Robert BrockwayCritiques

While there are times when I get a little lost with the various bugaboos in this series, I can't help but keep going simply for the full-on politically incorrect laugh out loud narration by the various protagonists.

And overall, it just feels so wildly different from most of the horror that I read, that it's a total blast of fresh air in a genre that can often feel like it's on life support.

On to the next book!

Finally! A final book in a trilogy that does what it's supposed to do. It wraps everything up.

Seriously, I've completely enjoyed this trilogy, and this final installment only made me love it more. We had some surprisingly heartfelt and bittersweet send offs for most of the characters.

Well done.

I had a lot of fun with this one. Likely due to all the low-class humour that runs right up my alley. But then again, what do you expect from late-70s NY punks, hyper-intelligent homeless people, and out-of-work California stuntwoman who tends bar on her downtime?

There's an awful lot packed between these covers, with several different species of monster villains, but there's also a rich cast of characters that, while occasionally a little too similar, are also just kind of fun to be around.

I think what make this one more fun for me was the fact that Carey, the main character, is damn near a doppelganger of a really good friend of mine. Definitely pushing this series his way.

Very funny book that explores different ways an apocalypse can happen. Worth reading!

The horrifying imagery in the Vicious Circuit trilogy by Robert Brockway is second-to-none. He has a way with surrealist gonzo skull-fuckery that I love without reservation.

It helps that these books are hilarious and populated with lovable assholes. I also always enjoy stories about hidden worlds that exist under the surface of the real world. Case in point – the main villain in the books so far is a hollowed-out monstrous version of Mario Lopez who no longer understands humanity.

I also loved the first book when I read it a few years go, and this volume keeps up the stream of obscenity and gruesomeness to excellent effect.

Brockway finished his trilogy of gonzo punk horror novels in fine form. Our ragtag heroes take the fight back to the angels and empty ones, and it’s a hell of a lot of fun.

In this installment, the gang teams up with a surprisingly helpful empty one named Zang, who used to hang out with Carey back in the day. One particularly great sequence happens in a dilapidated fancy suburb that fell off the side of a cliff after an earthquake, where barely functional unnoticeables go through the motions of daily life in absolute darkness.

My only regret in finishing this is that I want more books with this combination of humor, horror, and surrealism all thrown together in a narrative blender, and I’m not sure where I’m going to find that kind of experience. I may pick up Brockway’s earlier books, but he doesn’t have a particularly deep body of work yet.

bizarre, funny, not as good as This Book is Full of Spiders

When a book starts as strongly as this one did, with a story that’s attention-grabbing from page one, the disappointment for its failed promises hurts twice as much: this is what happened to me with The Unnoticeables, whose narrative arc… imploded (for want of a better word) two thirds of the way in.

The story runs on two different time tracks, separated by 36 years: Carey, living in New York in 1977, is a young man reveling in the time’s punk scene, spending his days getting drunk, stoned – or both – and generally causing any kind of mayhem he can think of; Kaitlyn lives in Los Angeles, in 2013, as a part-time stuntwoman, part-time waitress trying, and so far failing, to bring her stunt work to the next level [...]


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Just fucking no. It is probably just me because I just finished a perfect book, I'm jonesing for another, and this the second I've dropped almost immediately. This and the other seem like decent books, but just fucking no. Here's where I started to be like mmmno, "Two teen girls stood by a busted-open newspaper machine, drinking something distinctly beer-colored out of a Coke bottle. Too cute to be part of the scene. Aw, look, they did their mascara up all thick. Punk rock. 'If you gimme a cigarette, I might consider letting you suck my dick,' I told the blond one with the patches on her denim jacket."
It goes on like this. It seems like it might be funny in a Beavis and Butthead sort of way, or if like 4Chan morphed into a single person and wrote a book.

Just fucking no. It is probably just me because I just finished a perfect book, I'm jonesing for another, and this the second I've dropped almost immediately. This and the other seem like decent books, but just fucking no. Here's where I started to be like mmmno, "Two teen girls stood by a busted-open newspaper machine, drinking something distinctly beer-colored out of a Coke bottle. Too cute to be part of the scene. Aw, look, they did their mascara up all thick. Punk rock. 'If you gimme a cigarette, I might consider letting you suck my dick,' I told the blond one with the patches on her denim jacket."
It goes on like this. It seems like it might be funny in a Beavis and Butthead sort of way, or if like 4Chan morphed into a single person and wrote a book.

I've been lean on Debbie Downer paranoia to annoy others with and was looking for fresh fodder when I happened upon this treasure. Instead of reading chalked full of anxiety about the death of us all, I sat laughing my ass off. It's hard to imagine, but it's a really fun read.

I've been lean on Debbie Downer paranoia to annoy others with and was looking for fresh fodder when I happened upon this treasure. Instead of reading chalked full of anxiety about the death of us all, I sat laughing my ass off. It's hard to imagine, but it's a really fun read.

This book is obviously meant to be a tongue in cheek representation of worst case scenarios. It does a good job. I found it funny, entertaining and mildly disturbing. Some sections are a little long winded but overall a good read in the typical style of cracked.com writers. A decent select bibliography at the end just to prove that the author hasn't made it all up and something to point you in the right direction for further reading if you are interested in a particular topic.

The Unnoticeables was bizarre, violent, and occasionally gross... I think I liked it? It's hard to say, I'm mostly still digesting it, almost a week after finishing it.

If you don't like violence, profanity, and all around crass characters, this one isn't for you. If you don't mind those things and are intrigued by a different twist on grungy fantasy/supernatural, give it a go!

My biggest complaint is that because the story is told from the perspective of three characters, two of whom don't know what's going on, and the third is not exactly a reliable source for explanations, there's never any complete clarity around the events occurring. Sure, Carey and Kaitlyn make discoveries that advance the plot, but the overall "why," or even what the aftermath of their actions is, is never addressed. It does feel like that was a deliberate choice on the part of Brockway, though, so it's possible the book would benefit from having a friend read it as well - someone with whom the reader can discuss it, and come to their own conclusions.

Overall, if the synopsis to this book sounds like it's up your alley, give it a shot. I'm glad I listened to it, even if I'm not sure how I feel about it afterwards.

Angels aren't beautiful creatures of benevolence. They watch over us, but look for patterns and redundancies instead of protecting us. They eliminate the superfluous people to feed the Machine. Carey in 1977 New York and Kaitlyn in 2013 Hollywood both encounter these angels and their inhuman minions. Both just want to live their generally unsuccessful lives and have friends disappear around them. Both want to do something about it and try to despite crazy odds against them. Can two nobodies save their friends and other invisible people from being changed into empty puppets or flat out killed?

From the very first line ("I met my guardian angel today. She shot me in the face."), I was hooked. The story is split into three narratives: an unnamed narrator at an unknown time, Carey in 1977, and Kaitlyn in 2013. The unnamed narrator (the one shot by said angel) is rapidly losing his humanity and wants to tell his story. Carey is a punk whose interests are limited to punk rock, drinking, smoking, fucking, and stealing to get what he wants. He and his friends frequent clubs, create a bit of mayhem, and have fun. You see some pretty weird shit in New York, but Tar Men that melt people to goo is usually not one of them. He stays quiet because no one will believe him anyway, but when his close friends are targeted, he makes beating these creatures his personal crusade. However, Carey is a professional fuck-up, so his attempts are laughably bumbling at best and horribly inept at worse. I love his irreverence and self aware nature. He knows he's an asshole and most of the things he says are horrible, but that's just who he is. He's the most unlikely hero, but he has the best intentions at heart along with the drive to get drunk as cheap as possible and chase women.

The last narrator is Kaitlyn, waitress and out of work stuntwoman. She loves her work in movies, but she just sucks at networking, a vital trait to stay employed. Her best friend Jackie doesn't come home from an industry party after Kaitlyn is attacked by her childhood celebrity crush. Unfortunately, that crush talks in prerehearsed, mechanical sounding phrases and there's something off about him in addition to the huge alien tongue he shoved down her throat. This man is an Empty One who creates Unnoticeables, people who you can't describe even while looking at them. They blend in perfectly and lure people away in order to further fuel the mysterious Machine. Kaitlyn uses her background and cunning to save her fellow aspiring actors. She also has the bumbling help of a much older, crazier sounding Carey. He is pretty much the same, except closer to babbling homeless guy than sexy rugged punk. Both of them are considered expendable to these angels, but they couldn't be more different. This odd couple is hilarious to read and have some of the most fun interactions.

The Unnoticeables is a fun mix of urban fantasy and horror with vivid underground worlds in New York and Hollywood. I would love a sequel with more of Carey and Kaitlyn's adventures, exploring more of these underground, hiding in plain sight but no one sees it worlds. Carey is extremely entertaining to read while Kaitlyn is the more relatable one trying to make ends meet and being shunned from jobs despite being quite qualified. I would recommend this to fans of Richard Kadrey and Clive Barker.½

I laughed so hard... never thought the doom of us all could be so funny. Love it!!!

This is a delightfully frightening book. After a couple of chapters, I thought, "I should stop reading this. It's too depressing and I probably will have bad dreams." Then after a few more chapters, the sheer number of ways that humanity is on the brink of extinction became ludicrous and I was able to laugh at it. There's no sense in worrying too much; we've always been on the brink and will continue to be until one of these things (or something else we've never even considered) wipes us out, and we have very little control over it.

I did not realize until I began reading this that the author is one of the Cracked contributors. I love Cracked.com; it's a great way to learn while laughing.

Cracked is fine if you are into that sort of site, but as a book? No thank you. It's a shame because the topics were really interesting, but the writing was just so bad.

A thrilling, hilarious, action-packed novel and one of my new favorites

This book stars Red, a chemical beta tester (professional drug addict) and features Abraham Lincoln fighting a dinosaur and a futuristic (?) society organized around getting high on time travel. This book is a galaxy of fun.

Brockway is a writer for Cracked.com, and this book reads like a really long article for that site. I love Cracked, so this was perfectly fine with me. It was a bit androcentric, like Cracked, but it was still enjoyable despite me having breasts. The only problem was the subject matter -- holy crap am I going to have nightmares about some of the apocalyptic scenarios presented in the book. Still, it was a fun read, and I hope Brockway writes another book soon.