Rating: 2 stars

Chad is an unemployed punk musician whose guitar is usually in hock. Chad’s wife, Amber, is apparently a six foot mantis who happens to be a stripper and the bread winner in the family. They live in Astoria, Oregon, which is under siege by female mantids who get their protein by eating the heads off all the males. Feeling less than warm and fuzzy towards his wife after a few years and a kid, Chad needs a little help to get mister happy in the mood and downs four internet turbo Viagra – rather than “cutting one, into fours” like his friend told him. After sex with the wife, which Chad describes to be like “boning a leper” he finds himself armed with a hard-on from hell and now must go on a mission to deflate it before rigor mortis sets in. While on his journey to find a cure, Chad barely notices that bugs seem to be taking over the town until he meets Lola, one of the last humans who is trying to single handedly fight the invasion of the mantids.

I really don’t know what to think of Mantids. On the one hand, it’s really strange and sort of funny, but on the other hand, the writing is annoying as hell. I think the main reason I stuck with this book was because it was only 134 pages. I just couldn’t figure out Chad; he understands that having a stiffy for more than 4 hours is a bad thing and even knows the medical term for it, yet he can’t figure out that everybody is turning into bugs, even though he sees it happening. Chad even changes the diaper on his own child who is a giant mantis, but it doesn’t register – and this happened before all the blood rushed to his little head. I was confused from the start because the way he was describing things it was like he was in an inter-species relationship, he complains about what bad drivers the mantids are because they don’t have thumbs, and he is not supposed to go outside without his neoprene mantid suit on. Chad spends the whole book complaining about his wife, but it’s not until he finds the carcass of his real wife, Amber, by the fridge that he realizes that thing he has been screwing, who threatens to chew his head off, drools blue saliva and has a thorax wasn’t her. Nobody is that stupid. Helen Keller would’ve been out the door in ten seconds. Maybe I just didn’t get it. Even now, as I write this, I’m still confused. I’d re-read it, but I need to let the scars heal from the first time.
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Hardcover: 134 pages
Publisher: Black Heron Press (October 15, 2008)
ISBN-13: 978-0930773861