Off Season - Unexpurgated Hard Cover Edition

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Off Season covers a family of cannibal killers and their “interactions” with a group of friends who are just looking for a relaxing cabin getaway. Yeah - not happening. Off Season is about a woman who rents a cabin on the outskirts of town near the ocean. She has the house for a couple of weeks so she can get an editing project completed and spend some time vacationing and relaxing. Shortly after she gets to the house, her sister and some friends arrive to spend a few days with her in the cabin. Unfortunately for them, there's a group of savages in the area who live off the land and its inhabitants. Beyond that, I have also read Ketchum's short story collection "Peaceable Kingdom", which truth be told I found very uneven as a collection; the curious part is that Ketchum himself admits upfront in the introduction: "As a writer, I'm all over the place". But I don't think it was the variety of themes, as he self-diagnosed, it's more that he works better when he's not *consciously* trying to be edgy or "dark", but rather when he simply writers about... well, about people. This cannibal tribe uses a ploy with the teen girl they have covered in blood to gain entry and go for the baby. Luke and Claire help to get the child out of the house before they do, while David is murdered and Amy is taken hostage. With the cops nearby and Steven on his way, this will all come to a head in an interesting showdown.

Limited Special Collector's Ultimate Edition: Some of his books were initially published as this or were otherwise hard to find. The fact that Ketchum's work had bookstores balking is something I could have understood. Instead, I was told that changing the ending of my manuscript would make it far easier to get it published. Ketchum has become a kind of hero to those of us who write tales of terror and suspense. He is, quite simply, one of the best in the business.”—Stephen King" I hope the above makes clear that despite the ill-informed, slanted view of cannibals at times portrayed in this book, this community has many positive qualities and deserves to be treated fairly and with respect. I just wish the author would have made the brave choice and not pandered to the more powerful "anti" cannibal segment of the population.As for that old Scottish Incantation that appears at the beginning of this review, forget it. It won't do you any good. After all, the most horrific monsters are human. Or of human creation. Why? That's easy to answer - food. They are cannibals and they know nothing besides breeding, hunting, killing and eating. Of course there are those who will propose that Offspring is primarily a bloody, gore-fest and that if the film succeeds in delivering the carnage, it's a success. All I can say is that if baby dolls smeared with blood in plastic bags and the sporadic blood spraying of an insecticide pump filling in for a severed vein, there isn't much here to recommend. An update of the Scottish Sawney Beane legend and transplanting to Maine and the Canadian coast, it has some promising ideas and a couple of effective sequences, but it fails to establish them or develop them properly. What's with the lighthouse keeper? We get a glimpse of a newspaper clipping while the opening credits roll, and one of the characters makes a brief reference during the film, but this history deserved telling properly, even if only narrated by one of the characters, and could have added real mythic power to the plot. But it appears the film-makers just couldn't be bothered. As far as the specific plot elements of Ketchum's story, I thought they were fine. I find cannibalism, graphic torture and human dismemberment just as funny and amusing as the next guy and thought that the author did a nice job of providing an authentic and detailed representation of the practices discussed. While I do not currently practice cannibalism, I did experiment with the lifestyle for a time in college. During this time I learned a lot about the “Same Species Sustenance” Community and met a lot of wonderful people, several of whom I still count among my close friends (as long as I am armed). Thus, defending the rights and the dignity of the cannibal community is something about which I have strong feelings.

Offspring first? What about Off Season? Well, I've read on the Offspring message board that the reason why Offspring was chosen for film before Off Season is because of some rights issue. There were probably a couple skirts who were not being paid as much as the hard-working durable men, so they made a fuss. Eh, whatever. If you enjoy a gore fest, this is one you'll probably want to watch, since there was lots of blood, body parts, and eating of flesh. The pulling out the the intestines was a nice touch. The thing is, at first, I wasn’t sure I was going to write this little review on this book. I thought for sure it wouldn’t pass my scoring. But the more I read, the more I realized I couldn’t put it down. Ketchum crafts this story using a theme (in my opinion) that basically just shows human beings at their most primal. They’re all acting on one basic instinct: survival. Whether it’s the crazy cannibal family hunting and butchering and *gulp* raping people in brutal fashion…or it’s one of the heroes breaking a child’s skull against a cave wall because that same kid is trying to rip his throat out…it’s a horror survival tale using the most extreme imagery and violence. Everything about it is meant to offend and screw with you. Holy crap, what a first novel! It's not entirely perfect - the characters are a bit thin, many of them barely rising out of cardboard cutout territory prior to their victimization - but it is compulsively readable and utterly engrossing. I also did not really like the two prominent male family members (no names are given but I would describe one as "Mr Red shirt" and the other as "Mr Large and Bald." Don't get me wrong, they were very effective and were certainly "contributing" members of the family. I just found them personally to be very cold, unapproachable and even a little callous. This made it hard for me to identify with them and so I had a more difficult time caring about the hardships they encountered at the hands of the evil tourists.You're in the mood for a gory, and I mean GRUESOME film? Watch the clichéd-filled and grisly film: Offspring. Honestly, there's no other reason to watch it. It’s sad to think this author died earlier this year, but I think he will leave a legacy like few before or after him.