THE BIG BOOK OF BLASPHEMY EDITED BY REGINA GARZA MITCHELL AND DAVID G. BARNETT: BOOK REVIEW

"Blasphameee, Blasphayouuu, Blasphaeverybody in the room..." 
-- Eddie Izzard

Hoo boy. This one's a doozy.

The Big Book of Blasphemy is exactly what it says on the tin: it's big, it's a book and oh my is it blasphemous. Editors Regina Garza Mitchell and David G. Barnett have collected 30 horror stories (technically 29 and a poem) of sin and religious affrontery that are enough to make any devout worshipper turn white with queasiness and purple with rage. "If you're religious, look no further – this book is not for you," the blurb declares, and reader they are not overselling it.

The tales collected herein run the gamut from thoughtful explorations of religious hypocrisy and zealotry to nasty stories of rape and torture and general depravity. There's little here that would cause a believer to reject their faith, but there's plenty that would upset and sicken them. Atrocities are condoned by the faithful and damned alike, as people are murdered and chopped up and raped and eaten all in the name of Jesus or Satan or whatever deity happens to be around at the time. The best word to describe some of these stories is dirty. Like there's a sheen of oil or grease on them that won't rub off, a layer of seediness that never fully goes away. There's precious little salvation to be found here, just a world of evil and temptation and a cold cold universe.

As with most anthologies, especially ones of this size, the stories are hit and miss. Blasphemy is lucky in that the vast majority of the stories are hits, with only one or two proving too purple-prosey, confusing or comparatively dull when set alongside the others. Below are the standouts, the most noteable for better and for worse.

'Goddess of the Gallows' by Kristofer Triana – a man with a fixation on hanging himself discovers a cult dedicated to the Ixtab, the Mayan goddess of suicide by hanging. This is the book's first prose story and first orgy (yes, this book has multiple orgies), and it starts with some pretty extreme acts of desecration. Holy books are used as toilet paper, people dressed as religious figures perform acts of sex and violence on each other. This story's placement is no coincidence; clearly the editors are letting us know that imagery like this is how they mean to go on. Turn back and repent now, sinners. Triana's writing is great and extremely visual, perhaps too visual at times!

'Scriptures' by Edward Lee – a zealous priest and his sons rape and torture the women of the family while quoting religious scripture. No doubt meant as a criticism of the Church's history of misogyny and treatment of women, it comes across more as an excuse to write about the kinky degradation of women, and the underage incest is just not for me. It's certainly not badly written, though, it's just that the subject matter was a bridge too far for me.

'Jesus or Jacob?' by Ali Seay – this is my favourite of the bunch. A devout father, led astray by a bigot in his church, tries to reconcile the loving teachings of Jesus with the more smite-y aspects of Christian teachings, as he and a group of compatriots prepare to storm an LGBT+ church meeting. Seay really places us in the father's head as he agonises over making the right decision, a dilemma he sees as a choice between two Gods. Beautifully written and quite tragic.

'Angelbait' by Ryan Harding – now this one is my kind of nasty. Three seemingly random people find themselves captured by a hunter who believes he can use them to summon an angel if he punishes them in the manner various saints were punished. This involves inflicting various terrible bodily harms on them – and forcing them to drink the pus and other fluids of a leper that's confined in them. The way Harding describes these sessions turned my stomach, and I'm not especially squeamish when it comes to fiction. This was just so disgusting and horrific that it pushed my buttons. Very nicely done!

'R.I.B. Rest in Blood' by Paolo Di Prazio – this one was not my kind of nasty. A Pastor, who seems to be possessed by a holy force, kills his wife and kidnaps his trans daughter to punish them, believing that he can cast the woman out of his 'son' through torture. Again, this is doubtless a commentary on the Church's traditional stance on such things, but the constant transphobia throughout made me extremely uncomfortable and didn't make for an easy read. Approach at your peril, reader.

'The Cursing Prayer' by Lucy Taylor – mankind is struggling to get by after an environmental apocalypse, and a religious totalitarian regime has a strict stranglehold on the population. Children are the future, but they're starting to spout horribly graphic blasphemous prayers that threaten to bring their teacher to the attention of the fascist Providers. Worse, they claim that the man who taught them these prayers is Jesus himself. An excellently bleak look at a future in which Jesus, sick of our shit, is back with a new message.

Those are, for my money, the best of the bunch and the ones that stuck in my mind the most. Even the ones that were definitely not for me have lodged themselves into my psyche and sunk their hooks in tight. Among the other stories we have angel-eaters, angel-fuckers, false prophets, pizza cults, prosperity gospel snake oil salesmen, religious parents committing and fostering atrocities, a Jesus who's just a right dick, cannibalistic half-angels and proof that God doesn't exist & if he does then he hates us and it serves us right.  And more filthy, kinky sex than you can shake a semen-covered stick at.

It's outrageous, funny, disgusting and, yes, thought-provoking. The pages fly by and I found myself unable to put this down, mostly out of morbid curiosity about what depravity might be coming next. The many depictions of rape are grating (two male rapes are even played for laughs) as media currently has a real obsession with it as a means to shock an audience, but I suppose that as a profane act it does make sense that it appears in a book of blasphemous stories. It's just disheartening to see authors still relying on it.

If you have a cast iron stomach and a good deal of cynicism towards organised religion then dive right in. You might not like all of what you see, but you'll definitely find something that'll scratch that sacrilegious itch. But if you're squeamish or have an ounce of faith in humanity and the existence of a divine being that loves and cares for us?  Er, maybe leave this one on the shelf.

​Sam Kurd 

If you're religious, look no further - this is not the book for you. The Big Book of Blasphemy is just what the name says: BIG. With 30 stories from today's best extreme horror writers, no one and nothing is sacred. These stories take on everything from goddesses to paleros to priests to saints and sinners, angels, demons, devils, and even pizza. From wretched pasts to dystopian futures, these tales explore a range of topics, religions, and blasphemies. The stories in this book range from serious to humorous, loud to quiet; there's a sacrilege for everyone.

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