This book left me very mixed. Initially after reading the first few stories, I was disgusted and dreading the rest of the book as juvenile and/or pure gross-out attempts. Then I got to "Maggots" and I found something that spoke to me, something that was enjoyable. It actually had characters that were interesting. It relied on more than cannibalism and deformed rotting bodies, which was ironic because "Maggots" made heavy use of cannibalism and deformed rotting bodies. But the story wasn't about the gross-out; it was about survival and doing what is necessary. Then the next two stories were equally good and I thought maybe it was only a bad start to the collection. Unfortunately I then ran into another stretch of poor to acceptable stories. By the end, the whole book followed that pattern of some good followed by some really bad. I suppose that it is no different than any other collection where you expect to find some good stories, some bad stories and what you hope will be some great stories. Maybe the difference here is that the bad stories include both poorly written stories and gross-out stories. Below are the stories that stood out as better than the rest. Oh, needless to say, the stories in this collection are really extreme stories and not for a casual horror fan.

"Maggots" by Tim Curran - A French soldier in Napoleon's army during the French invasion of Russia must decide how far he'll go to survive. And some thing helps him to decide.

"Coquettrice" by Angel Leigh McCoy - A man falls in love and then finds out that his girlfriend is using him as cover. The story read to me as a modern and deviant spin of ROSEMARY'S BABY.

"Sepsis" by Graham Masterton - A young couple who are in love have problems separating themselves. While many stories in this collection were gross, this one really had me tasting every last drop and bite. And cringing the whole time.

"The Devil Lives in Jersey" by Z.F. Kilgore - A detective labeled as the "occult detective" in his department moves to a small town to help straighten out his teenaged son. Unfortunately the detective finds a new set of supernatural problems. I think I like this story more for the potential than for the reality. There are a lot of elements which were barely touched. The characters have depth potential but are a tad underdeveloped. And the action whips past too fast. This 25 page story should really be expanded into a 200+ page novella or novel and it could be really good!

"The Caterpillar" by C. Dennis Moore - After moving back to his hometown, a man starts to care for his cousin's quadriplegic daughter who he then discovers is changing even more. The ending is potentially beautiful or scary, depending upon your interpretation. ( )

I don’t know. Extreme horror just isn’t that extreme for me anymore except in what seems like the pervasive poverty of concept. I’m unsure if I’ve just read so much real extreme horror, meaning nastiness with a real plot and real characterization, and splatter, which makes no pretense about being simply an attempt to gross-out, that it takes a lot to move me. Perhaps I just lucked out in the beginning of my literary life and read good horror, good extreme horror and now little measures up. I mean, you have writers out there like Jack Ketchum and Edward Lee, who write hard content in the course of telling one mean story. The horrific content happens because the tale itself is horrific but you get a plot, you get characters you give a damn about, you get a tight story that draws you in even as it appalls you. Then you have collections like Excitable Boys that are meant to be grotesque and nothing else and present no pretense otherwise. And then you have collections like this, wherein the stories which were meant to be actual stories were poorly written vehicles in which to deliver a gross-out, and not very gross gross-outs at that.

I know, I know, some are going to be tempted to say, “Look, Sugarpants, you just don’t get extreme horror. It’s not meant to be good fiction.” To which I say, “Feh.” Too many writers manage to get it right, marrying excellent story-telling and fabulous gore, for this argument to hold water. Accepting the mediocre because it is gross demeans the whole genre. This collection was neither good stories with extreme content nor a straightforward nausea-fest and as neither fish nor foul, it occupies an uneasy nether land, all the more uneasy because the stories were so… nothing. Nothing to them. It never bodes well when after reading a collection of short stories, I find myself rereading the whole thing because I can’t remember it. Sometimes you need a refresher when you want to discuss a story. You can jog your memory by reading a few lines. Not here. I had to reread entire chunks of many of these stories to recall what they were about, so unimpressive were they as a lot. A few were decent, three were quite good, but the rest were terrible and one so bad I could not get past the first few paragraphs. Read my entire review here: http://ireadoddbooks.com/?p=685 ( )