A far-right cable news network is slowly taking control of the minds of half of Americans. As the brain rot spreads to social media and various websites, things start taking a turn for the worse when anchors and influencers begin warning of a “Great Reawakening”. New Yorker Noah Fairchild begins receiving unhinged voicemails from his Virginian mother warning that he must leave his Liberal city and return home before the chaos begins. Concerned, Noah makes the drive to Richmond to check on his parents. What he finds when he arrives is worse than anything he could imagine.

Over the past few years, I’ve been getting more and more into horror lit. When I saw this pop up on Goodreads, it was labeled as extreme horror and given my past experience with some of Nick Cutter’s more graphic work, I assumed I could handle it. That said, there were moments in WAKE UP AND OPEN YOUR EYES where I wanted to close my eyes and walk away. There are certainly scenes here that were a lot for me and absolutely not for someone with a weak stomach. There is a scene about perhaps two-thirds of the way through that had me reading with my hands on my head, audibly saying “no” while sitting alone in a coffee shop.

I really liked the devices which McLeod Chapman uses to administer the mind control process. It certainly speaks a lot to how media outlets and influencers prey on our emotions to sway our opinions strongly in one direction or another. The thinly-veiled “Fax News” network seemed to be a conglomeration of Fox and NewsMax, both of which share the blame in stoking anger amongst its bases. McLeod Chapman just turns the dial up to 11 and imagines a world where people will act upon their most horrific impulses.

While I enjoyed this book for the most part, I felt like it lost some steam in the third part, but given how intense and over-the-top everything was that led up to it, it helped to sort of level out the insanity. I’m not sure who I would ever recommend this to as I do not want the blow-back from people thinking I’m out of my mind for reading some of these scenes and then continuing to go about my day.