"I saw Death skulking behind the back fence. It was rotting, its head a skull trailing wisps of hair, its face covered with a... With a white mask? No, no, of course: with a popped balloon. From the cemetery. There were always balloons left out there, bobbing from headstones. Death had snagged one of them, ripped a couple of eyeholes and somehow got it to stick to its face. It didn't matter. Death's death, right?"

Oh my god. I don't think there exists a slasher as heart-breaking as this one. I Was a Teenage Slasher is not only the most quintessential of summer horror novels, it's a story that's got some real, raw emotional power to it. It's packed to the brim with every single trope that makes the slasher genre so delightful, and yet, somehow it manages to be so wholly unique that it transmutes into being something unlike any other slasher before it. Told entirely from the viewpoint of the killer himself, this is a truly quirky novel and is, as one would expect from a slasher, a whole barrel of fun. You'll find everything you'd expect, the blood and guts and gore, the satisfying kills, the most perfect of small town summer atmosphere, but you'll also find the most wonderfully heartfelt story.

I Was a Teenage Slasher is written so fantastically, it made me nostalgic for an era I'm not even from. Is it even possible to miss something you never had? That's part of the genius of Stephen Graham Jones. It's such a captivating, fresh, interesting take on the traditional slasher tale, yet still has all the appeal of the genre classics. When an author can make his villain cast a sympathetic portrait, you know that you're reading something truly special. The story of Tolly is just so heartbreaking, so painstakingly brutal and so wonderfully told that it's impossible not to feel for him, even after you realize this essentially makes you a slasher sympathizer. It's a love letter to the slasher genre, a true horror masterpiece, there's something so outstanding about how this story is delivered, it goes so far beyond just another slasher novel.

 

This is a book with soul, it has character, it's just so entirely rich and creative and it's so full of all those perfect late 80s vibes. At times, it borders upon the supernatural, after all, at its heart, this is a slasher, it leans heavily into the tropes of the genre, and you'll have to suspend your disbelief, even the characters themselves acknowledge this. Despite being the soul-shattering tale that it is, there's a lot of 'feel good' here, too. From its blurb, you may be expecting a rather standard memoir of a teenage murderer, but when you crack this book open, you're faced with a tearjerker of a story, a tale of family and friendship in a small town, a tale of love and loss and sacrifice, this is so much more than your regular summer slasher, this really is something breathtaking.

"When the blood splashed out, it wasn't just gloriously red, it was radioactive, at least in my vision. I thought that was a color I didn't have access to anymore, but now that I was seeing it in its most pure form, I understood that it wasn't about rods and cones, or wavelengths, it was about this particular red being the only one worth studying."