| Title | : | Soft Targets |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | - |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9798985992359 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Kindle Edition |
| Number of Pages | : | 112 |
| Publication | : | Published March 22, 2023 |
Sometimes they’re the ones pulling the trigger.
Now, say these guys discover a loophole that makes some days less real than others—less permanent—and start to act out their violent fantasies without fear of reprisal. Why shouldn’t they? Tomorrow, everything will go back to normal, with no one the wiser but them.
They’ll always remember what it felt like to act on their basest impulses. They’ll know how it could feel to do it again.
Maybe you don’t know these guys. Maybe you don’t want to.
Soft Targets is a reality-bending novella about malignant malaise; the surrender to violence; and the addictive appeal of tragedy as entertainment.
Contains graphic depictions of gun violence in the workplace; caution recommended.
Soft Targets Reviews
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Don’t be fooled by number(of page)s - this novella might be bite-sized but the subject matter is hard to digest.
What starts as a playful idea of a “tidal reality”, days during which reality is less real, providing a hall pass for doing anything you ever wanted to do without fearing consequences, turns into a somber reflection on the liberties we take when we can and what they say about us. Mental illnesses, mass shootings, murder, escalating violence - it’s all here.
And somewhere amongst those big words a little friendship trying to shoulder more than it can take. -
Well, this definitely took me for a ride! It’s not very often you come across something like this, the concept was like a fever dream, but executed very well. My anxiety was through the roof the whole time I was reading it.
Gripping, horrifying, anxiety inducing. A fast-paced ride where you never quite know where you’re going next. If you’ve ever worked a dead-end job that sucked the life out of you, you’ll appreciate this read. What would you do if you could ride the tides? -
Dark, funny, and utterly compelling. I read this in two sittings. Absolutely loved it.
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I'd wholly forgotten I was on Tenebrous Press's ARC (Advanced Reader Copy) list until on the 26 of last month a copy of Soft Targets showed up in my inbox. Considering I had been waiting for this one to come out, needless to say I was excited and threw all my other responsibilities to the wind to read.
I read the whole thing in a little less than two days.
Couldn't put it down and kept thinking about it when I couldn't read it.
This book, it haunts you. Grips you tight from the first moments and doesn't let go. Even now, several days after having read it and not gotten around to posting this review, the words of praise I have for Soft Targets just flow right off my fingertips. Generally, I write my reviews directly after reading a book because it is best to write when the emotion is fresh and still moving in your mind and heart. And yet with this one, with this book I can still find that emotions days late.
On the surface, Soft Targets is a bundle of content warnings, an exploration of the worst of what can happen when mental health deteriorates and spirals down into violence. But below that, on a deeper level where this story made me cry, there is the question of what would we do if we discovered some days were less real than others. If we could live without consequences, how would we live? These questions are not discussed on a higher level, but if we look at the worst of what we as humans are capable of, the question of our best is also brought to light, and the two twined together make this book an amazing read.
In all our days, our real and less real days, how will we live? And will we choose to live our best or our worst? I will be sitting back and pondering those questions while I wait until I can hold a paperback copy of this book in my hands. -
There are two books that gave me anxiety the entire way through—the first was Yellowface, and the second is Soft Targets, but there is something about these two very different depicted train wrecks that makes it so you’re unable to look away.
This is a book about finding comfort in shares pain and bleakness, of not succumbing to false positivity. It is mundanity mixed with cosmic uncanniness.
There are characters who experience the guilt and horror of giving into impulses but the unsettledness of also letting them remain in their minds if unacted upon, and what happens if they are allowed to fester. This book comments on stigma against mental illness and therapy—particularly the necessarily of therapy with workplace and performance toxicity, pressures, and stress.
What’s more, Winter shines a light on the way that the most horrific things are so easily forgotten by society, violence glorified by media and tossed for the next earth shattering news that only remains earth shattering for seconds. -
Wow. I read this book on a short flight. I was completely engrossed (and uncomfortable) for the whole time. This book doesn't mess around (I cannot emphasize this enough, it deals with some heavy content) , and the author puts all his feelings on the page. The premise is relatively simple, but explored with gruesome precision from the POV of a jaded office worker and his friend. It just works. No words feel wasted, and it was the perfect length to explore the concept. I'll be thinking about this one for a while.
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Based on the way the publisher had talked about Soft Targets prior to release, I was expecting a different, more extreme story. There is definitely violence, gore, and a lot of gun related death, but none of it felt out of place or over the top to me. The way Winter dives into the relationship and mindset of these two men feels real. I have known people in the workplace who had a similar darkness to them, and the juxtaposition of the way both men feel after their actions makes the ending feel earned. I will say that I hated the font used in this book and the narration felt a little clunky at times, but overall I think Winter does a great job at telling a dark tale. And sadly, I think it is a pretty relevant one.
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Say 10 Hail Marys and one act of contrition if you enjoyed this book. Great story. Two guys stuck in boring dead end jobs hatch plans to alleviate their boredom. Sarcastic snarky dialogue and gets right to the point. Good plane or beach read. The read was exhilarating and afterwards, you will feel guilty but don't worry, tomorrow always comes . . .
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Few things are as American as apple pie and mass shootings. The latter has become a national past-time with endless media coverage and big, bold headlines proclaiming death tolls in our latest daily killings (I'm writing this on March 7, 2023, as the news reports we've already exceeded 100 mass shootings.
CNN notes, "There have been more shootings at this point in 2023 than in any previous year since at least 2013." So, uh, way to go, America, I guess?) and the GOP having recently introduced a House bill to make the AR-15, the murder weapon of choice for crazed gunmen all across the States,
"the national gun of the United States.". We're a bloodthirsty country, lusting after one lurid murder heaped upon another. It seems that one's chances of being killed or at least touched by one of our nation's many gun nuts is now a matter of not if but when. I wonder if the shooting that happened next door to the building I work in makes my odds more or less favorable of being more directly involved in another. My former high school recently went into lock down after a deranged father sent his daughter pictures of his guns, promising to shoot the boys she was talking to and stating that the parents were going to have to set up GoFundMe's for their funerals. The police refused to do anything after deeming the threat was not credible. Does their inaction, much like the inaction of police at Uvalde, make a shooting at that school more or less likely? Do I have enough karmic goodwill banked up to make a shooting at my kid's school less likely? These are the issues we have to face daily now in the land of the free and the home of the brave. Hell, you gotta be brave to live here anymore.
But it's a question that lurks in the back of many of our minds as we head into work or school or church or movie theaters or nightclubs or farmer's markets or doctor's offices or or or -- are we next? What will we do if a shooter comes into our lives there? It's a question that preoccupies our unnamed narrator and his best-friend/co-worker, Ollie, in Soft Targets. They take glee in imagining their violent deaths via a disgruntled office drone with a gun while also wondering if either of them have the balls to become the assailant.
None of it's real, though. Until it is. Until Ollie discovers a certain flaw in the fabric of existence, a minor dent in space-time that causes some days to be less real than others, when you can do whatever you want and none of it matters because everything resets the next day, a la Groundhog Day. And it's within the parameters of this strange time warp that these two men are able to live out their wildest fantasy and find out what it means to kill and be killed without all that pesky permanence.
It's a brave and deliberate choice Carson Winter makes in crafting this nameless first-person narrative, even downright confrontational of him. You, the reader, are thrust into the narrative and made complicit as you read to yourself these almost-sexualized fantasies of death and murder, engaging in a friendship with a wannabe killer that runs so deeply as to be almost romantic. Soft Targets is, dare I say it, a love story, but about men in love with violence, who fetishize wholesale slaughter. I, as narrator, pined for Ollie and felt his absence as much as I, as narrator, pined for execution and reveled in the newly discovered joys and addiction of beating a co-worker to death and wanting to do it again, over and over. There's no impersonal third-person narrative, no omniscient point-of-view, nothing to separate the art from the reader save for the page itself, but the words are in your mind nonetheless, imprinting themselves there, shaping your desires to a nearly schizophrenic degree. Winter has made you Ollie's collaborator and instigator so that all this luridness becomes yours to own, to examine and fret over. There exists a mental tug of war as you compete to separate yourself as reader from what you proclaim as narrator.
"But that's not me!" you'll insist, your blood running high, maybe imagining it's your boss or that asshole who cut you off in traffic whose head you're caving in. That's not me! But isn't it, at least to a certain degree? Haven't we, all us rugged pull ourselves up by the bootstraps Americans, had these conservations, these imaginings, at least in part, with the Ollie's we know? I have. I've spent time talking with a co-worker about all the shootings. Hell, it was only just last week that we were concerned about her son, who goes to the high school I went to ages ago, in a different world, a different time, that was so recently on lockdown under threat of death. My boss has advised us on the best ways to escape an active shooter situation based on his years in the military. We send our kids to school to learn how to maybe die peacefully, pacifistically, calmly and quietly, for when a shooter comes to their classroom. We think, and maybe we even talk about, the fantasies of what we'd like to do to whomever dares harm our kids, or who wronged us, or screwed up our coffee order during an already epically bad day. To not have these conservations is to live in a bubble, and to deny even the very existence of our basest impulses under the veneer of civility is delusional. We may not want to live and die violently or glorify mass murders, even as escaping them in our daily lives as participant, victim, TV viewer, human being with a fucking conscious, grows impossible. We are aware of it all whether we want to be or not. Because, again, it's a simply a matter of time, isn't it? -
Full text review:
https://jamreads.com/reviews/soft-tar...
Soft Targets is an absurdist horror novella, the new proposal from Carson Winter. And it goes directly to debate one of the burning themes of American society, as is the easiness of getting a fire weapon by individuals whose mental health might not be in the best state; all using a story with an interesting proposal, which I don't expect to make people feel indifferent.
“If you found out that there were days you could do anything, that nothing mattered, what would you do?”
Our two characters are fascinated by the aspects of mass shootings, and partly, they fantasize about the possibility of living one. The relationship between Ollie and our unnamed narrator is good, and they decide to go live together. Existence is quite normal until Ollie discovers that there are some days that matter more than others; and in fact, those other days literally don't matter, and whatever happens is non-existent in the grand scheme of reality.
Once they establish those days are in fact a sort of Groundhog Day, we are spectators of how Ollie and our narrator start transgressing the limits, until once they cross the final line; and it's just a matter of time until they use one of those days to commit a mass shooting. Winter uses this kind of structure to create a debate, creating characters that are violent lovers, but who are only restricted by the fear of consequences.
Using an unnamed narrator is also an interesting resource, as I feel it creates an effect of immersing you more in the novella, putting you in the shoes of Ollie's friend. We can clearly see how both of the characters are in a bad mental state, but nobody does anything to stop them, not even themselves.
Soft Targets is a brave novella, one that forces us to look at the worst aspects of a controversial aspect of American society. I felt kinda conflicted while reading it, as it isn't conceived as a pleasant experience, but more as a reflexive one. Totally recommended if you like horror. -
Thank you Tenebrous Press for providing me with the eARC!
How would you spend a day knowing that it will be erased?
This novella was dark and disturbing yet terrifyingly gripping. It’s one of those books that stays with you and lingers in the back of your mind 24/7.
Winter masterfully navigates writing about violence and mental health. The dark sense of humor the main character maintains throughout the book is extremely reflective of society today. Gun violence has become so common that it’s something people joke about on a daily basis and workers, students, etc. have to consider when going about their everyday lives.
But what happens when people who joke and fantasize about gun violence find a loophole in reality? How far will they go to live out their violent fantasies? Soft Targets tackles this terrifying concept and how it affects the workplace. With an unnamed main character, this book makes you realize that any coworker, classmate, or stranger could turn to extremes. It takes you on an emotional ride from beginning to end and leaves you to reflect on today’s reality. -
At this point I'd recommend everyone pick up anything Tenebrous Press puts out without any hesitation. This most recent novella by Carson Winter was superb.
What if you had a way to do whatever you wanted without any repercussions? Well don't do what the characters in this book did. Yeah they just want to blow off some steam from being in a boring dead end office job, and boy do they do it.
The characters are great and their progression/dregression from start to end is just pure greatness.
Highly recommend. Probably one of my top 10 favorite reads of all time -
Sinister and engrossing
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“If you found out that there were days you could do anything, that nothing mattered, what would you do?”-Ollie
What is taboo? It’s defined as something prohibited or restricted by social custom.
Breaking out of boredom is expressed in many ways and while making others uncomfortable is frowned upon, or taboo, those people with a bit of dark humor get a kick out of others wincing or sneering at what we laugh at.
Now take that a step further. What if you acted on those urges that you so comically guffawed at, knowing that those horrific deeds would disappear the next day? Would you have integrity and behave as society demands or would you cut loose from your bonds of civility and open up a can of whoop ass?
Struggling at boring data entry jobs, and making barely enough scratch to get by, Ollie and I have discovered such days exist. Anything goes and then it’s all reset the next day. Is it time to release frustration and boredom’s or not?
Soft Targets is a respectful and intelligently written tale of two bored guys needing excitement but dealing with the dilemma of guilt. I asked quite a few questions in this review because that is what this book does to you. It makes you think while delivering a lighthearted tongue-in-cheek tale. We all joke around and say things we don’t mean from time to time, but if such an opportunity arises? Inconsequential time is just that, inconsequential.
“The victims represent a break in routine. Dying is but a hiccup in a normal life. Killing is breaking the routine—it is bending reality to your own will, making it in your image.” -
Soft Targets by Carson Winter is a darkly hilarious tale about two coworkers with an unusual bromance.
These two main characters are so charismatic and charming, even when they’re describing scenes from my nightmares. I loved seeing their antics and what they would discuss next.
This was such a fun, dark read. I personally had a blast from start to finish, and the ending was super impactful.
Horror fans that enjoy stories set in the real world with horror and comedy mixed in, this will be a hit for you! Though as the content warnings caution, this is centered around guns, so please be careful if that’s not a topic you have the capacity to handle at the moment.
Check out my full review here:
https://www.ericarobynreads.com/soft-... -
Read an eARC from the publisher
Trigger warnings: graphic depictions of gun violence in the workplace, gore, death by bludgeoning, suicidal ideation. A portion of all sales goes to the Sandy Hook Foundation.
Two office workers channel their worst impulses in casual conversation in a twisted friendship that makes those daydreams a reality through a loophole that acts almost like Groundhog Day for the unhinged. Violent, mind-bending, with a breathtaking ending that hasn’t stopped bouncing within my brain since I finished.
This is one of those books where the main characters are absolutely repulsive. They’re in jobs that pay the bills and, on the surface, seem relatively adjusted, until you, the reader, get insight into their conversations, mostly revolving around how great the break in routine in the form of tragedy would be. This novella definitely serves as a character study of the worst type of white collar worker: someone with lots of ideas but who fundamentally does not contribute much to society or culture. They’re so realistic, I found myself getting mad at them like actual people and not people within a work of fiction.
The writing and development of these two is something incredible, especially given the book’s length. I will not spoil the journey, but the amount of self-awareness that emerges is masterful, especially following the restraint-less self-indulgence of the Tide – the unreality that strikes our main characters like a cyclical storm. It’s Office Space for the twenty-first century in ways both painfully true and deeply upsetting.
Intense and horrifying in its mundanity; absolutely proceed with caution give the subject matter. -
First of all, writing fiction that centres around a workplace shooting requires a certain level of tact. I'm speaking as someone who lives in the UK and only experiences such things through media coverage. But the thought of something like that happening with increasing regularity is horrifying. So I was a little wary when I began reading this novella. But, in my opinion, Winter handles the subject very well. He doesn't seem to glamorise it in any way and, although a workplace shooting isn't the main topic of the story, he does a good job of showing the horrific impact it has on those involved, even through the speculative lens. I also really appreciated the note from the editors at the end of the book which addressed the subject, and their stance on it, including the donation of a portion of the profite to the Sandy Hook Promise charity.
The speculative element of the story, that some days count as more "real" than others, is a fantastic premise, and Winter explores it brilliantly. Many people have experienced periods of time where they've no doubt wished they could lash out at society without suffering the repercussions, but obeisance to morality and laws means they never manifest. Winter shows that, even when his characters are let off the hook by his speculative element, they still suffer. The pacing is excellent, the main characters are fleshed out well, and the prose is fantastic. I thoroughly enjoyed this engrossing read. -
This book blew my mind. Sharp dialogue, fast pacing, gratuitous violence. The relationship between Ollie and Bri is a fascinating dynamic, both depressed and mentally ill office workers who feed off each others pain. Opportunity presents and their morbid discussions turn to reality. But this book isn't a gore fantasy; it's about two ill people seeking for quick release, and realising the consequences of succumbing to their thoughts.
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SOFT TARGETS is not for the timid. This story of friendship is both an ode and a warning. Grim and grimly funny, it's a blistering skewering of a society that condenses tragedy into sound bites and a culture complicit in a capitalism that drives us to seek fulfillment however we can.
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3.75
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Jesus this was fucking intense.
Got bored halfway through, but the last 20% of this book was truly a marvel to read. Thrilling, suspenseful and depressing AF. -
Just buy it and read it. The book takes little time throwing you into a moral quandary that forces you to pick a side of morality that will have you asking yourself if you are no better than those that do acts of evil. What if you could act on intrusive thoughts without consequence, would you, could you? The story has a drive that makes it hard to put down and makes you complicit in wanting to see what comes next. The book takes the mundane and typical parts of our everyday life and looks at the darkness we all joke about and suppress and with our friends and shoves it out into the daylight for everyone to see its hideous strength. I didn’t feel like a good person after reading this and perhaps that’s the point, to explore those corners of our existence that no one wants to talk about without their tongue in their cheek. I loved the ending and the dialogue in this book.
Carson Winter and I discuss Soft Targets, spoiler free, on the Just James Horror Review Podcast episode 8! Check it out! -
I'm really glad I read this book. Soft Targets is a sour, black-hearted novella about the mundanity of late-stage capitalism, spiked throughout with elements of satire and horror. At its core it is a story about a friendship between two average American males who became mixed up in a "The Matrix" style situation, and who have nothing to live for but their pathetic, violent fantasies. This can be read in a single sitting and served as an intro to Carson Winter's work for me. Definite PKD vibes.
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A brutal little book! Incredibly unsettling and bleak. Loved it.
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You have worked a shit job.
We don’t know each other. We don’t have to, because we’ve all done it. I worked at a hotel in Myrtle Beach which shall remain nameless (it was that really really huge purple one at the end of the strip that has since changed ownership so I can say whatever I want without offending the owner, who I can’t offend any more than I already have anyway because Reasons). People, mostly Midwesterners, spent a lot of cold, hard cash on this vacay. Pause. Imagine the people that drop cold, hard cash on a very expensive resort vacation . . . in Myrtle Beach. If you don’t understand the meaning of this statement, please watch this video.
I alternately answered phones and took reservations—we were not allowed to get up, speak to one another, read books, etc. in between phone calls—or was roundly abused at the front desk by people who claimed they’d seen a roach on the ninth floor and demanded a free week’s vacation (newsflash: We had no roaches, and anyway, how the fuck would the roaches make it up nine floors, the goddamn elevator?!).
There were days when I prayed for a death that would not come.
Except what if it would?
What if you were working that Target/Wal-Mart/Piggly-Wiggly register and you could make it all end?
And not in, like, a permanent sense. In a temporary way. Maybe even in a blaze of gory glory. Didn’t you always wanna kill that bitch from accounting who ratted you out for reading under the table? Didn’t you always sorta/kinda/maybe wanna kick that customer in the crotch? Truthbomb: if you are the lady who refused to use our keycards and made staff members let you into your room every single time you left, I wanted to punch that hooker-red lipstick off your face (and no offense to sex workers, ‘cause I wear hooker-red lipstick all the time).
Carson Winter’s Soft Targets imagines . . . yeah, you could do all that. Then you could wake up, consequence-free, roll out of bed, and return to that shit job in the morning. What if some days just didn’t count? What if you figured out which they were, and you . . . did whatever?
Sign my ass up.
Our nameless narrator (yeah, he’s nameless; I checked, and Carson says I’m not the first to ask, so I felt like less of a dumbass) has this buddy, Ollie. He and Ollie are the dark-humor type. Y’all read horror, so you have that buddy. You know, the one you sit around with and say something like, “Okay, so when the zombies come/the aliens arrive/the serial killer breaks in, what do you do?” I mean like, hello job description, writers. Except their conversation revolves around workplace shootings, because, well, their data-entry job sucks ass.
Don’t pretend you wouldn’t do it.
Don’t worry it’s too macabre for you, either. I thought it would be—I approached this one with kid gloves, since my husband works in a place where, here in the grand ol’ USA, people execute elaborate shootings, then others offer #thoughtsandprayers. But when our nameless narrator begins musing on shattering windows with staplers, or perhaps a copy machine—would the kneecap break be worth it?—I was in.
These dudes endure the tedium . . . then discover a way to break free. But are there consequences to living without consequences? I just described every F. Scott Fitzgerald story ever, so if you sat through sophomore English, do the math (unless, like me, you failed it, but if you did, you probably know what I’m talking about, anyway).
It reads fast. As usual with Winter, the voice is impeccable (any read him in Split/Scream 1 by Dreadstone Press? Hot damn). His talent with characterization shows not only with the main characters, but the side peeps as well: I know Kayla and Wayne. I wish I didn’t. As for setting: please take me away from your bachelor pads. I’ve seen enough of them. They were very vivid.
He also sticks the landing. He really, really sticks the landing.
I loved this creepy little romp. Yeah, I called it a romp. It’s a wicked little fantasy, this juicy piece of what-if. Definitely worth picking up. I liked it as much as I’ve liked Winter’s other work, which is to say a hell of a lot. -
For anybody who wakes up on a Monday morning wrapped in sheets of dread, for anybody who has experienced a case of the Sunday scaries, and for anybody who has felt the years slip away at their 9-5 with every day indistinguishable from the next, Carson Winter’s new novella, Soft Targets , will hit you right smack-dab in the relatables, albeit with a disturbing twist.
Coming off like a cross between OFFICE SPACE, GROUNDHOG DAY, and a headline from the six o’clock news, Soft Targets tells the story of two coworkers’ burgeoning friendship that forms at a soul-sucking data-entry job and the discovery one of them makes, a discovery that will change everything with its reality-bending implications.
This is a story about the malaise of the modern workplace, a critique of the drudgeries that these places exhibit, how they slowly wear us down, yet we persist because there are no other options and how much there is to lose (health insurance and a steady paycheck).
This is a story about gun violence and mass shootings, but it never approaches the problem from an exploitative or preachy angle. Winter is not looking to solve the problem of gun violence in America. Instead, he slyly comments on how normalized these events have become and uses them to ask other questions. What would you do in a world without consequences? How real is reality, anyways?
This is a story about friendship. Soft Targets focuses on the new friendship between its two leads and how it devolves into something codependent. It is one of those tenuous relationships that only occurs out of circumstance. There are some superficial similarities between the two men (“Hey, we both like pizza, beer, movies, weed and laughing at the same jokes!”), but the backbone of the friendship is based on one of the most powerful connections: the attachment over a shared hatred. In this case, the two friends bond over their disdain of their place of employment, egging each other on with escalating negativity.
The book approaches an inevitable, yet surprising conclusion. There was an emotional core here that resonated and I was unaware that the author had woven it through the entirety of the story until the final pages where it came full circle.
If there's one negative to be found with this book, it is perhaps that it is too short. This is not a knock against the author’s choices, but rather a testament to what he has created here. I simply wanted to exist in this world a little bit longer, to feel a greater attachment to the characters. When the two main characters make their unique discovery, I would have loved to have spent a little more time in that space with them, witnessing what kind of disturbing misadventures they could get into.
Ultimately, too much brevity is a good problem to have. Better to leave your audience wanting more rather than wearing out your welcome.
Written an easygoing style, Soft Targets is a quick read that will hang around your brain long after it's finished, lingering there like the stench of a coworker’s microwaved fish in the breakroom. A strong novella from an exciting new voice in weird fiction. Highly recommended. -
Two slackers (the book’s narrator and his friend, Ollie), who hate their jobs, fantasize about either being killed in a mass shooting or holding the guns themselves and wiping out their entire office. Anything would be better than another day of tedious data entry! The two become roommates and their fantasies accelerate. But Ollie has a theory – a theory about existence itself. He posits that there are days that aren’t like other days – days when everything is just a wee bit off – days when what you do doesn’t matter because that 24 hours isn’t real. The book’s narrator is skeptical and thinks that maybe Ollie is off his rocker. But Ollie stages a dramatic act to convince his friend that he’s really onto something – that what he calls “Tidal Reality” actually exists. Now on board with the theory, the narrator and Ollie decide to take advantage of these special days, acting out some of their worst fantasies.
Soft Targets is not for the faint of heart. There are scenes of violence that this reader chose to skip over. But that’s not to say that this novella isn’t worth the read. No, the author’s examination of the psychology these two characters is definitely worth your time. The book is also quite a page-turner and I tore through it late at night, unable to put it down.
Soft Targets is a compelling novella and is highly recommended for lovers of time travel, horror, and science fiction. Of note is that, while Soft Targets depicts gun violence to the extreme, a portion of the proceeds from the novella are being donated by the author and publisher to Sandy Hook Promise.
I want to thank the publisher, Tenebrous Press, for providing me with a free copy of this book as a voting member of the Horror Writers Association in consideration for a Bram Stoker Award. -
"We were going to try to be good and do the job we were paid to do, because we thought there was no reason why two reasonably smart people shouldn't be able to do it. Everyone else in the office could do it. They managed to get up every day and do the same thing every day, and not feel like their head was going to explode. Or rather, that it would be worth it if it did."
-Soft Targets
For one year of my life I worked a corporate office job, and I hated every minute of it. Sometimes I would look around at my coworkers at 10:00 a.m. on a Monday morning and wonder why the hell they seemed so okay while I felt like a rat trapped in a cage. Winter's novella made me feel seen, but unfortunately, it didn't put me in good company. The narrator and protagonist of Soft Targets is kind of a pathetic piece of shit, and I hated relating to him, even if it was for only one (very big) reason. While I fantasized about financial freedom, he dreams of murder and death, and I deeply appreciate Winter's willingness to lay bare the soul-sucking nature of white collar work and take it to its extremes.
Soft Targets encapsulates the feeling of emptiness and dread that stems from wasting your life in front a computer, doing something you don't care about for someone who doesn't care about you until your mind spirals into dark places. Thankfully, the dark places my mind went were never quite as dark as the characters' from Soft Targets, but there's something both uncomfortable and important about looking at the way of working life we've chosen in America and putting us in the minds of the monsters it helps catalyze. -
I couldn’t put Soft Targets down. Simply put.
Let’s address the big thing first. The book is advertised as dealing with the controversial topic of mass shootings so that might turn some people away. Regular readers of my blog will know that I am not a fan of what I call “gore porn” — that is movies/books that seem to glorify gore. Soft Targets does not do this. While the main characters discuss violence a lot, there are only a few gory scenes.
Instead, Carson focusses on the psychology of his characters. Why they feel the way they do, what has driven them to where they are now, and why they made the decisions they do.
I mean, what would you do if you had a day where you could do anything you wanted without consequences? To me, Soft Targets achieves the message that The Purge tried to do.
Another theme is of corporate horror. Office buildings are like liminal spaces and that lends a lot to the character study that Carson achieves. Who hasn’t been victim to intrusive thoughts, who hasn’t dreamed of being free of a 9 to 5 job but can’t because of bills and obligations?
In Soft Targets, Carson explores this very question to the extreme.
Authentic, horrifying, and tragic — Soft Targets exposes the horror that might be lurking just underneath the polished surface of society.
