The Bride Stripped Bare by Rob Bliss| Review

Edward Lee meets Clive Barker…

Gord is getting married to a woman he recently met, named Venus Baer. His best friend, Chris, is invited to be the best man. The bride-to-be is incredibly sexy, manipulative, and evil. Chris and Gord realize something is horribly wrong with the Baer family and soon find out escaping the family is going to be one hell of a task. The huge family stretches around the world making a clean getaway an impossibility. But that's just what Gord, Chris and Gord's sister, Elizabeth, are going to try and do.

The Bride Stripped Bare takes the backwood freaks of classic Edward Lee books and slams them together with Clive Barker and his Nightbreed world.

Lots of blood, drugs, sex, and violence make this a perfect addition to the Necro family. New blood extreme horror ready to take you on a drug-crazed, chaotic race against evil.

Find out what happens when the bride is stripped bare.

The Bride Stripped Bare, a deadly synopsis that threatened to push boundaries and scare the wits clean out of you.  The execution however was quite far off the mark.  I enjoyed the book to the extent that I believed it was intended to deliver upon.  However, some elements just seemed to be injected into the plot for purely shock factor, but it had the exact opposite effect on my reading experience.  Don’t get me wrong shocking implications have a place but not in the sacrifice of the plot. 

You’ve met the woman of your dreams.  Stunningly good-looking, money falling out of the sky when she’s around and power that will ultimately be yours when you tie that symbolic knot.  What’s the catch, right?  I mean surely this would be a question at the forefront of your mind?  Everything is going just a little bit too well, there’s bound to be something off.  This is Gord’s problem.  The planets have truly aligned when Gord met Venus Baer.  They are now engaged to be married and he has invited his best friend, Chris to be best man.  Their relationship has stood the test of time and more importantly he sees Venus for what she is – Evil and manipulative. 

What The Bride Stripped Bare excels at is the addictiveness at keeping you reading.  The story delves deeper and deeper into a seedy and horrific underworld and although there were elements that didn’t work for me personally, I just couldn’t tear my eyes away.  At different points it felt like a drug – and Gord knows all about that!  The translation of human emotion is brought to life so expertly that I had to wipe sweat off my brow.  The adrenaline was pumping throughout.  We also see survival instincts at play – flight or fight is a recurrent theme in The Bride Stripped Bare.

Now, the parts that I most definitely struggled with.  The plot had a strength and a resilience all of its own, but I did get the impression that the author believes that shock sells.  Rape, incest and cannibalism were elements that felt forced and a tad contrived – it filled up time and space, but I never had the impression that it enriched the story.  For me it lowered my overall impression and experience of the storytelling.  It is a bit of stretch to assume that people of this cult could remain hidden under the radar for so long. 

The Bride Stripped Bare was my first outing with Rob Bliss but it won’t be my last.  I have heard incredibly complimentary things about his writing and will venture his way again.  In this instance I thought the story was good, but journey frazzled my brain a little.  Sometimes I felt like I had taken some particularly strong acid and I was experiencing a zany comedown. 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Rob Bliss was born in Canada in 1969.

He has an honours degree in English and Writing from York University, Canada. He has had a hundred stories published in thirty web-based magazines, plus three anthologies. He is the winner of SNM Magazine’s Author of the Year for 2013.

His work published by Necro Publications is:
‘Cut’
‘The Bride Stripped Bare’
‘Widow’

His work self-published with Amazon is:
‘Devil’s Note’
‘God of Zombies’
‘The Pigg Bros’
‘Flesh House Blue’
‘The Meggido Motel’
‘Gulf’
‘Time’s Moth’
‘T’Hell Witcha’,
‘Black Blood & Other Stories’
‘Blood Queen & Other Stories’
‘American Birthright & Other Stories’
‘Skull Seller & Other Stories’
‘Flies & Other Stories’
‘The Idol & Other Stories’

Rob Bliss