Percy Already Got Probed: and More Effed Up Stories (Percy Gets Probed) (Volume 2)

If you managed to make it through the first volume of short stories, Percy Gets Probed, and somehow find yourself yearning for more- perhaps you enjoy self abuse? -then you might be keen on this second volume, appropriately titled Percy Already Got Probed. Here you'll find peculiar stories about unpleasant characters you've probably never seen the likes of before, and may not care to see the likes of again. There are doomed young lovers, doomed old lovers, coming of age, coming of rage. Things are rarely as they seem or first appear. There is comedy, there is drama, there is horror and there is fantasy. Not for the easily offended. Customer reviews for the first volume include the following: ?Mr. Harding has burst onto the literary scene with a collection of astonishing - and, yes, frankly bizarre - stories that are sure to make the reader sit up and take notice, though the more conservative among us may sit up and take offense - but who needs them, anyway? He has a keen ear for naturalistic dialogue and an utterly twisted imagination, which combined with his own subversive psyche, has resulted in the birth of, if not a modern classic, then at least an underground masterstroke. The illustrations are perfect and the author made an excellent choice in the artist. Roll on, volume the second!? - J. T. ?It won't be far into this volume before you realise that the author doesn't really do taboos! No subject, be it however sexual, scatological or socially awkward, is forbidden here - in fact, they are the central pillars of many of the tales. So, a potty-mouthed iconoclast? Well, strangely, no - not at all! Chris Harding manages to counter his disregard with the sensibilities of the easily offended with... his obvious regard for those very sensibilities - even going so far, on occasion, as to apologise for the previous sentence within a tale! His choice of language engenders the feeling in the reader that he is more than a little embarrassed by the things he is writing but, hey ho, that's just the way the story goes and I am only the blushing conduit for what must be told! Harding is one of those writers that allows his own personality to shine through in his writing. Halfway through the book you will feel that you know him via his characters and their various neuroses and obsessions. One might almost assume the work was autobiographical were it not for the thoroughly bizarre plots. Almost all of the stories in this collection could be described as fantasy but you can't help but feel that the actions and reactions of the protagonists are precisely those that the author might make, were he faced with such an absurd version of reality - in fact, you would probably assume, as I did, that he actually lives in a world that is almost as odd and peopled with equally gauche and inept characters - as do we all most of the time. Above all, the feeling that I came away with was one of a warm, caring author that was genuinely upset by many of the things that his creations had to suffer at his hands. A cracking read.? - Xamonas