UPDATE (11-21-11): This book took home the Wonderland Award for best collection of the year, among a very strong list of contenders. I read several pretty incredible Bizarro short story collections last year, but this one got my vote for the best.Before randomly crossing paths with Cameron Pierce on Twitter more than a year ago, I had not been exposed to the term `Bizarro’ outside of Superman or Seinfeld re-runs. Then I learned that Pierce was not only a young writer, but he had a book coming ou...

LOST IN CAT BRAIN LAND is utter insanity, in a good way. There's so much weirdness crammed into this tiny book that it's hard to comprehend most of it after you finish. Someone laced this book with LSD.Some of the stories that stood out to me:Visitor Ganesh - A man with a robot for a wife is nervous because he hasn't seen his old friend Jack in years. Otherworldly things seem to be after him...or perhaps he's crazy...or maybe not... Madness ensues.Drain Angel - Joy raises an earwig as a child co...

If Lazy Fascist was a 900 page epic, I'd read it.

As a fan of David Lynch and H.R. Giger, I certainly enjoy the surreal and weird, so I was pleasantly surprised when I found out about the niche genre of bizarro fiction. My first outing into this new territory is Lost in Cat Brain Land, which is a collection of short stories. The title, illustration, and summary all drew me in, as I expected compelling stories that would make sense in their own internal logic, no matter how much it required the suspension of disbelief. Unfortunately, this was ac...

"Lost in Cat Brain Land" is a step away from Pierce's earlier books. But that's not to say that fans of his previous Novels, "Ass Goblins of Auschwitz" and "Shark Hunting in Paradise Garden," renowned for pushing the limits of Bizarro readers everywhere, will be disappointed. There is no shortage of unnatural decapitation, tongue severing, corpse violation, or mutant children. A lot of authors of longer fiction have trouble pulling off a strong short story collection, especially as early in thei...

A well-written collection of sad, surreal, nightmarish stories dealing with loneliness, alienation, parenthood, birth/creation, family dysfunction, salvation, and other themes. Favorite stories of mine in the collection include “A Scorpion Town in California,” “Personal Saviors,” and “Crazy Love.” This book clocked in at about a 3-star rating for me in terms of my overall personal “like” meter; however, Lost in Cat Brain Land is all the more impressive when you consider that Mr. Pierce wrote all...

I have read two novels by Cameron Pierce before this short fiction collection titled Lost in Cat Brain Land. Cameron Pierce's talent as a writer was instantly noticeable yet his two novels, Ass Goblins of Auschwitz (2 stars) and Gargoyle Girls of Spider Island (4 stars) were so purposefully shocking that it tended to disguise the immense talent he has. That may have been an unfair assessment but it was the first feeling I had upon tackling these two Bizarro novels. Yet they left me wanti...

After this book, I knew I would never read another normal book. Very honored to have been able to republish "Flowers" as the first story out by Kafka Review. It's a black hole checking into your mental motel for tea, forever.

A great little collection. Some of them are real gems, though they’re not all consistently hitting the mark with me with the same sort of gusto. Not to say they’re not all good (they are) but they’re not all EQUALLY good, if that makes any sense. Of course, that’s pretty much par for the course when it comes to story collections/anthologies. Regardless Cameron Pierce has such an accessible yet elegant writing style that he usually leaves you little recourse but to get involved with a story withi...

when I ordered this Book I thought it was about a dude stuck in cat brain land. Short stories are even better because I never read anything by Cameron.I'm. hooked like a stupid salmon caught by a fake piece of bait. every story is four star worthy. Here is a few of my overall favorites.Cat Brain Land, Death of a Dog Eater, Embryo Tree for Android & Dead Monkey Exhibit.

I love Camerons stories! Simple.

For me, reading a new Cameron Pierce book is an event! There's just something so understated in his work, like he is offering social commentary on something that just arrived and is quickly disintegrating before our eyes. The surreal, whimsical landscapes Cameron creates are so fragile that it is as if they are too wondrous to sustain themselves.Take his longest story from this collection, "Drain Angel". It begins with a dysfunctional married couple whose lives are interrupted by something crawl...

I haven't cried this much over a book since I read Shall We Gather at the Garden? by Kevin L. Donihe back in 2008. Coincidentally, the author of that book appears as a character in this one.This book is a set of sad, surrealist short stories that contain themes of loss, betrayal, depression, fatalism, and loneliness. You will find very little redemption or optimism here. I think that's what makes these stories so good for me, in that there is no false hope presented. Sometimes the stark realitie...

My overall impression of Lost in Cat Brain Land invokes the image of Cameron C. Pierce dressed as Willy Wonka singing Pure Imagination, cane-swinging and all. Any and all references to paradise may be changed for Pierce’s cover, however, and given the tone of most of these stories it seems that Pierce would be singing it through bitterly-grinning teeth. Nonetheless, this collection of short stories should be picked up because going through the material to understand this aside is an intriguing e...

I am on a bizarro fiction kick. Didn't love all the stories here. The concepts/ideas/plots are fun. Sometimes the language is not interesting enough for me.But def got me writing. Which is a sure sign that something is working for me here. Good fun. I liked the story drain angel. I liked the final story in the collection the most. Whoaaa!!! Funny, strange. A lighter touch. Stuck with me for longer than the other stories. A bus going off the cliff and ends with: "It's just you and the pterodactyl...

There is a word you will hear over and over when talking about this short story collection and this author. Imagination. That is because Cameron's weird as hell imagination bleeds through every page with a syrupy thickness like no other author I've read.Culled from the pages of various Bizarro and horror zines, websites and such Pierce tells stories that are surreal, aburdist and sometimes disturbing. Unlike some authors that are just trying so very hard to be weird the strength of Cameron Pierc...

I haven't yet read a lot of bizarro fiction, I really liked Fungus of the Heart, but Cameron Pierce's style seems often to be just randomness for the sake of being random. Many of the stories feel like he just came up with it as he went along, especially with the longer stories. There are a few good ones here, but the bad ones outweigh them and there are a few that are pretty terrible.

It’s been a while since I’ve written a book review, so I figured I’d go right back to when I first started reading bizarro fiction. The book that started it all for me was Cameron Pierce’s “Lost in Cat Brain Land.”It turns out that I actually wrote a review for this book way back then, and posted it to the book depository. So, to save me some time, I’ll copy and paste the review and then add my thoughts on the book now.“This book is a quick read. At a glance it’s just a cluster of quirky short s...

Pierce shows with this compilation of short stories that he really knows how to write in his genre, bizarro. All of the stories are entertaining and you mostly can't figure out where they're going, and all are read-in-one-sitting quality - meaning the longer ones are enthralling enough for you to not put it down until you're done.If I have to give some criticism it'd be that I wanted some stories to be longer than they are. Some ideas could've been expanded on, like the one page story "The Green...

While I do not think Pierce's first collection of short stories is as good as his newer one (Die You Doughnut Bastards), it is definitely a wonderful and enjoyable read. My favorite stories were "Lost in Cat Brain Land," about a man who gets sucked into his cat and is trapped in a desert world, and "Drain Angel," about an earwig that crawls out of the shower drain and quickly grows into a monstrous angel. Many of these stories deal with failing relationships and all of them are positively bizarr...