Review: Carnage, anarchy, and murderous mannequins
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 03 21, 2013
Mad Mannequins from Hell won me over pretty early on - how could I not at least get some enjoyment out of a book whose hero is a special effects expert who loves horror films and splattery makeup work? That's a winning start to any book, and by the time our hero ends up accidentally summoning demons that turn all the mannequins in town into murderous, terrifying monsters, I was pretty well on board for all the anarchy Fahren had to offer. And that's good, because there was LOTS of gore, splattery violence, and wholesale slaughter to come. Like you might guess from the title, Mad Mannequins doesn't take itself entirely seriously, a fact that becomes pretty evident by the time you realize that EVERY mannequin is alive - up to and including every member in the town's nativity set...and I do mean EVERY member. And that doesn't even get into a most unlikely trio of, shall we say, female religious warriors who appear near the end of the book. Mad Mannequins doesn't always entirely work; there's a somewhat fractured timeline that doesn't really serve much purpose except to leave you a bit confused until you sort it out, there are more than a few editing errors that end up distracting from the story, and the story's ending and final chapter all feel a bit rushed and perfunctory, leaving you a little baffled as to why it all ended so quickly. Even so, I can't argue that I quite enjoyed the book as a whole; there's so much gleeful insanity and so much satisfying mayhem on display that I couldn't help but have as much fun reading it as Fahren did writing it.