Full Brutal

By: Kristopher Triana

Narrated by: Dani George

Length: 9 hrs and 4 mins

Publisher's Summary

Kim White is a very popular cheerleader. She’s pretty, healthy, and comes from a well-off family. She has everything a girl of 16 is supposed to want. And she’s sick to death of it. 

In search of something to pull her out of her suicidal thoughts, she begrudgingly decides to lose her virginity, having heard it’s a life-changing event. But Kim doesn’t want to do it the same way her peers do. She seduces one of her teachers, hoping to ruin his life just for the fun of it. This starts Kim on a runaway train of sadism, and she makes every effort to destroy the lives of those around her. But soon, simple backstabbing is not enough to keep her excited, and she nosedives into sabotage, violence, and even murder. 

When Kim finds out she’s pregnant with her teacher’s child, a new madness overtakes her, and she realizes there’s only one thing that will satisfy her baby’s hunger....

©2018 Kristopher Triana (P)2019 Kristopher Triana

Fantastic narration of an unrelenting trip into Hell

Dani George killed it ( Pun intended) on this absolutely gut punch of extreme horror. Although Kim White is my dream girl, I’m almost 100% sure you won’t be prepared for the atrocities that Kristopher Triana hurls at you like a clown chucking pies at your face. Highly recommended to fans of extreme/Splatterpunk horror!

Extreme horror done right...

My first Kristopher Triana novel will NOT be my last. This is extreme horror done right.

Kim is a beautiful and popular 16-year-old cheerleader with suicidal thoughts and a general pessimism for life in general. She wants something new to change her perspective, to make her feel alive, and she decides that based on what her friends have been telling her, sex is the answer. But sex alone isn’t enough for Kim, who likes to set herself apart. Instead, she sets her sights on her sex-ed teacher and finds him all-too-willing after a few gentle nudges.

Nothing changes in her perspective, but she soon finds she quite enjoys making her teacher squirm in fear of being found out. What follows is an increasingly depraved descent into cruelty and madness, blood-soaked and full of fun twists.

I’ve read my share of extreme horror novels, and generally speaking, I like them. It’s rare that I LOVE one, but I usually have a good time. I often find that the writing or story or characters take a back seat to the moist squirts and disembowelments and the like in extreme horror, so I usually kind of treat them the way I would a popcorn action flick: turn my logic reactors off in my brain and just settle in for the fun.

However, FULL BRUTAL doesn’t suffer from ANY of these ailments. The writing was tight and flowed extremely well, the story was interesting and unique, and the characters all rang true, none more so than Kim, who tells us the story in first person, not shying away from any of the brutality and sadism she inflicts on those who think she’s their friend. What was fascinating to me was, as sick and depraved as this girl is, you find yourself rooting for her as her escapades get increasingly more vile and horrific. You don’t want her to get caught. You want her to figure out a way to deal with her ‘situation’ (no spoilers, read the damn book!). You want her to turn everything on its head and convince everyone she’s as innocent as she says she is. All while feeling like you need to run to the confessional for cheering on such rotten individual.

That’s the brilliance of this blood-soaked book: you’re rooting for the bad guy. You IDENTIFY with her. There’s a good deal of social commentary here, much like with Caroline Kepnes’s YOU (though infinitely more depraved), and Triana deftly weaves this into his tale of debasement and butchery. Watching as Kim manipulates literally EVERYONE to her whim and fancy is nothing short of brilliant, further adding to the appeal of this character who, by all rights, should be utterly reviled by any sane human being.

This isn’t what I’d call a slow burn, but it does take its time getting to the gory bits. However, there’s plenty of gooey goodness (or not-so-goodness) from the get-go, so the extremes are on display early here. But when the blood starts to flow, a mighty Amazon river of the red stuff floods the pages and does let up one iota through to the last page. In fact, it just keeps getting more and more and more intense and squirty and stomach-turning…all in the best possible ways.

The dialogue is good, the characters–especially Kim–are very well drawn and believable, the pacing is excellent, and it delivers in exactly the way you’d want an extreme horror novel to do: in dripping–and apparently delicious–chunks. There’s a good reason this gem won the 2019 Splatterpunk award. It earned it.

This is extreme horror, so reader beware if this is not your taste. The extreme content isn’t going to be for everyone. But, if you’re into this or think you might like to give it a try, I highly recommend this book to you. As far as extreme horror novels go, this would be my second favorite of all time, right behind (and I mean just a foot or two away) OFF SEASON by the late and great Jack Ketchum. It’s that good.

Dani George does an incredible job with the narration. Truly a top-notch performance.

If this is a genre you enjoy, you’re in for a REAL treat…and Kim is a fine cook.

Uncomfortable, Unrelenting, and Unabashed

If you've ever asked yourself what American Psycho's Patrick Bateman would be like if he were a teenage girl living in the current age as opposed to Wall Street of the 1980s, Full Brutal by Kristopher Triana is the book for you. I'm only joking a little bit with that introduction because--much like Ellis's most popular character--Kim is pretty, popular, and superficially passing as being not only normal but successful and even a role model of sorts. This is, of course, a facade.
As the story unfolds, Kim goes from being a calculating, manipulative sociopath dwelling on suicide--as much out of boredom and a desire to shock/stun the people who believe they're close to her as very real depression over the fact that nothing brings her any sort of pleasure in life--to a cold-blooded monster. The turning point seems to be that pivotal decision in many teenager's lives, whether they should have sex and with whom.
Developing a fixation on serial killers as well as torture-porn movies (and actual pornography featuring torture) and finding a spark of pleasure in these things, it's no real surprise that everything goes dark and brutal from there. She determines her first time should be with someone she has to break down and degrade to get there, and she sets her sights on her sex-ed teacher. When sex itself turns out to be less than the life-changing experience she was hoping for, instead of letting it depress her further, she finds entirely new ways to get herself off.
Destroying lives, creating turmoil that spreads everywhere around her, and always seeking an even greater thrill, Kim finally discovers that catharsis she was desperately searching for. As she decides to go "full brutal" everything continues getting worse for those surrounding her.
Dani George provides fantastic narration that captures the coldness and cruelty of Kim as well as breathing life into the vapid superficiality of her peers and friends--if one could consider these people to be either of those things.
I'm torn, because I appreciate the way this book turns the psychopathic killer trope on its head in a sense, transitioning the usual victim of these sorts of stories into the perpetrator. The skillful storytelling is the same as I've come to expect from Triana, along with the depravity and attention to gritty, unsettling details. Those things are fantastic elements. Some part of me feels that this is intended to be a sort of female empowerment, albeit a twisted form of it.
On the other hand, I feel like Kim is sort of an exaggerated, almost sexist caricature of the sort of girls all rape-culture bros like to pretend are all over the place. You surely know what I mean if you've bothered to torture yourself by reading incel screeds and the like. To a certain sort of guy, the world is populated by girls/women who will manipulate, dominate, and take what they want at any cost. For that sort of person, all girls are a stone's throw from threatening to cry rape if they aren't getting everything they want, or just because it's funny to ruin someone's life. To guys like that, most (if not all) girls are secretly very much like Kim...excepting the murderous streak. In that sense, I find the character and the story to be a bit problematic in the same way I would if the protagonist were a caricature of the mythical "welfare queen" from the Reagan era...as it sort of breathes life into an ignominious stereotype that should be allowed to die the off-screen death it deserves.
Taking the good with the bad, I still can't help but recommend this book to anyone who enjoys extreme horror. The best sort of horror is the kind that makes you uncomfortable and forces you to examine things you'd rather ignore, and that's precisely what you get with Full Brutal.

This will take your mind off your woes!

This book will not be for everyone but it was definitely for me. It managed to take my mind off of the current nightmarish timeline we’re caught up in and thrust me into someone else's for a few hours.

But, yeah, this book is not for everyone. It is extreme horror and by extreme I mean extremely gross and violent. Prepare thyself.

It’s funny too, sometimes. Or at least I thought so. And I desperately needed some pitch black humor in my life at this moment in time.

Things start out normally enough. Kim is one of those spoiled little rich cheerleader types that most of us love to hate and by us I mean me, and maybe you too if you’re busy reading a review of a book called Full Brutal but I’m not here to judge. Her daddy gives her whatever her black heart desires, as well as all the freedom in the world but she is deeply unhappy. She can’t feel things like the other girls do. Boo-hoo. Woe is her. Blah, blah, get over yourself and who cares, right? Well, this girl decides to be proactive and tries to fix her ennui and her whining and believes life will be worth living once she finds the thing that gives her a thrill. You can't fault her for that, right? She thinks that thing might be losing her virginity but soon enough she discovers that sex is blah like everything else but she’s a girl who learns from her mistakes. She learns that it’s the thrill of the dark and the dangerous that make her heart and other body parts race.

I’m going to keep from spoiling the ugly surprises that await within these pages because I think the impact will be stronger if you don’t know what’s coming. I spoiled myself because I read the blurb and skimmed a review or two before stopping my nosy self. You should know that this story features a whole heck of a lot of trigger warnings. Quite possibly all of them with the exception of prolonged animal torture (but don’t quote me on that because my brain is not working okay right now). Sometimes things bother me depending on my mood, the day, or the color of the sky but there was nothing here that made me ever want to shut it off and pour bleach in my ears.

I enjoyed this immensely despite knowing I probably shouldn’t. Kim is a monster. One of those human monsters that walk around looking like everyone else and pretending to be like the others. Full Brutal is cruel and evil and so very wrong but the fact that the perpetrator of all of these horrible misdeeds is a beautiful teenage girl worked for me. I’m not even going to pretend to lie, if it had been a grown man telling this story and finding such joy and glee in these atrocities I might’ve pulled the plug, I refuse to think about that too much or attempt to explain myself so please don't ask. You like what you like, you know? And this book held me in its gore-filled grasp until the very last word.

Narration Notes: Dani George does a decent job with the narration. A few of the guys sounded a bit rough but they didn’t really matter anyway, lol.

Heathers meets American Psycho

If Patrick Bateman was a 16 year old cheerleader you’d have Kim White. Not for the faint of heart, Kristopher Triana gets darker and darker as the story unfolds. Dani George’s dead pan narration fits the subject matter perfectly, and is all the more impressive when she gives indelible voices to the supporting cast.

Extreme Horror, 2019 Splatterpunk Award for Best Novel

FULL BRUTAL is among the top 5 most extreme books I have read and has an excellent story and voice to go with it. FULL BRUTAL reminded me of THE GIRL NEXT DOOR by Jack Ketchum a bit in that some scenes were very hard to read yet it is so well written there was no way I could stop. I look forward to more work by Kristopher Triana in the future!