Review: No Home for Boys

No Home for Boys by Edward Lorn
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

When Eric Penderecki torches his science class with a papier mache volcanco full of thermite, he winds up in the Bay's End Home for Boys, run by famous writer Trey Franklin. Little does he know Trey's reasons for running the home...

Edward Lorn hit me up to read this a while back. I'm down with the Lorn and have called him the future of horror on several occasions. Anyway, I was between books and decided to read this. I wolfed it down in two sittings.

No Home For Boys is some fucked up, timey-wimey cosmic horror, the seeds Lorn planted in all the books in the Bay's End universe finally bearing fruit. It is one hell of a ride.

Parts of it are auto-biographical, I expect. Trey went through some of the same meat grinders as old Easy E from what I've gleaned from Ed over the last few years. Lorn probably hasn't lived several lifetimes, although I don't know him THAT well.

A wise burnout once said "Time is a flat circle." In the case of the Lorniverse, time is a pretzel. Humanity inhabits the infinity shaped piece and the loop below is home to all sorts of nastiness. No Home For Boys explores that notion and also tackles things like religion, the afterlife, time, the universe, and everything. And it will also creep the begeezsus out of you if you're not careful.

I don't want to give too much away. Suffice to stay, Ed stuck the standing. His writing has matured quite a bit in the however many years I've been reading him. A story like this takes a lot of confidence to attempt. Admittedly, I was in the dark for parts of it, given the pretzel-y nature of things but I'd say he pulled it off.

Now that the book is (probably) closed on the Bay's End universe, I'll be interested to see what Edward Lorn does next. Four out of five stars.

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