Welcome to the future! Consume!

Gutmouth by Gabino Iglesias takes place in a future where everything is run and mutated by Megacorp, a huge corporation that took over from the government by releasing a biological agent that created mutations and only they knew how to control them. Insert Monsanto joke here.

Our hero (as it were) has a particular mutation that caused him to grow an obnoxious talking mouth in his gut. Actually, the author seems to have put a lot of thought into how this could physiologically work. That's a little more disturbing than anything else.

When his hooker girlfriend cheats on him with the mouth, he decides to exact revenge on her. But how can he do this when everything is watched by Megacorp? How does one take out a potentially valuable consumer without notice?

I found this book surprising in more ways than one. To start, the editing is actually quite good. Editing problems are a common complaint I've had with bizarro books, and so far this year's class of the New Bizarro Authors Series, of which this book is a part, has been surprising me in this regard. It bodes well for the future.

This book is bleak. I mean really bleak. It depicts a heavy dystopian future that may turn some readers off. Still, if that's your thing, you'll probably like this book. It's really a matter of taste.

A complaint I do have is that there aren't many surprises. Most of the book is told as a noir-style flashback. We sort of know what happened, but we're watching it carried out. And it sort of plays out the way you would expect. Up until the end (and there is a bit of a surprise at the end), it felt a bit like the movie “The Man Who Wasn't There.” But there's not a whole lot else.

In short, the descriptions and imagining of the world are great, but the plot itself leaves a little to be desired and doesn't leave the reader with many surprises or mysteries, which is surprising given the noir-style the author uses.

As I mentioned earlier, Gutmouth is part of the 2012-2013 class of the New Bizarro Authors Series, which means that this is Gabino Iglesias' first published novel. It's a good effort, and it did keep my interest, but by the end I felt a bit deflated. Still, I look forward to his other work to see how he grows as a writer.

Gutmouth by Gabino Iglesias earns 3.5 klepto-roaches out of 5. ( )

You can read my entire discussion here: http://ireadoddbooks.com/gutmouth-by-gabino-iglesias/

Here's a snippet:

In this novel, Iglesias creates a perverse dystopia that can best be described as 1984 with extreme body modifications and mutations. Extreme pain is pleasure, pleasure is demented and everyone is amoral and marginally insane. There is a Church of Albert Fish, Carlton Mellick V is writing brutal fiction, people can genetically cross themselves with salamanders and a body modification expert deconstructs his ex-girlfriend into a motorcycle. This is a fun, perverse and at times really gross dystopic book, and it even has something for the paranoid types who like to visit here from time to time. The dystopia is a capitalist hell hole and Dedmon plays his part as a “hunter” for MegaCorp.

"The job, as the name implies, involved hunting down people who refused to comply with MegaCorp rules and regulations and bringing them to the local Consumer Rehabilitation and Punishment Center. I would usually get a call or text with a crime, a name and an address and then I would track down dissidents – folks that refused to buy their allotted quantities of products each month, stubborn citizens who wanted to grow their own food, horny individuals that raped someone else’s pleasurebots, things like that. From the inside of the cell, that life looked like paradise."

Dedmon loathes the stoma-mouth that penetrates his abdomen and you can’t really blame him. Philippe forces Dedmon to interact with him and if ignored Philippe chews up whatever is in his way, including Dedmon’s clothing. Philippe also puts a lot of financial and emotional pressure on Dedmon.

"Philippe was misogynistic and racist, which made me feel guilty about having him. Plus, his extravagant tastes clashed with my financial reality. A hunter couldn’t afford a steady diet of bipolar midget brains, Angora cats and chocolate-stuffed olives." ( )