The Wizard of Oz meets Carlos Casteneda

Sloughing Off the Rot

By Lance Carbuncle

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

A warning to those who laughed their way through Lance Carbuncle's first two bawdy romps. You will laugh through Sloughing Off the Rot too but it will be the kind of uncomfortable laughter that comes from handling donkey bezoars; a object you will be quite familiar with once you finished this bizarre masterpiece.

Carbuncle's new travesty is quite different than anything he wrote before. While the wicked humor is there, as well as the scatological word feast and the multitudes of cultural references from rock lyrics to literary and religious sources, the author has risen to a weird psychedelic form of seriousness; a tale that is a sort of The Wizard of Oz as told by Carlos Castaneda. It is an intense spiritual journey down a red brick road as John the Revelator, a man who wakes up in a cave with no sense of who he is and why he is there, travels through a purgatorial wilderness loaded with creatures like zombie-like Lunkheads and sexually irresistible Blumpkins. John is aided by a group of guides that feels an awful like an id, ego and superego set-up, not to mention the bezoar-puking Alf the Sacred Burro. All of this madness is steered by Carbuncle's manic over-the-top style that isn't afraid to offend and always entertains. Lance Carbuncle has already been proven to be one of the most original writers around. Sloughing off the Slough merely broadens and cements his already infamous reputation.

Method acquired: Review copy from author