Motherfucking Sharks is a terrible novel that was written by Brian Allen Carr and inadvisedly published by Eraserhead Press. It is due for release on the 1st of December, 2026. This review is intended to be free of spoilers, but none of us are perfect. Consider yourself warned! I was provided with a review copy by the publishers. There are no affiliate links at the end of this review because I don’t want your money for this.
Blurb
Where I come from, the children sing a song:
Oh the motherfucking sharks Oh they’re gonna come to town Oh they’re gonna kill the babies Oh they’re gonna make you drowned in your blood
Oh the motherfucking sharks Oh they’re gonna mince the flesh They’re gonna swim up and surround you Don’t you know you’ll never pass the test it’s over
Oh the motherfucking sharks Oh they don’t care about the gods And they don’t care about the families And they don’t care about the cries or tears they’re killers.
Motherfucking sharks Motherfucking sharks Motherfucking sharks Motherfucking sharks
Review
Motherfucking Sharks is the kind of book that sounds like it should be fun. Flying sharks, a dusty ghost‑town setting, a wandering prophet with a mule; it promises a pulpy, chaotic, Sharknado‑adjacent romp. What it delivers instead is a mess of shock‑value scenes stitched together with prose that mistakes repetition for style and transgression for depth.
There are sharks, eventually, but they’re not the focus. Most of the book is spent with townsfolk who feel less like characters and more like props for whatever grotesque idea the author wants to try next. The writing swings between overwritten and self‑indulgent, with structural gimmicks that feel more like padding than purpose.
But the real problem, the thing that sinks the whole project, is the reliance on taboo sexual content as a shortcut to “edgy.” Incest and sexualised violence appear without narrative weight, thematic relevance, or even the courtesy of subtlety. They’re not disturbing in a meaningful way; they’re disturbing in a lazy way. It’s the literary equivalent of someone shouting, “Look how far I can push this,” while hoping you’ll mistake provocation for bravery.
There are readers who enjoy this kind of bizarro splatterpunk, and that’s fine. Every genre has its audience. But for me, the book never earns its excess. It’s not weird with intention, or violent with purpose, or surreal in a way that reveals anything about the world or the characters. It’s just noise. Loud, crude, and hollow.
A great title. A fun premise. And absolutely none of the substance needed to make either of those things worth the time.
Rating: 1/5
Such a Samuel L Jackson title for a book that. Balls of steel there