I got The Mind is a Razor Blade by Max Booth III and when I opened it, you won’t guess what happened next!

I turned the page! I kept doing that until I had finished the book! OMG!

Okay.. I’ll admit it, I’m not very good at doing a grab like other websites are. You know..

“This man found a box and you won’t believe what was inside!”

or…

“A woman bought a house and won’t believe what she discovered in the basement!”

Oh well. I’ll try another time.

Okay, where was I? Oh yeah.. I read The Mind is a Razor Blade by Max Booth III. What actually happened next didn’t actually happen after I read it, it started to happen during the very first chapter.

What happened ZombieMall? What happened??!?

Well.. In the 1^st chapter our main character wakes up in the pouring rain, naked, and next to a river. He also has no memory of who he is. THAT is when a seed was planted, THAT is what actually happened next that I mentioned a few sentences ago…

ZombieMall.. you have gone off the deep end. You are talkin’ gibberish now.

Okay, let me back up..

I read Max’s book Toxicity a while ago. Then I read his novella, Black. The moment I picked up The Mind is a Razor Blade, I started to suspect something. I started to formulate a theory.

Yeah? Go on..

My theory is that all three of the writings are connected. As in.. they all take place in the same universe… I’ll explain..

A lot of writers create an entire universe in which their tales take place. Look at pretty much anything Stephen King writes; the most recent example that rolls off the top of my head, IT and Under the Dome – in IT there is a symbol in the cave, above a door, where they find the creature. In Under the Dome, that same symbol shows up. It’s a tiny connection, but a connection it is.

Back to Max’s books; Toxicity introduces a drug called Purple. When inhaled it causes one to “see” things. In this instance it is black flies. It also causes one to go into a strange trippy frenzy in which almost anything can seemingly happen. One moment you can be flying, the next you may see zombies. And there is Johnny Desperation… (wait for the bonus!)

Fast forward to The Mind is a Razor Blade.. While flies are not here, there are black spiders. BrianSpiders, uh er.. I mean BrainSpiders. We also have a character named Indigo.. Kindav a, how should I put this, a ring-leader, of sorts. He seems to be a head guru for a cult following a demon they call Conundrae. And there is.. (wait for the bonus!)

The world in which this all takes place seems.. oddly familiar as well. When our lost soul awakens and starts to stumble around the city we see total chaos. Almost as if…

Ahh.. but I gotta wait to explain that.. THAT’S the bonus at the end of the review!

NOW, step backwards to Max’s novella Black. Charlie and a demon. Not flies, not spiders, but oh yes, indeed there are thousands of insects.. and.. of course.. there is the demon. While it’s never given a name (at least not that I can recall), for the sake of my theory, I’m going to consider it to be Conundrae.

Did that blow your mind?

Put simply, Max has weaved a very complex universe (and in only 3 books!). Yes, I may be trying to read way too much into all of this, but isn’t that the point? I mean.. If you like something you read, isn’t it your job to explore every shadowy corner contained within those writings?

But ZombieMall, there is not much of a review here! And what about the bonus?

If you have failed to see my review here, then to be totally blunt, you have missed the entire point of what I have written. And the bonus.. the bonus will be given in just a moment.

For now let me break it all down; Would I put this much thought and consideration into trying to connect these books together if I didn’t enjoy them? Hell no! Hell yes, I loved The Mind is a Razor Blade, and just because of my personal theory I WILL get Max’s next book just so I can confirm it for myself.

I’d say that, all in all, makes this one hell of a review, it’s a damn good book. Go buy it, hell buy all of his books.

You can get it here: The Mind is a Razor Blade

The Bonus

Okay kids, this bonus is for the Max Booth III fans. My theory that at least two of Max’s books are connected turns out to actually have some merit. Check this shit out; Johnny Desperation is actually in both Toxicity and The Mind is a Razor Blade. It took me 3 reads to catch it (plus some prompting from Max himself), but oh yes, Johnny is most certainly confirmed as being in both books. Plus there is this little bit that Max told me during a little chat:

Max Booth III: “Razor actually takes place as an aftermath of the drug introduced in toxicity. But I’ve never told anyone that before. Haha.”

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Howard Boling is a friend from way back. Warhammer 40k, rolling dice, painting miniatures, and general bullshitting is what we had in common… at first.

I discovered he was a wrestler (yes, what you guys call “fake” wrestling – but there is nothing fake about it) and kick-boxing. Occasionally we would spar; his favorite technique was to kick my shins until I could no longer stand. Come to think of it… I don’t think that I ever actually landed a single kick or punch on him…

That was always okay, I never wanted anyone to let me win. I wanted to win because I was better than the person I was going up against. In this instance, he was the teacher, I was but the learner.

A few months back I learned that Howard had published a book. I had no clue what it was about (at that time), I just knew that I wanted a copy because I figured that he could, once again, teach me something.

What I got in the mail was both a lesson and a book.

Hell’s Castaway by Howard Boling.

Within is not a tale of fiction, oh no. It is very much real.

As I read page after page, I realized that Howard was once again teaching me a lesson. Again he was the teacher and I was the student.

What did he teach me? It breaks down like this…

Hell’s Castaway is a book of poetry. It is dark and it is full of pain, and it is from the heart. That is what I learned, Howard had pain in his life, just as I had in mine. I never knew of this torture within him when I met him all those years ago.

I am sure we all have days that we just want things to stop, but we move on. We have hope that things will get better. That is what Howard taught me after all these years. No, not to have hope, but that others out there suffer just as I had, that there are others out there that were just like me.

I’ll let Howard’s words sum up my final thought:

You can purchase Howard’s book at Amazon.com here: Hell’s Castaway by Howard Boling

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Toxicity Review

There is a saying “Do not judge a book by it’s cover”.

It’s a rather self explanatory saying; don’t assume you know what the innards are going to be like simply by looking at the… well… cover.

Regardless, that’s exactly what I did with Max Booth III’s book Toxicity.

I mean… look at it, it’s freaking cool!

I’ve been threatening myself to get it for a while now, just based on that cover. The thirst to read it really didn’t exist at first. I mean, it did, I was going to read it by virtue of simply owning it, but it was the cover that attracted me to it. Finally I contacted Max and ordered it.

Not only did I finally get to look at the cover up close, but I was also rewarded with a journey into a surreal and bizarre world.

Dolls, Purple, Murder, and The Fly are just some of the buzz words (pun intended) that I could use to describe elements that are crafted in this book. It’s not exactly horror, but it’s more than simply fiction. The label on the back of the book categorizes it as Thriller. It has a touch of dark comedy as well, and with that all combined, you have one hell of a story.

The characters are very well developed, and they all certainly have solid pasts that make them interesting and unique.

Parts are pretty graphic (just to give you fair warning), but it is not included in a haphazard way. Everything placed in these pages is there for a reason. A very specific reason. Hell, I even went back and read it a 2^nd time and caught a couple of other things I didn’t catch the 1^st time (Maddox Kane’s daughter’s name for example – Addison – I’m fairly certain she got that name because of the road that runs just South of Wrigley Field) I read it.

I have many questions to ask Max about (and I will post the questions with the 1^st comment to this article so as to not give away any spoilers), sadly, I feel that I may not get an answer.

Why?

I don’t think that Toxicity is over and that makes me sad. Sad because I’m not ready to leave this world behind and should Max have more plans for these characters, well… why would he tell me all about it? I really do want more, and in that way I am happy. It is a rare book indeed that leaves me hungering for more.

The anticipation of Toxicitii (see what I did there? Huh? huh? didja? Max, you better give me credit for that title!) is great indeed. I must tell Max that The Fly told me that his work must continue and Max knows one must obey The Fly.

ZombieMall highly recommends Toxicity. Give it a read. You can find it on Amazon:

Toxicity on Amazon

ALSO… Max Booth III has his 2^nd novel due out on September 18^th, The Mind is a Razor Blade, which is being published by Kraken Press. In fact… if you preorder it today, right now – right this second, you will get immediate access to the e-book version. So you get the book shipped to you around the middle of this month, but you can start reading it NOW on your technological device of choice. That sounds like a deal to me!

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