Cockblock by C.V. Hunt

It begins with being verbally assaulted on the street, but when Sonya and Callie reach their restaurant, safety isn’t to be found. A message overheard on the radio seems to influence men, turning them into mindless animals driven by one thing: to violate every woman in sight. Desperate for the nightmare to end, the couple make it their mission to stop the violence at its source.

(WARNING: This review contains minor spoilers.)

Believe me when I say right off that Cockblock was unique as I’ve NEVER read anything like it before. Imagine the zombie apocalypse as a ball of smooth playdough – we all know what to expect from it by now – but Hunt took that ball and unapologetically smushed it up into her own twisted creation. Sonya and Callie just want an evening meal, yet instead of being interrupted by flesh-eating undead, they’re accosted by sex-crazed men who mindlessly gush pickup lines. While it sounds fun, and was to an extent, it was also more than a little disturbing. Graphic depictions of rape were not out of the ordinary during the struggle for survival, women taking the brunt of severe misogyny and abuse. It touched on loss and death in general, going to some heavy places while not taking itself too seriously. How to kill the wood-sporting monsters? Well, blunt force trauma to the privates, of course. I didn’t know whether to laugh out loud or to put the book down and walk away as it oscillated back and forth between these two extremes.

It’s not going to be everyone’s cup of tea, not only because of the triggering content, but because of its political and feminist themes; it paints our male counterparts in a very negative light, the US Presidency as a joke, and religion also takes a hit as well in regards to homophobia. It’s not a stretch to consider it as one person’s expression of discontent, especially given the climate in which it was written, and I think that’s fair. If anything, writers have the right to use their work as an outlet, and Hunt was damn imaginative in getting across her feelings.

In conclusion: Violent in every way, Cockblock unleashed a new kind of apocalypse, one that transformed men everywhere into nothing but their base sexual urges. A group of women seek to destroy the source, that being a hateful broadcast from none other than the President of the USA. It was a constant pendulum of satire and unpleasantness, verging on being jarring. I knew what I was getting into after eyeballing some other reviews, but reading about it was nothing compared to actually experiencing it for myself. For such a small package, it was non-stop madness, its premise intense and ridiculous.

Notable Quote:

We were just things to use however they wanted and when they were done with us we would be snuffed out like a flame.

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