Cannibal Creator is a story of survival and blood-soaked, frenetic horror. Author Chad Lutzke spends the intro informing us of his "guilty pleasure", namely the cannibal films of yesteryear; often the gory exploitation tales of the "civilized" crossing over into grotesque pastiches of native culture with ill intent and paying a horrible price for it.

Lutzke attempts to duplicate such works and the results are mixed. Two families suffer a plane crash in the Barbados, running afoul of a primitive group of cannibals living there. Lutzke's creativity allows for solid characterization for the cannibals themselves, with a decent origin for them that helps to lampoon the usual racism and colonialism inherent in cannibal films.

Unfortunately, the creativity of the plot suffers with the execution. The characters are quite thin, and women mostly exist in this story to be victims and/or cheaters. I could not find myself attached to a single character, with the most interesting being the cannibals themselves.

The novella straddles an odd line when it comes to violence. Brutal deaths are common but rarely dwelled upon or described overmuch, which feels strange in a novel meant to homage grindhouse gore films. The origins of the cannibals are given a brief overview in a plot that feels far too big and far too rushed for the short length this novel is when our hero uncovers a secret conspiracy and deals with it in the span of a few pages.

Cannibal Creator intends to show what happens when people are pushed to the brink of savagery, but little is made of it until the end. The shocking conclusion leaves the reader cold without characters to grow attached to and the novella fails to capitalize on the ideas and setting laid out early on, even with intense and adrenaline-packed action scenes.

People who love fun, gory romps will enjoy it, but there is sadly little bite to the story.