3 of 5 Man-Beast Stars – The Melding of Aeris by D. Wallace Peach.
This is a strange book. It’s very brutal. People are skinned alive, and ‘melded’ with animals. Because human skin is so valuable. So all the poor people get skinned. This world is filled with human-beasts, covered in fur.
The few brief sex scenes in this book kind of freaked me out, because it’s like bestiality. Imagine banging a woman who has cat eyes, and wolf’s fur. Okay, so it’s kind of a turn on. I mean, if you’re into ‘furries’, which some people are.
I don’t get the whole dressing up as animals thing. How do people find that sexy? It’s just weird and creepy. But having a woman who actually has silky fur all over her body? That’s hot. Or am I just sick and perverted? Yeah, that’s probably it.
But I digress… This book is about a man named Aeris who gets melded, because he’s a poor ass bum. They skin him alive and replace his skin with wolf’s fur. And a bit of goat. Maybe a squirrel or two, for flair. This really pisses him off. He swears revenge, and learns how to fight, to get back his precious human skin.
Aeris starts a rebellion. He wants to end the skinning. The only way to do that is to destroy the Pathway, or whatever… It’s some magic thingy. This part of the book confused the living shit out of me. I mean is it magic, or is it surgery? What the fuck the whole Pathway thing was, I never fully understood. But it’s like bad or something.
So they assault the thingy. Lots of sword fighting and such. Harsh words were spoken, and some magic seeds were destroyed. Or something. My brain hurt while reading this bit. I just didn’t get it.
This book was well written, but it needed to be simpler. There’s no need for any kind of magic in this story. The Pathway, and the seeds, and all that happy horseshit didn’t need to be there.
Because in the end, it’s just evil guys doing evil shit. Skinning people alive and all that. So, just kill those motherfuckers. End it. That’s all that needed to happen. Everything else just muddled the story, and made it painful to read.
Glenn Hates Books 