A meta-horror story about survival, obsession, men, women, and chainsaws.

Sacred Lamb is a secret town where the survivors of endemic slasher killers, also known as Final Girls, reside in a 'witness protection' to stop innocent people from being murdered when the inevitable 'sequel' occurs and the slasher returns from the dead.
I have to be honest when I started I was a bit overwhelmed with this, and had a hard time connecting to the characters, but as I kept on reading I really liked the campy feeling, it was as I was reading a 90's slasher. Its fast and fun and the final girl is one of my favorite horror movie tropes so I enjoyed this one in the end.

The overall story and art were nice. There were times though that I felt like a couple panels of explanation were missing and this would take me out of the story as I flipped between pages to see what was missing. It was still possible to follow the plot and get to know the characters. I would recommend this to someone who loves slasher films and the final girl tropes but not to anyone else due to the story being choppy at times. The art was great and the characters were interesting.

DNF. The art wasn't as good as I expected and kept taking me out of the story, but the pace was also strange; while the idea of starting with a killing being broadcasted was appealing, the execution didn't do it for me.

This graphic novel started off with a bang and just kept going - it was fantastic. The story follows a group of women who have been the victims of slashers, think Ghostface or Freddy Krueger, killers like that. They have all been cut off from friends and family and taken to a compound called Sacred Lamb. Here they will live out the rest of their lives together. But then weird things start happening at Sacred Lamb. And then all hell breaks lose. No spoilers here, you'll have to read this one and find out for yourself how it ends.

Sacred Lamb is a place where serial killer survivors are placed by witness protection. If a gang of undead serial killers is looking for a challenge, I’m thinking this town is the perfect location for their next party.

I’m not sure if this graphic novel is an homage to my favorite cheesy 1980s horror movies or a parody. Unfortunately, even the original movies have some cringeworthy sexism and stereotypes that this book is forced to use, which is sure to turn many readers off.

I’m not sure who is the perceived audience for this book. Fans of the old movies may take offense at making fun of their favorite films. More woke readers will just grumble about all the overt sexism.

While the artwork is good, I never felt connected to any of the characters. The plot feels sterile with no truly horrific scenes. Sacred Lamb is a puzzle—but not in a good way. 3 stars.

Thanks to TKO Studios and NetGalley for a digital review copy of the book.

An interesting take on final girls, a compelling story arc, interesting art, and super hard to put down. I hope more parts come out soon

It might be easier to name the things I like about this book than what I did not like because the answer is, I didn’t particularly like anything. I am an avid horror connoisseur, especially slashers. The art style was unpleasant to look and the story was bland and lacking in intersection.

The characters lacked dimension. The story seemed to be a critique of misogyny in horror, but instead did the exact thing it was meaning to avoid.

Honestly, at the end of the day the graphic novel had the depth of a puddle on a hot day.

Thanks to NetGalley and TKO Studios for an ARC in exchange for an honest review! I was delighted with this campy, gory, meta novel about a bunch of tough "final girls" who all move to a (prison-like) town to stay safe from their otherworldly attackers. This would be a place where, for example, Jamie Lee Curtis's Laurie Strode might hide out to avoid repeated attacks from Michael Myers. It's an intriguing premise, carried out perfectly. It's silly at times, over-the-top, and quite scary. The main character, a social media influencer famous for opening packages, is the most recent arrival to Sacred Lamb, the protected town. But after she arrives, things begin to go downhill.

I only wish I had known the premise of the novel before I started it, because it took me a little while to catch on. I've enjoyed just about every horror franchise, so the tropes and characters were wonderfully familiar. I especially liked how strong the women of the town were, particularly MC Kellyn. There were some nods to feminism as well, when Kellyn refuses to take the blame, or to make herself small, to fit the needs of the various men (and killers) in the novel. I only wish I had gotten to know some of the characters a little better. Sacred Lamb has a large group of women, and I would have enjoyed more time with each of them, especially Kellyn.

This book is highly recommended for fans of horror, especially those who have seen ALL the movies. It kept me guessing right up to the very end. I give it 8/10 stars.

I was really disappointed by this graphic novel. I feel like the art doesn't gel with the story and the action is very poorly communicated. Panels that are supposed to portray movement feel very flat and stiff.
The story is supposed to be reinventing tropes about women in horror, but ultimately does the exact same thing as its predecessors and isn't any better. Maybe worse because its attempt to be self aware and subversive failed.
The protagonist falls into "cringe" territory a lot for me. With her being an unboxing influencer, that led to a lot of dialogue I wish I never read. Being an influencer is one of Kellyn's only defining traits, we know next to nothing else about her so it is referenced a lot.
The amount of times they do a fake reveal of the bad guy and they have an evil villain monologue and then die a few pages later is hilarious. I personally didn't find any concepts scary or even unnerving in this book. None of the killers were given enough time to be scared of.
Lastly, I was really annoyed with the supernatural elements. I love a good zombie, ghost, alien etc. horror movie. But this story through the majority of the book feels like it's realistic in tone: this is the real world. And then they try to throw spirits and things I didn't even get (because it was explained so poorly) into the mix and it did not mix well at all.
I'll leave me thoughts here because there are other reviews that go in depth onto other criticisms, namely the misogyny. So I recommend reading those as well.

This was a really fun take on the Final Girl trope. The overall plot was gripping and the artwork perfectly matched this.

Some of the characters were a little flat and I wish there had been more. But overall I really enjoyed this graphic novel and I would read it again. It’s a great halloween read.

I won’t lie I had to DNF this one.

I’m a HUGE horror graphic novel fan so I was so pumped about this one, unfortunately it wasn’t great.

Starting off the art style was not for me, it didn’t feel like the art and the story worked together.

I tried really hard to continue this one but the dialogue alone was enough to make me stop.

I appreciate the publisher and NetGalley for granting me access to this ARC!

First of all, let me thank the author, the publisher and NetGalley itself for providing me with this advanced reader's copy.
Secondly, I need to excuse myself for this very short and quick review. I would very much like to do my usual lengthier and more detailed feedback, but as this was not what I was expecting and I didn't completely understand it, I'll leave the longer and better reviews for other readers.
As I mentioned, I did not expect this graphic novel to revolve around victims of abuse, near murder and other atrocious acts. For some reason I expected this book to be about some native tribes, potential rituals and rites; which is probably why I was confused half of the time as to what was going on. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed the graphic part of the novel, however, I'm a little unsure about the actual plot and takeaway. In general, I simply have no idea how I feel about this book, it felt pretty monotone for me, but then again, that might me due to me having different expectations.
In conclusion, as I said, I'll leave the more exact reviews to other reviewers, as I don't feel justified in discussing something I don't feel sure about. Given that the book is quite short (as most graphic novels are), it wouldn't hurt to read it if it seems interesting to you (unless you mind gore, blood and violence in your literature).

this ... was not great. cool art but that's pretty much it. the story rubbed me the wrong way and i got bored of the clichés very soon in.

This was just not for me. It was a "good" story I guess. But I didn't like the artwork, it was way too gruesome and graphic for me and I just didn't have much interest in the story itself once I started it. It just wasn't for me. Good for this time of year (around halloween) for some people, but not for me.

I think you should probably stick to "The Final Girl Support Group."

A homage to the 1980s and 1990s slasher flicks, which really does reek of the same sexploitation of the originals. Tim Seeley TRIES to reinvent the "killer won't stay dead" trope, but the thing is, in doing so, he blames the victim-survivors. He designates them as "EVes," which is, of course, meant to be a reference to Eve of Eden and the Fall of Man. These EVes are not INTENTIONAL temptresses, but there's something about them that drives men mad. Even the SINGLE gay man and supposed EVe, who is quickly brought under our protagonist's "spell," and is killed within the first arc.

Further blame is taken from the male slashers heaped upon women as we find that the killers are not actually rogue incels or the like, but are all possessed by the spirit of a young teen girl. And, like...no? You're given not just one, but TWO ways women are essentially at fault, here?

Also, the one Black character sacrifices her life to save everyone else. And all the women guards are also killed, like, INSTANTLY

Is it bloody? Yes. But it doesn't do any improving, only adding convolutions that are worse. Hell, you want to see a good way to re-examine multiple serial killers and how women fight them, check out the Netflix "Fear Street" trilogy. But this comic? Just a skip.

You know how there were like six Friday the 13th movies and Jason kept like resurrecting and going on killing sprees, even after he had been frozen in outer space? That's what this book is like. It has the same vibes as 80s horror movies that didn't age the best. I don't entirely understand the supernatural elements of this and I didn't enjoy the art style.

An influencer is stalked and a person kills her friends and fans. After becoming a final girl, she is placed in a safe town with other final girls.

This was really interesting. I love the whole aspect of the final girl thing, so I was immediately interested in this book. The art was interesting and pretty, not my fav style, but it was still gorgeous.

This book was fun to read and had a lot of cool aspects. The ending made my jaw drop. The pacing of the story was good and helped keep me interested and the overall ending was pretty satisfying

I was originally not going to have such a long review. I was going to try to keep it brief, but once I started typing I thought of more and more things I wanted to say. Then I saw the really high ratings on Netgalley and Storygraph and decided to go all in on this because I have a lot of complaints to air out that no one else seems to have.

It might not surprise that I did not like Sacred Lamb.

The first of my many issues is the illustration. The art style sits directly in the uncanny valley. Not in an interesting way, but in a way that makes it very difficult to like the characters or sympathize with them because they are so genuinely off-putting and unpleasant to look at. The illustrator's style isn't to blame for this, either. The art in the first scene is the same style but it looks leagues better. I am not sure what happened with the production or art direction, but the decline in quality after that very first scene is very noticable.

The art is a minor gripe, though. It was off-putting, yes, but I could have looked past it had the writing been good.

Spoiler alert: the writing was awful.

The main character is so flat she's almost two-dimensional. She has two personality traits: being an influencer and having grown up poor. That's it. I know nothing about her beyond these two things. I couldn't name an actual personality trait of hers if you held me at hookpoint.

The only vaguely interesting character in the whole novel was the Babysitter, Diana, the first E.V., which made me wonder why on earth she wasn't the main character instead of Kellyn. She has a far more interesting backstory, personality, and motivation than Kellyn (which, to be fair, is not a high bar to step over).

Speaking of Diana, Kellyn has a genuinely unpleasant interaction with her where she accuses Diana of having internalized misogyny (something white female influencers famously never have, especially against women of color). Diana then pushes her to the ground in a way that is initially framed as a physical attack (she is actually pushing her down because she's blowing up a door with some doll eyes. Long story, not interesting in the least). Once the door is blown, they stand up and walk out with absolutely no acknowledgement of the conversation that just happened besides Diana saying they'll "get back" to what Kellyn said about her fight with her own slasher, Soulsaver. The thing they "get back" to has nothing to do with the awkward, shoehorned conversation about internalized misogyny. It's that Diana's slasher has literally possessed her but Diana is keeping her prisoner in her own body.

This graphic novel aims to critique misogyny, victim blaming, and the power men hold over women. It fails on pretty much every front. Every conversation the narrative has about misogyny is explicitly spelled out, as though the writer didn't trust the narrative to get the theme across without it being stated in painfully on-the-nose dialogue. Characters are only mouthpieces for the message “victim-blaming bad;” they're not well-rounded or nuanced.

Let’s take a quick detour to talk masked killers. Some are supposed to embody forms of misogyny women have to face (for example, an entitled male fan, a peeping tom who sees women as sexual objects, a nice guy who thinks he’s entitled to his female best friend), but many of them aren’t representations of misogyny. Many of the slashers in the novel are the way they are because they were either victimized by women (Xyr, abandoned by his mother as a baby and locked into a covenent’s basement to rot away for hundreds of years), radicalized into violence by a woman (all of the sequel slashers), or are implied to be transgender in some way (sequel Xyr [has breast implants for some reason] and Ran the Drowner [a man who believes he is the reincarnation of a goddess]). Things never got explicitly transphobic (a minor miracle considering horror’s track record with trans women), but it’s enough of a red flag to make me wary.

For a plot supposedly about misogyny, it sure is misogynistic. The original slasher? A girl. The person revealed to be the one egging on slashers and the one responsible for their resurrections? A woman. You’d better believe that the black woman dies to save the white girl. Oh, yeah, and try to guess which character becomes the group’s mouthpiece for the plan to reform the town of Sacred Lamb to better serve victims and rehabilitate men before they become slashers. If you guessed the qualified black woman with several degrees who is a therapist already working to help her fellow survivors, you would be wrong. It’s the white girl whose job was opening Amazon packages and knew the other girls for a day or two before they all got sequel’d. Because “getting what [she] wants is kind of [her] whole deal.” Great.

Look. I’m not going to pretend like internalized misogyny doesn’t exist, or women shouldn’t be portrayed as doing bad things, can’t perpetuate misogyny, or be complicit in victim blaming. What I am saying is that the way Sacred Lamb explores these topics is so surface level, so flat, that the narrative choices mentioned above do not substantially explore, criticize, or analyze these topics.

For example, let’s take the whole Kellyn becoming a leader thing. Would I have bought the choice to use her as the mouthpiece for the plan if the characters had discussed it (even briefly) and decided that because Kellyn is white, conventionally attractive, and has an internet following that she should run point? Yes, because that does make sense. But none of that groundwork exists in the narrative, so the decision to frame Kellyn as the group’s leader and put Kesha on the backburner isn’t making a point about racism in the justice system. Even if I can theorize a way to make it feminist, the text itself didn’t do the work so it doesn’t get the points. The whole novel lacks the nuance required for handling such a complex, important topics like victim blaming, male violence towards women, online radicalization, the justice system, and societal treatment of victims because it doesn’t do the work.

I also despised the way they handled the only male E.V., Shane. He is friendly with Kellyn, shows kindness and consideration towards the people around him, and yet randomly gets aggressive out of nowhere (demanding she unbox something for him because he's a fan) before being killed off by his sequel slasher. The narrative choice to have the only important black male character be aggressive and demanding towards a white female character is one that is problematic due to the history of portaying black men as being a danger for white women. Shane being gay doesn’t get rid of that connotation. This element easily have been removed because, though it serves as a red herring (implying that Shane is going to be the next slasher), it’s a needless red herring. He dies two seconds later.

Honestly, the way race is handled in the narrative is strange. As I make these criticisms, keep in mind that I am white and not the end-all-be-all to this conversation. However, these elements were problematic enough to be noticable, doubly so because the writers actively incorporating diversity as a goal. Kellyn, a white woman, is intimidated, made uncomfortable, and/or physically assaulted by survivors of color several times (Diane breaking into her house, Shane grabbing her and demanding she do something for him, Diane tackling her after their misogyny conversation in a manner framed as angry and aggressive). She is never physically assaulted by one of the white survivors in a similar manner. Even though these instances were threats of violence rather than actual violence, the handling, writing, and direction of these characters could have used a hell of a lot more care and consideration. The most generous interpretation of this I can think of is that they were trying to make a point about white women perceiving people of color as threatening and/or dangerous, but if they were trying to make that point then they failed. Miserably. Much like my point about the Kellyn becoming the group’s mouthpiece earlier, the narrative actually doesn’t do the groundwork to actually make that point, even if I theorize how it could.

The most generous way I could use to describe Sacred Lamb is that it has a promising premise and threads with potential for interesting, genuine critique, but because it lacks intersectionality, because it tries to do too much, because it lacks focus, Sacred Lamb fails as a critique and as a narrative. The world building is shallow. The characters are shallow. The plot, though not difficult to follow from moment to moment, falls apart rather quickly if interrogated. The dialogue is often unnatural. The art quality declines sharply and--at times--is genuinely goofy. (Every time Kellyn screamed or yelled or looked scared in the later chapters I laughed because it looked ridiculous.) The narrative's understanding of misogyny’s intersection with gender, race, class, queerness, and trauma either barely goes beyond surface level or skips over it entirely.

Whew. Now I’ve got all that out of my system, on to some minor complaints.

The stinger is “A meta-horror story about survival, obsession, men, women, and chainsaws.” Obviously a reference to Carol J. Clover’s book Men, Women, and Chainsaws, but here’s the thing. There is survival in this book. There is obsession. There are indeed both men and women. There are cleavers, knives, hooks, shovels, hell, even a weighted fishing net, but there is not a single chainsaw. Come on, y’all.

At the end, all of the girls kill their sequel slashers. Besides Kellyn, each of these scenes is very brief, being 2-3 pages long interspersed between the other scenes so we quickly flash between each girl from page to page. Not only that, each girl dispatches their sequel slasher very quickly and easily, as though this is just another Monday. There’s no real emotion in these scenes, and it’s not helped by the characters all being flat references to/representations of specific eras or genres of horror movies.

Although it’s a love letter to horror movies (and particularly slashers), the story comes off as not really having any love or soul in it. I don’t doubt that the writers and artists have it, but as a lover of slashers (especially early slashers!), I just felt none of it beyond the slasher designs and backstories.

The ending, too, is—and please excuse my bluntness—mind-numbingly stupid. I’m not going to justify with discussion beyond that insult. Let’s move on.

Twice the narrative uses these transition panels. I think they’re supposed to be like a record scratch? A title card fake-out? They come off as trying to be witty but they fall flat. Part of that is probably because their letting/design is boring. They don’t support the joke. Why not actually make it look like rolling credits? Or do something else interesting with the lettering in reference to an iconic horror credits or after-credits scene? Commit to the bit! Don’t just copy/paste the exact same all-black panel with some text slapped on top twice. Also, the joke is really out of place—there are some points where the narrative tries to be funny/witty, but overall the tone isn’t comical enough—or meta enough—to make the “Except not really” panels serve any purpose beyond making me roll my eyes.

Final (and most petty) complaint: the panel where the girl is eating ice cream. What is she scooping? Ice cream? Where is the carton? Why (and how) is she scooping it one-handed? If it is ice cream, why is the fridge open (you can see eggs and a condiment bottle on the door) and not the freezer? Are those eggs, potatoes, onions, or something else rolling around loose on the bottom shelf there?

I’ll give the ice cream panel one thing. If I was told that a lockdown was in place because one of my neighbors was murdered by a serial killer running around in the gated community I have no route of escape from, I’d probably scoop myself some ice cream too. What, were you expecting me to do something important like participate in the plot? Develop my character? Show a single shred of personality?

Maybe in the sequel.

Sacred Lamb is the ideal community to protect survivors of horrific attacks. Don't mind the guards, high walls, and strict rules. Sacred Lamb is a safe haven...or is it?

This graphic novel has so many of my favorite horror elements: final girls, witty dialogue, killers who don't stay dead, etc. What's fresh about Sacred Lamb is the premise. Final survivors are viewed as dangers to society because of the potential for the original killers or copy cat killers to come back for them, causing chaos and bloodshed. The survivors are sent away to Sacred Lamb, a secret base that's more like a jail than a haven. It's meant to keep the killers out and the survivors in. Naturally, things don't go as planned and it's a fight to survive.

The artwork is really well done. There's a lot of detail and small touches that make it a true winner. There were quite a few moments when I was reading that I found myself nodding, like "YEP we do victim blame women ALL the time." There are quite a few small details that add to the overall theme of the novel. From calling the survivors "Eves" to having the base be called "sacred lamb". It's evident the author put a lot of thought into the plot.

The only reason I'm giving this 4/5 stars is that there were too many characters to get to know any of them more than superficially. Had there been more time spent on fewer characters the last quarter of the story would have been so much more satisfying.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for a free copy of this in exchange for an honest review.

I usually love comics/graphic novels for their fast paced and quick reads, however this just wasn’t it for me. I am a huge fan of horror, especially slasher novels, but this seemed very much like a repeat of the others I have read. The illustrations and graphics were really really impressive and I cannot fault the artist for the incredible world they created. The characters were unique in their own way and total badasses, however, it just wasn’t the story I was expecting.

I would recommend this for someone who is just getting into slasher graphics, comics or novels, but not for someone who usually reads books of the premise.