The Television by Edward Lee

Title: The Teleivision
Author: Edward Lee
Publisher: Madness Heart Press
Genres: Splatterpunk, Horror
Pages: 285
Release Date: November 22, 2022
Book Rating: 💀💀💀💀
Spice Rating: 🌶🌶🌶

Click here for the goodreads page and here for the storygraph page

Disclaimer: This book is bought with my own money. It is not an ARC.

Trigger Warnings:
Child death, Gore, Child abuse, Cursing, Homophobia, Bullying, Animal death, Pedophilia, War, Body Horror, Rape, and probably much more.

Book Summary

Burnstow is an ordinary little town populated by ordinary people. Farthing is an ordinary guy and he has just inherited an ordinary mobile home in an ordinary trailer park. Farthing looks forward to a nice, quiet, ordinary life.
But in the back room of that ordinary mobile home, there’s an ancient television that’s anything but ordinary. It doesn’t broadcast sitcoms, sports games, news shows, or movies.

No.

It broadcasts only the very worst atrocities in human history.

Follow Farthing down, deeper and deeper as he struggles to reveal the appalling secrets of…

THE TELEVISION

My Opinion

I love myself a bit of extreme horror. Or splatterpunk, however you want to call it. And The Television by Edward Lee most definitely delivered what it promised! This book was filled with gore, death and brutality to the very brim! I heard that Edward Lee writes splatterpunk pretty well and I can’t help but whole heartedly agree!

This was my first book by Edward Lee and the writing style blew me away! I absolutely loved it, as it was very descriptive. But what I loved most about the writing style? The way that Edward would regularly break the 4th wall! I just couldn’t get enough from that tidbit. The fact that we, as the reader, are regularly acknowledged, was fantastic. There also is a layer of social commentary to this book, which I gobbled right up! Edward Lee managed to mix history into his story, which is quite a feat in a splatterpunk book if you ask me. Though, in all honesty, our history is quite bloody and gruesome. So maybe I shouldn’t be that surprised that he was able to do that?

"You could call it a mirror, a crystal ball in reverse, you could call it many things. And to those who live to serve our benefactor, you can call it a blessing"

There was very little to this book that I didn’t like! The pacing was pretty good, though it took a bit too long for my squirrel brain to get started. In such a short book (less than 300 pages is short for me, lmao) I like the main point to be addressed a little bit sooner. So for people like me, who are very easily distracted, this book might be a little too slow-paced at the start. Luckily, the gore more than makes up for it. Sometimes it felt a little random, as if it was more of an add-on to the story instead of the actual story itself. The plot, even though dark at its gore, didn’t feel all that gorey or gruesome to me.

I have to admit, the characters in this story are quite well-developed, considering the short length of the book. With only 285 pages it managed to get me invested in its characters. Even though the characters were a bit surface levelled, that didn’t bother the story that much because it was so short. I would have liked for it to be a bit longer,. I really would have liked to get to know all of these characters a little bit better. Especially Mel! Somehow that character really stood out to me.

When we get to the end of the book, things started to feel a little bit rushed to me. Hence, why I would have liked for it to be a little bit longer. Maybe a chapter or two more would have done the story great justice! It is an absolutely fascinating subject to write about; a television that shows you the very worst of human society.

The book is absolutely brutal, filled with gore and death to the absolute brim. It definitely has it’s shock value going for it, even though it really only shows us our own history. Truly, Edward Lee managed to intertwine our own history without it beng too obvious. When you have a bit of knowledge of our past, then you will notice. But if not, then it is just part of the story.

There are plenty of twists and turns to the story. It most definitely managed to kept me entertained and I had a blast reading it! If you’re a lover of body horror, like me, I definitely recommend The Television. And I am already looking into other books of Edward Lee that I could potentionally pick up. I fell in love with his storytelling ways, the breaking of the fourth wall and the detailed gore descriptions. I can’t wait to read more from him!