REVIEW: The Cannibals of Candyland by Carlton Mellick III

To be honest, I wasn't sure about this book. I'd stumbled across it while looking for other things, and while the cover was eye-catching and the title is unavoidably cool, I wasn't sure if it would be my "thing." I'd never read bizarro fiction before and didn't think it was my cup o'tea.

But anyway, I gave in and downloaded this one for my Kindle and it sat there for a few months while I went through my "read only true crime/read only biographies/read only nonfiction" phases. Last night, bored with everything else, I decided to read a few pages and see just how 'bizarro' it was.

Well.

My first bit of surprise was that I got into it immediately. I'm unfamiliar with Mellick's writing, but once I accepted his world of men who wear only candy-apple red and keep multi-colored kittens in his pockets while hunting down the candy-men who killed his siblings, I was totally absorbed in the story.

Huh? What's that you're wondering? Candy-men?

First of all, to enjoy this book you're going to have to embrace the absurd. Yes. Candy-men. Men and women literally--and I really do mean literally--made of candy: taffy bodies, cotton candy hair, gumdrop nipples, etc. and so on. They also have really sharp teeth. Think Pennywise from "It." And they use said teeth to eat up little children. Graphically and in great detail. This is not a book for the faint of heart or easily upset, because the kids in this book...they don't fare too well. Apparently they make for dee-licious eatin'.

The great thing about this book is that it has such a simple plot: as a child, Franklin saw his siblings eaten by a monstrous candy-woman and, of course, no one believes him. The candy people grow into a thing of legend, and when he grows up, Franklin makes hunting them down and getting proof of their existence his goal in life. When he wounds one of the monsters and follows it down into the underground caves they live in, he finds a world right out of Willie Wonka's wet dreams: everything is candy. Houses are made of cookies. The ground is chocolate. Everything is edible...including Franklin. I won't give too much more of the plot away--needless to say, he runs into the candy-woman who killed his brothers and sisters--but the details of that world are so interesting and well described that I actually think it made my blood sugar go up.

So will I be reading more of Carlton Mellick's work? Yep, yes, and oh yeah. I've already got two more of his books cued up on the Kindle, and will likely be reading more. I'm in professional awe at his ability to just go batshit crazy with his ideas and take them as far as he can. That kind of fearlessness is rare nowadays. I highly recommend this book to anyone who likes weirdness, horror, and cannibals (not necessarily in that order).