In Guy N. Smith's original synopses for his Mark Sabat series, which I explored for an article included in a Polish collection of all the Sabat stories, Sabat Antologia, things were not as they became. Mark Sabat was an outright villain, even if he's still fighting for good against evil. His even darker twin had still possessed him at the beginning of the first book, so that the two constantly battled for supremacy, but he was called Hugo rather than Quentin. And 'Cannibal Cult' wasn't the original third book.

Book one was always 'The Graveyard Vultures' and book two 'The Blood Merchants', even if Guy developed them considerably as he wrote them, adding in many prominent characters and iconic scenes that stand out to us today. However, book three was originally 'The Druid Connection' rather than 'Cannibal Cult'. Perhaps because it echoed some of the themes of 'The Graveyard Vultures', it was moved back to become book five, after 'The Soul-Stealers', only to shift forward again to become the book four it ended up being, with 'Cannibal Cult' slipped in before it. 'The Soul-Stealers', as far as I'm aware, was never written.

One other detail that's pertinent here is that, number in the series aside, 'Cannibal Cult' is relatively unchanged from its synopsis, unlike both its predecessors. I've always thought of Guy as a plotter, because he wrote such detailed synopses, literally outlining what would be written in each chapter. Comparing the first two Sabat synopses to their eventual published form, I realised that he was happy to become a pantser when a book needed to be changed a great deal. With 'Cannibal Cult', he clearly didn't feel that he needed to do that.

And that's even though this features easily the simplest plot of the four original novels. It's not without its standout scenes, which are wonderfully gruesome. My favourite has to be a corpse slowly returning to life, its severed head gradually reattaching itself to its body in an open coffin in an old remote chapel. However, for gruesomeness it's hard to top the scene in which a young man, described as a mongol child, is hypnotised and ordered to climb into an oven to be cooked for the cannibal cult of the title. He does it, of course, and feels no pain, at least initially, but that doesn't make it any less outrageous. That Sabat then has to carve the meat is just an extra push over the edge.

However, the story behind these isn't particularly deep. Having made it over the Channel to mainland Europe at the end of 'The Blood Merchants', it seems natural for Sabat to move a little further into the continent. He's seen a news item about mass murderer Louis Nevillon, the Beast of France, being guillotined in Paris for his crimes. The news isn't that he claimed at the end that he'll return after three days, a deliberate effort at blasphemy, but that his body vanished from the execution chamber. The world sees it as a standard fluff piece but it reads very differently to Sabat. However, before he can follow up on it, an assault by forces of evil leave him in hospital for ten days unconscious with pneumonia.

After he awakens and is deemed fit enough to leave, he travels to Interlaken in Switzerland to recover properly. If you've been following this series, you shouldn't be too surprised when his recovery becomes taking up with Madeleine Ganfredi, a gorgeous young lady on the run from a convent. Ever a sucker for a pretty face, he falls for her so completely that he quickly kills to underline his devotion to her and then takes her to the safety of her friends. By the time he discovers that they're the titular cannibal cult, he's been so overwhelmed not only by Madeleine but by his evil twin brother Quentin that he becomes a slave to the cult.

This is becoming quite the routine. In three books out of three thus far, he's fallen hard for the bad girl and in two of them he's been turned to the dark side, with Quentin to the fore. To be fair, that serves as a built-in story arc. Sabat can do whatever he does as a kinda-sorta good guy, only to do something stupid, inveterately because of a woman, and Quentin can take over for a while. That's the rise and fall, so all that remains is a final rise once he can figure out how to regain control of his own body and save the day. Of course, we can safely assume he'll manage that because there's another book to come in which that cycle can be run through yet again.

And that's pretty much all we have here, because everything else is mere detail. The initial chapter covers Nevillon's death and promise to return, so we also know where we'll end up. In between, Sabat goes to Switzerland, becomes Madeleine Ganfredi's slave, does whatever the cannibal cult wants him to do, however outrageously gruesome, and struggles against a dominant Quentin until he regain control and win out in the end. Even though Nevillon is guillotined in the present day, there are plenty of connections to the past here and we get to be whisked back to historic times to figure them all out, because resurrection of evil is a common thread throughout the series.

So this isn't really a book to read for the plot. The series definitely worked to a template and there are central themes that came to it from Guy's earlier work, especially the evil ancient druids from 'Doomflight'. However, if you're on board with a simpler Mark Sabat novel, free of the layers of church hypocrisy and nascent fascism, this is a heck of a fun read. It doesn't feature as many outrageous showcase scenes as 'The Graveyard Vultures' but the ones that it does have are unmissable. Guy gleefully broke taboo after taboo in the Mark Sabat series and that's why it still seems edgy even four decades on when extreme horror is a thing. Then again, when you call your book 'Cannibal Cult', you're not hinting at subtlety. ~~ Hal C F Astell

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