Playground

Was a fun concept and not as brutal as I expected. It was gross, especially the infamous page 40, but clever. this reminded me of Jigsaw in how a group of people go through different traps until there is a victor. I liked having alternating chapters of the parent's view, and the illustrations were thoughtful, though I wish there were more to show the playground equipment. Sometimes I had a hard time picturing it. Also the revenge story was an interesting approach, I felt sympathy for Rock and was glad he got to “play”

Haven't read The Slob yet, but being in circles with A. Prunty and CV Hunt means I'm quite aware of the noise Aron has been making over the last year or so. While Playground had been floating around my TBR for a while, I hadn't given it a lot of thought. Splatterpunk with kids...probably boring and predictable even if “popular” (for the genre). But a friend wanted to read it - and an opportunity to do that - with this genre? Yes!

We have a 290 page book, not a collection, not a series of interconnected shorts - a full proper novel sized book about kids getting fucked up on a playground. And while it is heavy on the (bad) metaphors, the story is actually almost character-driven, and the characters have history, and depth, and their own unique voice. By the time the blood starts truly pouring you actually give a shit about these people. The deaths, the tension and torture are relatively creative if occasionally predictable. So despite some errors and just bad metaphors, the writing won't blow you away, but for the genre it is I was overall impressed.

If the trigger words don't bother you, perhaps you've read the genre before - if you're on the fence on this, this is a great book to take a leap from and impale yourself on that fence.

and I just don't see any of that sexism spoken of here - she was a disgusting human being, and there is no word, no insult, unworthy of her. And seriously, this book had a Nazi in it without ever promoting hatred, or bigotry - that's some careful writing.