I’m going to do quick review of a book that I enjoy. The Cannibals of Candyland by Carlton Mellick III.

I’m going to cheat a bit with this review. I’ve thought about it for awhile, and it is difficult for me to properly summarize it in my own words, so I’m just going to quote the synopsis from the back of the book:

There exists a race of cannibals who are made out of candy. They live in an underground world filled with lollipop forests and gumdrop goblins. During the day, while you are away at work, they come above ground and prowl our streets for food. Their prey: your children. They lure young boys and girls to them with their sweet scent and bright colorful candy coating, then rip them apart with razor sharp teeth and claws. When he was a child, Franklin Pierce witnessed the death of his siblings at the hands of a candy woman with pink cotton candy hair. Since that day, the candy people have become his obsession. He has spent his entire life trying to prove that they exist. And after discovering the entrance to the underground world of the candy people, Franklin finds himself venturing into their sugary domain. His mission: capture one of them and bring it back, dead or alive.

I’m not sure what I can add this. Either that summery makes you want to read this book, or it doesn’t. Seriously, it is, for lack of a better phrase, FUCKED UP.

It is sick, twisted, and gross (mind you, I mean that as a compliment). The protagonist, Franklin Pierce (named by his parents after one of the worst U.S. Presidents in history), is a total loser whose only joy in life is his little cat, Crabcake, which he carries around with him in his coat pocket. He lives in a small apartment with his wife and mother-in-law, a couple of drug-addicted sluts who have sex with other men (together) right in front of him. And he has an artificial brain. And, as the above synopsis said, he hunts the mysterious candy people after his little brother and sisters were all attacked and eaten by a candy woman years ago.

In the book, after witnessing a candyman eating a young boy (the only nice boy in his neighborhood; all the other kids tease and harass Franklin daily), Franklin chases him down a manhole and winds up in Candyland. There, he meets the candywoman named JuJuBe (pictured on the cover), who killed his siblings. She keeps him chained up in her gingerbread house, supposedly to keep him safe from the other candy people.

She chops off parts of his body and replaces them with candy to make him look like one of the candy people, forces him to eat human flesh by chewing it herself and then spitting it into his mouth, and then eventually forces him to become her sex slave so that he will get her pregnant.

Did I mention that this book is FUCKED UP? Because it is. Really. And once I started it, I couldn’t put it down. I give it 5 out of 5 stars.

To buy The Cannibals of Candyland, go to amazon.com/cannibalsofcandyland, and learn more about Carlton Mellick III by checking his website: http://carltonmellick.com/