemingly at random. There are inner monologues that go nowhere. I think there’s a plot about summoning a beast in the woods to wreak revenge and havoc, but I got distracted by the description of Henry II (yes, that one) coming on himself in the excitement of battle.
I wanted to find a difficult aesthetic handled with a steady hand. I wanted the author to stick to the occasional brilliant flashes of hallucinogenic horror. Instead, I am fascinated, almost, by how terrible this book is. I shall place it oozing onto its own shelf and hope it doesn't corrode downwards.
This book is self-published. There is a reason for this. I hope Gretchen Felker-Martin can find an editor willing to reign in her overbearing tendencies. There are some good ideas and lovely turns of phrase here and there, but they are drowned by the unrelenting, purposeless grimness, the overwritten slog confounding the plot and offering nothing to the reader.
Two stars, to be nice. It’s at least got some vivid imagery, at least.
Should I go on from there? Should I write a long essay about the Game of Thronesification of medieval fantasy and how it plays into age-old tropes about the violent Middle Ages? Should I flash my own expertise in medieval studies and medievalisms? Should I engage with the scene that is a barely concealed rewrite of Sansa being presented to Cersei at Winterfell and break open its constituent parts in terms of how the modern person encounters the medieval? Should I talk about the tropes of medieval sexual assault, the reality of medieval sexual assault, and the different iterations of misogyny threading through each? Should I pull out my Old French and my Late Old English and make them fight to the death about the Anglo-Norman nomenclature here?
What’s the point? The problems here are inexorably connected to the setting and genre, yes, but those choices don’t make the errors inherent. This book is bad because it doesn’t know what it’s doing with its aesthetic vileness. That makes it uninteresting.
I have no problems with gore. I like splatterpunk well enough. Cows by Matthew Stokoe is a bit scatological for my tastes, but I understand it; I enjoy the prose. I can read a Jack Ketchum novel and shut my brain off for the duration. I am firmly of the opinion that the discursive branches of Twitter that refuse to engage with queerness and violence unless it is condemned in the terms a first-grader would understand is part of a process of sneaky conservatism installing itself into well-meaning leftist communities. I understand the special relationship a transgender author might have with body horror and gore and sexual trauma.
So. I wanted to like Ego Homini Lupus. Medieval gore horror written by a trans author. That’s delicious, in the abstract.
The prose is decent, in sentences. In paragraphs it’s not. The dialogue is a few steps away from prithee and what ho. Rohaise refers to arranging the gang-rape of her brother as “a jest on [him].” Every page, and on some pages every paragraph, has some new fetid description: pus, phlegm, rot, flies, blood, excrement. There’s hotly described mother-daughter incest (this is separate from the mother-daughter fisting), gorgings, gore, depravity, gluttony, and just about nothing else.
A lot of gory horror revels in its own transgression. I can’t even get a sense of naughty delight out of this because it’s boring. It is an unrelenting slog of revulsion and disgust, with no tempering. There’s no contrast, so it can't be shocking. There’s no horror, because what horror can exist that pushes past the base volume of 100% Fucked Up? There are no characters here, only the subjects and objects of filth. Joan’s inner monologue is supposed to be violent and frantic, but it has all the spark of Anastasia Steele’s Inner Goddess. Joan’s mother joylessly masturbates to Christ at church, while her new sister-in-law Rohaise masturbates fruitlessly to the memory of her dead lover. There is nothing to make this horror because all of it is horrible, seemingly pointlessly.
There is also the problem that nothing happens, very slowly. 114 pages in and Joan skins her first wolf. The preceding pages she mostly vomits, hates everyone, and sleeps with her brother. This is overdescribed in plodding detail.
There is a plot here, somewhere. Loosely it’s about Joan, the dowry-less daughter of an impoverished noble, being married off to the effete homosexual Arséne, another impoverished noble who maintains his relationship with the king by handing over wolf pelts. (One considers wolf pelts vs, say, squirrel pelts in the general medieval economy and refrains from commenting.) Arséne has a bastard daughter named Sophie and a sadistic stepsister named Rohaise. Joan is abused and worked to the bone by Arséne, terrorized by Rohaise, troubled by her unwanted daughter Merienne, and seized with rage towards Sophie. And that’s it. Terrible things happen to Joan. Rohaise appears every so often to be dreadful and hedonistic. Joan's role as the object of filth and violence shifts to other characters seemingly at random. There are inner monologues that go nowhere. I think there’s a plot about summoning a beast in the woods to wreak revenge and havoc, but I got distracted by the description of Henry II (yes, that one) coming on himself in the excitement of battle.
I wanted to find a difficult aesthetic handled with a steady hand. I wanted the author to stick to the occasional brilliant flashes of hallucinogenic horror. Instead, I am fascinated, almost, by how terrible this book is. I shall place it oozing onto its own shelf and hope it doesn't corrode downwards.
This book is self-published. There is a reason for this. I hope Gretchen Felker-Martin can find an editor willing to reign in her overbearing tendencies. There are some good ideas and lovely turns of phrase here and there, but they are drowned by the unrelenting, purposeless grimness, the overwritten slog confounding the plot and offering nothing to the reader.
Two stars, to be nice. It’s at least got some vivid imagery, at least.
September 13, 2022
All hail the lobismuller!
If there is no good, then there is no evil. If all of it was ugly, all of it was beautiful too. Gender is a construct, but blood, viscera, piss, shit, and vomit are real. As a trans person, shapeshifting and body horror are alluring to me for the same reason- wouldn't it be great, if flesh were so malleable?
If there is no good, then there is no evil. If all of it was ugly, all of it was beautiful too. Gender is a construct, but blood, viscera, piss, shit, and vomit are real. As a trans person, shapeshifting and body horror are alluring to me for the same reason- wouldn't it be great, if flesh were so malleable?
May 7, 2022
I read it in a day, it was dark and gruesome, but also so well crafted, with layers of unexpected depth.
January 23, 2021
I went into this book totally blind. I had no idea what it was about but that's fine. I also only paid $2 for the book and I feel like I need to give her more money for the weird and blood soaked experience.
This is the story of Joan and her family in some dark ages England. It is cold and filthy and they have to break their backs for every single inch of peace. Which never last long. But that's surface stuff. The real story is the reality that being a non-man, as defined by the most toxic of toxic masculinity, is punished and that trauma seeks only to beget more trauma. Also there are monsters. Great twisted terrors shaped from blood and bone and offal.
There is also this protodiscussion about religion and what worth "doing the right thing" actually IS. All the characters in this story did the right thing as defined by their culture and they all paid dearly for it.
Personally after reading this I think that they're already in hell. Maybe they're not dead but they're in hell nonetheless. It was a good book. I only put it down because I had to work or else I would have read all 530 pages in a day.
This is the story of Joan and her family in some dark ages England. It is cold and filthy and they have to break their backs for every single inch of peace. Which never last long. But that's surface stuff. The real story is the reality that being a non-man, as defined by the most toxic of toxic masculinity, is punished and that trauma seeks only to beget more trauma. Also there are monsters. Great twisted terrors shaped from blood and bone and offal.
There is also this protodiscussion about religion and what worth "doing the right thing" actually IS. All the characters in this story did the right thing as defined by their culture and they all paid dearly for it.
Personally after reading this I think that they're already in hell. Maybe they're not dead but they're in hell nonetheless. It was a good book. I only put it down because I had to work or else I would have read all 530 pages in a day.
November 16, 2019
Well, I just loved it. it’s like a distillation and monstrous crystalization of Monica Furlong, Elizabeth Hand, Doomsday Book, Seraph on the Suwanee, The Wasp Factory, We Have Always Lived in the Castle, and a Peter Greenaway film.
Ego Homini Lupus, before it is a fantastical novel or a medieval novel, is a gothic horror story about three traumatized people whose trauma does not make them kind, or brave, or special, or good. Their trauma is not valuable; it is not the source of lessons or secret strengths. It is damage. Fiction as honest as this is rare. This truth is too terrible, and most writers soften and weaken it, to make the world seem more just and bearable than it is.
The verisimilitude alone is an astonishing achievement. I live around the region where the novel is set and have a great interest in its history and material culture, and no detail of Ego Homini Lupus rang false to me, from its pottage to its dry stone walls to its murder holes. Getting the everyday details of medieval life, its rigor and its casual violence, so right— it makes the preturnatural scenes so much more vivid and terrifying.
I loved the existential scream at the center of the book, from young to old, wife to husband, generation to generation, mankind to God: you said you loved me but you brought me here to be your slave. I loved how every new piece of character information displaced and humanized assumptions or expectations I had formed. I loved all the strange associations of colors, the golden dead, the white fire. I loved how even though I could see it was all going to go wrong, every new heartbreak and violation was still a surprise and a shock. Ego Homini Lupus is a great, tragic, painful novel about how trauma isn’t a cool rite of passage that makes us better, it is a wound that weakens us, one which, though it may heal with time and care, can leave a place in us where we are more easily torn, for life.
Ego Homini Lupus, before it is a fantastical novel or a medieval novel, is a gothic horror story about three traumatized people whose trauma does not make them kind, or brave, or special, or good. Their trauma is not valuable; it is not the source of lessons or secret strengths. It is damage. Fiction as honest as this is rare. This truth is too terrible, and most writers soften and weaken it, to make the world seem more just and bearable than it is.
The verisimilitude alone is an astonishing achievement. I live around the region where the novel is set and have a great interest in its history and material culture, and no detail of Ego Homini Lupus rang false to me, from its pottage to its dry stone walls to its murder holes. Getting the everyday details of medieval life, its rigor and its casual violence, so right— it makes the preturnatural scenes so much more vivid and terrifying.
I loved the existential scream at the center of the book, from young to old, wife to husband, generation to generation, mankind to God: you said you loved me but you brought me here to be your slave. I loved how every new piece of character information displaced and humanized assumptions or expectations I had formed. I loved all the strange associations of colors, the golden dead, the white fire. I loved how even though I could see it was all going to go wrong, every new heartbreak and violation was still a surprise and a shock. Ego Homini Lupus is a great, tragic, painful novel about how trauma isn’t a cool rite of passage that makes us better, it is a wound that weakens us, one which, though it may heal with time and care, can leave a place in us where we are more easily torn, for life.
April 3, 2022
This is a looooong book, but it took me about five days to read because I just couldn't stop. And I'm not a fast reader either. But this book cast a spell on me. It is bleak and completely loathsome, and I absolutely loved it.
While this is absolutely a horror novel, it meanders through different subgenres -- historical fiction (and dare I say, historical romance) and fantasy, for example. There are very few events in the book that AREN'T horrific. There's buckets of oozing body horror that reads like a fever dream. There are constant painful passages of acts of violence that we have to acknowledge were commonplace during this time period. Life for women and impoverished people is joyless, an actual living hell.
I wouldn't classify this book as extreme horror but it's harrowing. The sheer cruelty people in it are capable of is the horror at this novel's black heart. But there's a sensitivity to those people too, an acknowledgement that cruelty begets cruelty. The abused become abusers in an attempt to assert control over their hopeless lives. When even that doesn't help them, some of them turn to the ugliest sorcery imaginable to try to save themselves.
While this is absolutely a horror novel, it meanders through different subgenres -- historical fiction (and dare I say, historical romance) and fantasy, for example. There are very few events in the book that AREN'T horrific. There's buckets of oozing body horror that reads like a fever dream. There are constant painful passages of acts of violence that we have to acknowledge were commonplace during this time period. Life for women and impoverished people is joyless, an actual living hell.
I wouldn't classify this book as extreme horror but it's harrowing. The sheer cruelty people in it are capable of is the horror at this novel's black heart. But there's a sensitivity to those people too, an acknowledgement that cruelty begets cruelty. The abused become abusers in an attempt to assert control over their hopeless lives. When even that doesn't help them, some of them turn to the ugliest sorcery imaginable to try to save themselves.
June 6, 2020
After a fairly steady stream of graphic suffering, there was a scene where a character suddenly hurt someone they hadn't hurt before, who asked "What's wrong, what happened?" (or similar). Looking back at the events of the previous 300 pages or so, I thought it would be impossible to answer either question. The cycles of violence are just too long and complex.
The writing maintains a constant physicality, bodies react to and are altered by the world and by others, becoming worn down and bearing their history. The tone is maintained through what is a fairly long book witout becoming grating.
This isn't my normal type of book, and I found the transgressive elements really uncomfortable, but I'm fairly sure that's the point.
The writing maintains a constant physicality, bodies react to and are altered by the world and by others, becoming worn down and bearing their history. The tone is maintained through what is a fairly long book witout becoming grating.
This isn't my normal type of book, and I found the transgressive elements really uncomfortable, but I'm fairly sure that's the point.
September 1, 2020
Words are failing me right now. This book puts several classics to shame in its ability to depict rich settings, complex characters, and beautiful prose, all while cranking up the disgust factor to 11 and then some. If you can stomach visceral(but not voyeuristic) rape scenes and severe abuse, this is entirely worth the read. If, like me, your initial thought on reading the book's description is that it's a slightly monotonous depiction of a woman's descent into madness while surrounded by the mundane, I'm delighted to tell you that we were both wrong and you should read this book right now.
September 10, 2021
My therapist is gonna hear about this one.
This is stunning, harrowing and deeply unsettling reversal of the inspirational trauma narrative. An absolute masterclass in horror and EXACTLY what the genre needs.
Beautifully written, absolutely filthy and the story I would've needed 6 years ago when I was really angry and no one would acknowledge my right to be.
CW: rape, gang rape, domestic violence, incest and child abuse, animal death, gore, violence, blood, description of war, death of a child, necrophilic acts, suicide, death, stillbirth, birth trauma, self harm
(Ms. Felker-Martin if you're reading this Id probably sell my first born for a physical copy of this book)
This is stunning, harrowing and deeply unsettling reversal of the inspirational trauma narrative. An absolute masterclass in horror and EXACTLY what the genre needs.
Beautifully written, absolutely filthy and the story I would've needed 6 years ago when I was really angry and no one would acknowledge my right to be.
CW: rape, gang rape, domestic violence, incest and child abuse, animal death, gore, violence, blood, description of war, death of a child, necrophilic acts, suicide, death, stillbirth, birth trauma, self harm
(Ms. Felker-Martin if you're reading this Id probably sell my first born for a physical copy of this book)
May 31, 2024
What an experience
November 22, 2020
A novel in the Ken Russel’s The Devils extended universe. i really liked it!
May 3, 2021
reviewed this in 2019: https://medium.com/anomalyblog/doppel...
June 7, 2021
I loved this book but am hesitant to recommend it to my Goodreads friends, as it is extraordinarily graphic, dark, and upsetting. I would classify it, in broad strokes, as fantasy/horror. For those unaware, the book's title appears to be a play on the Latin proverb "homō hominī lupus est," which means (per Wikipedia) "a man is a wolf to another man." So I take the title to mean "I am a wolf to myself." And boy is that true of just about everybody in the novel.
The book addresses pretty dark issues--in the words of another reviewer, "extreme violence, transgressive sex, rape/incest, and grostesque bodily degradation . . . and extremely creative and disturbing supernatural body horror[.]". I rarely felt like this was done without reason, such as for shock value, though. Prominent among those reasons was to show the cycle of abuse and how patriarchal values/standards--and how those values impact how we treat men and women who do not live up to them--feed into a cycle of abuse, self-hate, and mental illness. No one is uniformly "good" or "bad," but neither does the work apologize for any of the (admittedly horrible) actions of its characters. Another thing I want to highlight is that the bleak approach of this book also addresses something that bothers me in a lot of works: it doesn't portray the abuse the characters received as some kind of heroic/tragic backstory that the characters will overcome. It's just...abuse. And a lot of abused become abusers.
Also, the writing is fantastic, even though it is describing the grotesque and horror of these lives. The prose isn't just strong--it hulks and rages through the frozen forest wasteland where the story takes place. It is evocative, sometimes so rich that I had to step away because I felt sick or shocked or awed. I don't know how historically accurate this is; some of the events in real life did not unfold the same as in this book (according to my post-reading Wikipedia research), but maybe that's because, you know, the characters may be a bit bonkers. In any event, few things stood out as particularly anachronistic.
I'm glad I read this and definitely want to read more books in this genre/by this author. But like I said above, not everyone will enjoy a book like this.
The book addresses pretty dark issues--in the words of another reviewer, "extreme violence, transgressive sex, rape/incest, and grostesque bodily degradation . . . and extremely creative and disturbing supernatural body horror[.]". I rarely felt like this was done without reason, such as for shock value, though. Prominent among those reasons was to show the cycle of abuse and how patriarchal values/standards--and how those values impact how we treat men and women who do not live up to them--feed into a cycle of abuse, self-hate, and mental illness. No one is uniformly "good" or "bad," but neither does the work apologize for any of the (admittedly horrible) actions of its characters. Another thing I want to highlight is that the bleak approach of this book also addresses something that bothers me in a lot of works: it doesn't portray the abuse the characters received as some kind of heroic/tragic backstory that the characters will overcome. It's just...abuse. And a lot of abused become abusers.
Also, the writing is fantastic, even though it is describing the grotesque and horror of these lives. The prose isn't just strong--it hulks and rages through the frozen forest wasteland where the story takes place. It is evocative, sometimes so rich that I had to step away because I felt sick or shocked or awed. I don't know how historically accurate this is; some of the events in real life did not unfold the same as in this book (according to my post-reading Wikipedia research), but maybe that's because, you know, the characters may be a bit bonkers. In any event, few things stood out as particularly anachronistic.
I'm glad I read this and definitely want to read more books in this genre/by this author. But like I said above, not everyone will enjoy a book like this.
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April 19, 2022
Roiling, rotting, rioting, revolting; this book was disgusting and disturbing and it lingered lewd in my mind for hours, days. Ripening. A putrid tale poking at gender, violence, masculinity, womanhood and role expectation.
Here is the result of childhood beatings, here is the consequence of rape, and here are the women and men who's connection to their gender is limited only to body. And the body is not sterile and it is not beautiful. I adored the depictions of work, the tiredness and caging of the body, and I adored how desolate and wanting the characters were. How utterly despicable most of them were, and yet so horribly sad. Truly, the horror of this book is the powerlessness to be happy, and the normalcy of structural violence.
There is nothing more enjoyable than a corruption story. The visual descriptions of pelts writhing and slinking across the ground, of meat, shit, and cum; god, Joan was so right: it was beautiful.
Here is the result of childhood beatings, here is the consequence of rape, and here are the women and men who's connection to their gender is limited only to body. And the body is not sterile and it is not beautiful. I adored the depictions of work, the tiredness and caging of the body, and I adored how desolate and wanting the characters were. How utterly despicable most of them were, and yet so horribly sad. Truly, the horror of this book is the powerlessness to be happy, and the normalcy of structural violence.
There is nothing more enjoyable than a corruption story. The visual descriptions of pelts writhing and slinking across the ground, of meat, shit, and cum; god, Joan was so right: it was beautiful.
January 6, 2023
This was a recommendation I found after reading Between Two Fires.
I enjoyed the slice of life bits: the descriptions of chores and how they were done. I did not enjoy the graphic body horror and constant violence. The descriptions of sexual violence were really gross and upsetting. Why was everyone, including women, cutting up vulvas and vaginas with their nails? Overall it was an uncomfortable read.
I enjoyed the slice of life bits: the descriptions of chores and how they were done. I did not enjoy the graphic body horror and constant violence. The descriptions of sexual violence were really gross and upsetting. Why was everyone, including women, cutting up vulvas and vaginas with their nails? Overall it was an uncomfortable read.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
July 28, 2022
Wow!
Edit on 7/27/22: I still think about this book all the time. I've wanted to read something like this for years and wish there was more like it out there. Hopefully, Felker-Martin gets famous enough that her old work gets printed, so I don't have to live in fear of my e-copy getting corrupted by nanotechnology or something.
Edit on 7/27/22: I still think about this book all the time. I've wanted to read something like this for years and wish there was more like it out there. Hopefully, Felker-Martin gets famous enough that her old work gets printed, so I don't have to live in fear of my e-copy getting corrupted by nanotechnology or something.
May 17, 2021
one of the worst books i've read in a long time.
October 29, 2022
I am not sure how to review this book - but I’ll give it a try . First I have been particularly unlucky with selecting books that have too much description for my liking. I think this book has good potential but at times throughout it was incoherent… well at least to me it was. I was confused and lost. I read someone else’s review who stated that a lot of shocking moments were for shock and depravity value only and I’d agree with that statement.Some shocking moments there as the author had deftly written unexpected things which made me put my book down. I’m confused by this book as I didn’t fully understand parts. I can say that I enjoyed the final 25% of the book more than the first 75% as that’s when the story started to come together better. I think I may have to re-read it one day so I can read with fresh eyes. Again I wish that GR had 1/2 star and 1/4 star options as I would have given this a 2.75 rating. I’m not sure if I’d read something of this genre again (outside of re-reading this) just isn’t my thing.
October 9, 2022
Holy shit. What a book. Trigger warnings for . . . god, just about everything, but specifically rape, gang rape, incest, body horror, and animal death.
I previously read Felker-Martin’s Manhunt, which I found both less gory and satisfying to read than Ego Homini Lupus. Right from the word go, the world of EHL is dank, dirty, and dark, all of the most distasteful parts of humanity forced together under one roof. Although some might say that EHL is over-zealous with its descriptions, I disagree — the prose sings it’s ode to depravity, and never forgets the effects of past trauma when giving characters new trauma. A book I can never recommend to a friend, but one that I will without doubt revisit one day when I find myself wondering - is the real horror what lurks in the woods, or the systems of violence we enact upon each other in the name of social order?
I previously read Felker-Martin’s Manhunt, which I found both less gory and satisfying to read than Ego Homini Lupus. Right from the word go, the world of EHL is dank, dirty, and dark, all of the most distasteful parts of humanity forced together under one roof. Although some might say that EHL is over-zealous with its descriptions, I disagree — the prose sings it’s ode to depravity, and never forgets the effects of past trauma when giving characters new trauma. A book I can never recommend to a friend, but one that I will without doubt revisit one day when I find myself wondering - is the real horror what lurks in the woods, or the systems of violence we enact upon each other in the name of social order?
February 4, 2021
This is a book about bodies, about the terrible (and wonderful, but mostly terrible) things that happen to them at the hands of society, other people, nature, themselves. And it's also about connection: from the monstrous constructs of bone and muscle that ravage the forests of Northumbria, to the desperate longing to be loved that Joan, Arsène, and Rohaise have in common but are incapable of providing for each other, even if they'd tried. Martin's characters are all shades of gray, loving and brutal by turns; the closest she gets to a Disney princess is Sophie, a witchy feral child who climbs catlike in and out of the roof of her father Arsène's hall, watching and watching and watching.
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