Meat by Joseph D'Lacey

Meat by Joseph D'Lacey
Bloody Books UK
Paperback: 343 pages


I've read Joseph before and enjoyed his novella (I think it was Kill Crew--don't quote me on that); it was an exciting and tense read, it is reviewed here on this site somewhere.

Meat is the story of a town called Abyrne where meat is the answer to everything. Breakfast, lunch and dinner, everyone eats meat. The innards of the cattle gives power to the city. There are two major powers in the city: Parsons of Welfare (religious group) they have a lot of power and then there is: Magnus who controls the meat. Throw in, John Collins, the leader of a group of vegetarians, and a man nicknamed Ice Pick and a milker who falls in love/lust for one of his cows and you have the ingredients of an explosive novel.

That failed. Sorry. I think D'Lacey tried to put too much into the story, I got lost and there seems to be an awful lot of padding (more than character building), things were not all that clear (cattle don't have palms to my knowledge and I thought perhaps the cattle were actually humans, but that didn't seem to be the case. Things happened for reasons that were not fully explained and just kind of happen out of the blue (build up here would have been nice, especially one part of the storyline). It is a slow moving story that builds up as characters are introduced and the plot moves along.

This book didn't resonate with me. Maybe the message behind the story did not interest me.
From Amazon about the author: Winner of the British Fantasy Award for Best Newcomer, D'Lacey is best known for his shocking eco-horror novel MEAT. The book has been widely translated and prompted Stephen King to say "Joseph D'Lacey rocks!".

And judging by the reviews on Amazon, I obviously didn't get it.
I simply wasn't for me.

37%