I cannot say enough great things about The Black Farm, it may be my new favorite book.
Let me start by saying that this book is graphically violent, disturbing, bleak, grotesque, and includes some pretty intense scenes of SA. It is not a light-hearted jaunt. This novel is a gauntlet of despair and brutality. You have been warned.
The Black Farm is the story of Nick and Jess, who have committed suicide after a tragedy shatters their world. What they’d hoped would be a release from their despair, a slip into the void where they would no longer be burdened by existence, turned out to be a journey into a nightmare beyond any pain and suffering they could have ever imagined in life. As soon as Nick wakes up after his death, he’s introduced to the horrific new world he’ll occupy for eternity. Ruled by a malevolent pseudo-god, The Pig, who yearns for the power of creation; the farm is a twisted and corrupted imitation of earth inhabited by violent, lustful, and malicious spawn of the swine. A black-hole sun hovers in the permanent twilight sky, dripping ichor into a diseased ocean where towering giants roam to scoop up any humans who attempt to escape. There are fields of spikes where bodies are impaled until they bleed out or starve to death, one of the more merciful ways to meet your end on the farm. But even if you die here, your reprieve is brief, as you will be reborn elsewhere in this realm to begin your suffering fight for survival again. Nick will have to face these horrors and so much more in order to find Jess, and when he does, he’ll do anything to get them both out of the farm, even if it means abandoning what is left of his humanity.
Elias Witherow does an amazing job building this world in all its vivid brutality and the performance by Tom Jordan perfectly brings this bleak world to life. There is a sequel, Return to The Black Farm, that is getting an audiobook release soon and I cannot wait to give it a read.
P.S.- If you’re a fan of Brom, specifically Lost Gods, you’ll love The Black Farm.