PopHorror Let's Get Scared
Author A. Rushby (The Stand In 2022) takes readers on a journey into the dark underbelly of Georgian-era London with Slashed Beauties. In an attempt to entice male medical students to study female anatomy in eighteenth-century London, ultrarealistic wax figures of women are created – otherwise known as anatomical Venuses. Modeled after real-life sex workers, these anatomical Venuses carry a dark and horrifying truth: at night, they come alive to murder the men who have wronged them.
Taking place across two timelines, Slashed Beauties is a gothic feminist take on body horror. In the present time, Alys journeys to procure the final (and most dangerous) Venus, Elizabeth, to sever her cursed connection to the Venuses once and for all. In London, 1763, the stunningly beautiful Elizabeth takes in Eleanor and draws her into the world of escorting and companionship for London’s elite. Despite the glitz and glamour, Eleanor is faced with the horror that beauty is not only pain, but it’s also deadly. Is Elizabeth her savior or something much worse?
With the main plot set in the 1700s, the book feels more accurately categorized as a period thriller rather than a modern horror. As a period piece, the pacing is fine, but as a horror novel, the pacing is extremely slow. Despite the genre vagueness, Rushby’s writing is more than adept at creating a world that will ease all readers into the eighteenth-century London backdrop.
Despite being fantastical with sentient wax figures, much of the story is grounded in the sad reality of women being placed into dark situations. Eleanor struggles to navigate her plight of womanhood and sexual liberation. Although Alys’s plot lets readers know where Eleanor’s story is leading, there is still a continuous lingering sense of dread with enough ambiguity to keep the plot in the past from getting stale.
The violence is written in such a pleasant and urbane manner that it’s not overly graphic or cringeworthy. Bloodshed is kept to a minimum, but when it hits, it hits hard. The gore is used to further the horror faced by characters rather than as an excuse to revel in it. It shocks the reader on a deeper level because the victims are neither one-dimensional nor just cannon fodder. When the Venuses meet their inevitable fate, the only thing that surpasses the butchery on display is the distress that comes from spending so much time with these characters. The world-building and character development make it all the more engrossing (and horrifying) when they eventually become the slashed beauties.
The true action of the story doesn’t take place until the final third of the book. The dangling promise of body horror rattles above the reader for most of the story. The tonal shift is sure to give whiplash as the final section of the book moves extremely fast. Rushby handled earlier events with long form, but the climax happens in such a quick fashion that smaller details and intricacies are glossed over in a race to get to the finish. There’s almost a nostalgic yearn for the longer prose from before.
Real anatomical Venuses might have fallen out of fashion, but A. Rushby has created a fresh take in a genre that predominantly lavishes in female victimhood. She has written a story of dread that burns slowly and eventually intensifies to an inescapable fire; it’s as heartbreaking as it is vicious.
Slashed Beauties is now available where all books are sold.
