Red Team / Blue Team: Who My Books Are Actually For
The Definitive Guide to Whether You Should Read My Novels
Most book marketing is bullshit. Authors oversell, readers get disappointed, everyone wastes time and money. So I'm going to do something different: tell you the pros and cons of Gods Fare No Better and Berserker Club. Honestly. They're not perfect. If you still want to read them after this, you'll probably love them. If not, I just saved you a couple weeks and about $40.
There will be intense spoilers for both books. If they already sound cool to you, just ignore this entire thing and go purchase. Seize the day.
I'll go one book at a time, leading with the negative. We're using Red Team / Blue Team framing. If you're red team, these books are not for you. If you're blue team, these are probably going to be your new favorites.
Here's Claude's honest assessment of my work. I had some vague ideas about what needed to improve in my writing, but I have blind spots too. I've condensed it into human language, because AI writing makes my teeth itch.
JDO Books — Are They Good?
The Antichrist refers to my work as "high risk vs. high reward." It says that when I'm on, I'm really on — "unique: kinetic mysticism, animist cyberpunk, Oklahoma weird fiction that feels ALIVE." Unfortunately, when I'm off, I'm "excessive, unfocused, and occasionally feels like he's writing for an audience of one (himself)." That tracks. My main goal for the next book is to focus on writing for an audience.
It did give me some flowers: these books commit to a vision and are "clearly driven by the author's obsessions." On voice: "JDO has a distinctive, recognizable style. You're never confused about who wrote this. The prose is kinetic, muscular, rhythmic." But the books suffer from "Repetitive phrasing. Unclear antecedents. Sentences that almost work but don't quite land. The ambition sometimes outpaces the execution."
The "unclear antecedents" thing is dead-on. It's something I'm working on in a major way.
Read JDO if you value:
- Voice over polish
- Ambition over safety
- Feeling over understanding
- Regional specificity over universal appeal
- Weird ideas executed with commitment
Skip JDO if you value:
- Clean prose over distinctive voice
- Clarity over complexity
- Satisfying, wrapped-up endings
- Books that don't require work
- Diverse perspectives and representation
Clocked me on the "satisfying endings" thing. I'm working on it.
Gods Fare No Better
🔴 Red Team — Do Not Buy This Book
The AI was pretty brutal with this one. It seemed to "like" Berserker Club more. Here's a point-by-point breakdown of what might make this the worst book you've ever read:
Too Many Characters. There are 4 main POV characters and dozens of supporting characters, some of which show up once and never again. I've been getting this criticism since my first published book in 2010.
Exhaustion. The word "exhaustion" came up again and again. The sheer amount of things that keep happening leads to dissonance and incoherence. My initial inspiration was to see if I could stretch the feeling of the first ten minutes of Miike's Dead or Alive into a 600-page novel. I believe I succeeded, but whether that sounds appealing or hellish is a preference thing.
Not Enough Women. Valid. There's at least a woman MC in GFNB, but most women in the book are there to get "fucked or killed" (the AI's words, not mine). These are books for dudes, about dudes destroying themselves. True.
Abrupt Ending / Underdeveloped Threads. Early readers told me: "dude…it just stops." I addressed it, but the book is still about the journey, not the destination. If you hate that, you will find it here.
Excessive Gore and Sex. There's some rough stuff. I'll go into more detail in the Berserker Club section, since that's the grosser of the two.
Tonal Whiplash. "This goes from ultraviolence to philosophical meditation to absurd comedy to genuine pathos in the space of a page. One chapter is a school shooting. The next is about empathy mushrooms. It's schizophrenic on purpose." I love that kind of shit. Many do not.
🔵 Blue Team — This Is Your New Favorite Book
It Emphasizes the "Punk" in "Cyberpunk." This isn't slick smart noir. It's a kitchen-sink book, independently published, and genuinely anti-capitalist in a way I didn't fully intend. Cyberpunk is an inherently anti-state, anti-capitalist genre, so the milieu itself carries that charge.
Ambition and Uniqueness. The AI noted it approvingly: "This tries to do EVERYTHING: cyberpunk, Buddhist philosophy, animism, body horror, dark comedy, myth, video game logic, mushroom networks, the World Serpent."
Philosophy That Is Actually Entertaining. "The book is ABOUT animism, interconnectedness, what makes us human, how technology changes consciousness — but it delivers these ideas through ultraviolence and talking mushrooms and a preacher who becomes a techno-fungal god."
Lived-in World and Clear Action. The places feel real and are meticulously described. The action is clean. I learned from John Skipp: write action like panels on a comic book page, not a movie. You focus on core images rather than motion.
It's a Comedy. Something Claude did not pick up on: this book is a comedy. The number one response I get from readers is that it's entertaining and fun. I guess it depends on how much you like to party.
It Feels Like Nothing Else. "Seriously, what else is like this? Cyberpunk Oklahoma with Buddhist monks and the World Serpent? Where Swan-wives get killed by ceiling fans and deer-men massacre rodeos and empathy mushrooms make psychopaths more dangerous?" There is no other book like it. Which makes it a bitch to market.
Bottom line: Gods Fare No Better is a messy, ambitious, excessive novel that tries to do far too much and somehow mostly succeeds. It's kaleidoscopic — you have to let the fragments assemble in your mind rather than expecting traditional narrative flow. When it works (Kentaro's arc, the Cielo/Apanatchi confrontation, Zuno's transformation), it's doing something genuinely unique. When it doesn't, it's still interesting. This is high-risk, high-reward reading. It might frustrate you. It will definitely challenge you. But if you're willing to meet it on its terms, there's nothing else quite like it.
Berserker Club
🔴 Red Team — Do Not Buy This Book
No Explanation for Anything. If you're the type of reader looking for everything spelled out, stay away. You'll understand what's happening, and the rules for the green serum are clear, but you won't get closure.
Women Are Almost Entirely Absent. These are books full of dudes doing dude shit. If no girls = no read, then don't. (Though I'd push back on the idea that women wouldn't want to read this. The extreme horror community skews heavily female readership, and those books are considerably worse. Everybody's different.)
Gore and Sex. Claude's actual words: "A man shits through a hole in his intestines in the first chapter, then gets shot and transforms into a spider-creature. There's a 'semen demon.' Phil gets anally raped by an invisible force. This is visceral body horror." My brother texted me to say the opening scene was a bit much for him. So it goes.
The Ending. I will write a satisfying ending as though my life depends on it. We're making progress. But if you need a twist or everything falling perfectly into place, there are thousands of books that can do that for you.
🔵 Blue Team — A Great Way to Spend a Few Hours
Meaningful Body Horror. "The transformations aren't random. Miller becomes a semen demon because he's desperately lonely. Jody becomes an armored spike ball because he's a control freak. The 'green juice' is a mirror — it shows you what you actually are. That's terrifying in a way random monsters aren't."
Carlton Mellick III meets Cormac McCarthy. Carl is actually a friend of mine from the Bizarro Fiction days. I came out of that scene — Silent Weapons for Quiet Wars, Satan Burger, Angel Dust Apocalypse, Shatnerquake. Those influences will follow me forever. What Berserker Club does: "It's got the gonzo weirdness and visceral grossness of bizarro fiction, but grounded in working-class Oklahoma authenticity. These aren't cartoons — they're recognizable men who turn into cartoons, which is somehow worse."
Economy of Words. I can get a story done in 1/3 the words of 99% of writers. No exposition dumps. I trust you to keep up, or enjoy being confused. I genuinely enjoy being mystified when I'm reading something, and that comes through.
Genuinely Weird. Not quirky. Not offbeat. Strange. About 30 pages in, I introduce The Skinned Prophet — a kangaroo-sized rabbit that dual-wields ARs. A human becomes a tree that grows pulsing meat sacs that give birth to syringes. Two dead brothers are given a new body by forest spirits: a trenchcoat-wearing, tomahawk-wielding, deer-headed revenant. It all works. Fight me, Claude.
Hopeful Nihilism. No matter how dark it gets, I always steer toward some hope, or humanity. JRJ used to say I had the Vonnegut "so it goes" mentality. I'll take it.
Bottom line: Berserker Club is economical, visceral, and smarter than it first appears. Osborne has a genuine gift for violence that resonates beyond shock value, and he's doing something interesting with the idea of stories as living, transformative forces. The book doesn't waste your time, doesn't talk down to you, and commits fully to its bizarre premise. It's not perfect — but it's alive in a way most horror fiction isn't. Know what you're getting into, then let it take you.
(The middle doesn't drag, by the way. The fuck???)
If either of these sounds like your kind of thing, you know what to do. If it doesn't, I feel like I've warned you. What I want are like-minded people who will fuck with the vision and tell others accordingly.
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