Book Review – Uncage Me Edited by Jen Jordan

Books, Review | NerdOfNoir | July 28, 2009 at 9:28 am

umfrontcover Title: Uncage Me
Edited by: Jen Jordan
Binding: Trade paperback
Publisher: Bleak House Books
Publication Date: July 24, 2009

I’ve been paging back through Uncage Me for a while now, trying to see if the countless kick-ass writers in this beast of a short story collection missed covering anything under the vast umbrella that is transgressive fiction. Adultery? Plenty of that in there. Child molestation? No, that was in there. Incest? Got that covered too. Murder? Nah, there was a bunch of that. Rape? Jesus, how could I forget the sick-ass fucking rapeifying in this motherfucker. Fetish sex? Boat loads of that shit. Shit (like, no joke, straight-up poop)? There’s a shit ton (had to).

So let’s see…tally that shit up…yeah, Uncage Me has pretty much runs the whole fucking gamut. Thankfully, not only is Jen Jordan’s masterfully edited anthology chock-full of scrub-your-fucking-brain nastiness, the writing ain’t too shabby neither.

But then again, how could it not be? A whole fucking fleet of the Nerd’s personal faves are writing sans-fucking-abandon in Uncage Me. Favorite novelists Allan Guthrie, Scott Phillips, Victor Gischler, and Christa Faust are rocking the fuck alongside short story extrordinaires like Greg Bardsley, Patrick Shawn Bagley, and Stephen Blackmoore. There’s also awesome shit from novelists the Nerd has yet to get around to like J.D. Rhoades, J.A. Konrath, Stuart MacBride, Simon Kernick, Blake Crouch, Gregg Hurwitz, and Declan Burke. For you crime comics fans, 100 Bullets writer Brian Azzarello knocks one out the fucking park in here too! Plus much, much more!

Okay, I’m sounding like a fucking late night TV carpet warehouse ad right now and for that bullshit I apologize. No wait, I don’t fucking apologize. What else can an obsessive crime fan do in this situation but fucking scream from the roof tops? I mean, I could go through and fucking thumbs up or thumbs down each and every fucking story in here, but that’d be bullshit because there was never a moment in Uncage Me where I was thinking, “Nah, they shoulda scrapped that shit.” The range in this motherfucker is simply from rock-solid to fucking brilliant.

And if you read Jordan’s Bleak House collection from 2007 Expletive Deleted, you know what a gleefully gross good time you’re in for (and if you haven’t read it, you know, fucking do so already). Uncage Me is sick, gross, and dark fun. What more could a noir fan ask for?