Survivor

by J.F. Gonzalez

Book Overview

A young mother is kidnapped and taken to an isolated cabin to star in an underground snuff film--a film where someone actually dies on tape. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Mass Market Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0843955678
• ISBN13: 9780843955675
• Release Date: January 2006
• Publisher: Leisure Books
• Length: 373 Pages
• Weight: 0.45 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 4.2" x 6.8"

Customer Reviews

Omg!

This book is only for the Extreme hardcore horror fan! Survivor is the sickest, most depraved book I have ever read! I felt the need to put it down..but couldn't, instead I read it with my eyes feeling like they were going to pop out of the sockets because of the most graphic brutality!

Uncompromising and utterly unforgettable

I have never read anything like J. F. Gonzalez's Survivor. There were times I actually thought of putting this book down and walking away (Chapter 17), but I couldn't do it. The story is so compelling, the danger so real, and the characters so believable, that I had to keep reading to the bitter end. I write horror for a living, and I thought I had seen it all. I was wrong. The villains in this novel are the vilest and most horrific creatures ever conceived. 'Animal' alone will give you nightmares for the rest of your life. Survivor disgusted me, enthralled me, and it actually made me cry. If you have a taste for real terror, and a very strong stomach, you must experience it for yourself!

Highly disturbing

Call me masochistic, but I love horror books and movies that do more than entertain, I like them to be seriously disturbing. Case in point: Survivor, which I can only describe as the literary equivelant of the movies Saw or Hostel. The entire scenario of this novel was gut-wrenching and horrifying. Snuff films are a sort of urban legend, but with a few deft strokes, it becomes conceivable that they could be real. The plot of Survivor explores this as a young couple get seperated in what appears to be a road rage incident. The woman is later kidnapped and we realize why: somebody wants to see her get killed in a snuff film. Just exactly who it is will shock you. She also has just found out she's pregnant. What she does to escape is the most awful part of the book, and it was actually painful for me to read and yet at the same time I couldn't put it down. Yes, horrible things happen in the novel, and the very mention that an infant is murdered is horrible enough (this isn't even shown in the novel, but referred to in flashbacks). But the gore is handled in a way that makes it realistic and ugly and I don't think it was written with the intention to shock. Considering the kind of characters the bad guys are, and the subject matter, I don't think it could have been handled any other way. I recommend this highly to anyone who loves seriously disturbing horror, and yet I can't stress strongly enough that this is not a book for everyone.

Great, but very disturbing

Call me masochistic, but I love horror books and movies that do more than entertain, I like them to be seriously disturbing. Case in point: Survivor, which I can only describe as the literary equivelant of the movies Saw or Hostel. The entire scenario of this novel was gut-wrenching and horrifying. Snuff films are a sort of urban legend, but with a few deft strokes, it becomes conceivable that they could be real. The plot of Survivor explores this as a young couple get seperated in what appears to be a road rage incident. The woman is later kidnapped and we realize why: somebody wants to see her get killed in a snuff film. Just exactly who it is will shock you. She also has just found out she's pregnant. What she does to escape is the most awful part of the book, and it was actually painful for me to read and yet at the same time I couldn't put it down. Yes, horrible things happen in the novel, and the very mention that an infant is murdered is horrible enough (this isn't even shown in the novel, but referred to in flashbacks). But the gore is handled in a way that makes it realistic and ugly and I don't think it was written with the intention to shock. Considering the kind of characters the bad guys are, and the subject matter, I don't think it could have been handled any other way. I recommend this highly to anyone who loves seriously disturbing horror, and yet I can't stress strongly enough that this is not a book for everyone.

SURVIVOR - How Far Will You Go???

Fans of Jack Ketchum really need to check this book out. Remember when Ketchum's first book, OFF SEASON, came out? All the hubbub and scandalmongering - "too dark to see print", "too graphic". Well, I read OFF SEASON, and I didn't find it that graphic. It was vivid. There is a difference. Ketchum never looks away from the horror that is going on in his novel, but he doesn't glorify it either. Neither does Gonzalez. SURVIVOR is a study in survival. Just what the title tells you. SURVIVOR is a story of how far a human will go, if they need to survive. Attorneys Brad and Lisa Miller are off on a short vacation. Lisa has a secret to tell Brad. She's pregnant. Everything is perfect. Lisa has planned the whole thing out. What she hasn't planned is Brad getting framed and arrested, and her being kidnapped by a maker of snuff films. She's given a hard lesson in how far some folks will go for pleasure, and she in turn learns how far she will go in her basic instinct to survive. There's nothing edifying or glorious about SURVIVOR. It's not going to uplift your spirits or make you want to sing pretty love songs. SURVIVOR is nitty gritty realism. Lisa is (in effect) thrown into a cesspool and forced to claw her way out. She's one of the strongest female characters I've ever come across. This book is getting a bad rep, and I hope this review will do a bit to clear it up. No, SURVIVOR is not for the timid or easily offended. Yes there's some pretty nasty stuff that goes on, but most of that stuff is done by the "bad guys". Lisa's just trying to survive. The book is about how close to the surface the savage lies. How much we will do to survive. It's one of the darkest and nastiest books I've ever read, but I don't get any notion that anybody is "getting off on the gore" in this book. J.F. Gonzalez brings two characters into the toughest nastiest arena you could imagine, and then lets them try to get out. It is definitely worth reading. J.F. Gonzalez is going to be a name to watch out for. He's going to be around for a while. J.F. Gonzalez is going to survive.

Excellent!

J.F. Gonzalez didn't just hit a nerve when I read Survivor. He chained me to a chair and held a rusty hunting knife against that nerve and laughed maniacally the whole time. Yes, Survivor does cross boundary lines. In fact, it tramples them into a heap and leads you into territory that's beyond uncomfortable in many ways. It's not just the raw, visceral descriptions. It's the agonizing emotions the characters go through and the choices they are forced to make. Gonzalez crafted Survivor in such a way that you cannot help but wonder how you would react if you were in place of the character. Lots of horror novels are easily forgotten. You enjoy the scare, close the cover and put them on a shelf, moving on to the next. Survivor is not one of those books. The story of Lisa and Brad has stayed with me since I finished it. In fact, it keeps coming back to me each time I'm driving long stretches of highway. Places where that "what if" train of thought starts working. Survivor is a brutal, unforgiving novel and Gonzalez pulls no punches, revealing the entire stomach churning plot bit by bloody bit. It's a realistic holy-@#$%-that-could-really-happen story, which makes it all the more horrifying when you're caught up in the middle. We can expect only great things from Gonzalez in the future because, like Survivor, he's going to be carving up our psyche for quite some time.