Black Jack Derringer: The Ace of Spades is like one of those little four-piece Whitman’s Samplers. You end up with a good idea of what the story’s going to be, but it’s over and gone just when you’re really ready for more.
Wild Alice West is not a woman for breeding or homemaking or any of the other things the Wild West-flavored land called the Skillet considers women good for. She’s a bounty hunter, plagued by a bit of bad luck, a mouth that constantly gets her in trouble, a society that can’t respect her and the fastest shot she’s ever met. (She’s humble too….)
Full Review at DarkScribeMagazine.com
Reviewed for MonsterLibrarian.com
Damnation Books, 2009
ISBN: 9781615720316
Available: New, print and digital
Sam, his wife and son have just bought a dilapidated monster of house in the countryside, determined to see the old hulk rehabilitated and livable for the first time in over forty years. But things aren’t adding up. The previous owner keeps visiting, despite having already replaced the bits he agreed to, and there is a creepy old heater in the basement. Then one of the roofers tells Sam about the strange murders that took place in the basement long ago, and hints about ghostly visions and occurrences that have scared off the town folk since. Not even these disturbing tales touch the surface of what really lives in Farnham House.
The Haunting of Sam Cabot holds reader attention very well. It’s a classic haunted house tale with a heavy dose of foreshadowing and an abbreviated length to keep eyes glued to the pages. Some of the events will be familiar to the well-read. Also, this books uses a method of storytelling wherein the author withholds information from the reader to aid in the final reveal, which will aggravate some readers. However, the book is solid and readable and in this age of so many ghost investigation and haunted house shows, deserves a place in public collections. Private collectors should adjust their buying decision to their own taste. Recommended for public library collections.
5
Feb
Reviewed for MonsterLibrarian.com
Snarl by Lorne Dixon
Coscom Entertainment, 2009
ISBN: 978-1897217870
Available: New and Used
Chev, a trucker, Ross, a grandfather and David, his ten year old grandson who just lost his whole family to a house fire, all have the bad luck to find themselves in a horror novel, the kind where the characters get lost and end up in a tiny town terrorized by a gang who also happen to be werewolves. The human townies can’t give the outsiders over to the beasts quickly enough, and the werewolves want to use Chev and Ross as excuses to break the pact made between human and monster fifty years ago.
Snarl is a tale that belongs with the best of werewolf movies: fast-paced, dark, and gruesome. Between humans willing to live complacently with the brutal deaths of many others (as long as it isn’t them) and shape shifters who might have motive to slaughter, there are no clear good guys. For werewolf and general horror fans, it’s a good, solid read and would make a quality addition to public and private libraries looking to expand the number of horror titles in their collection. Recommended.
Contains: Gore, language, violence
Eric S. Brown’s Season of Rot is a collection of five zombie novellas that from the first page demonstrates how well-versed Brown is in the zombie genre. In scene after scene, readers will find good guys and bad guys, women and children, all trying to survive the undead plague while holed up in hospitals, military bases and even luxury cruise ships converted for war against the undead.
What’s hard to find is a true sense of storytelling in any of Brown’s offerings…
Full Review at DarkScribe Magazine.
ISBN: 9780981989419
I have a mental list of movies I’ve seen, and I don’t regret seeing them, but I never want to see them again. What Dreams May Come, Philadelphia, A.I and Funny Games all have their places on this list. Slowly I’m forming a list of books that I’ve enjoyed and would recommend, but never I want to read again. Devil’s Marionette by Maurice Broaddus is definitely edging its way onto this list.
There’s nothing technically wrong with this novella about the cast of a black skit show/sitcom descending into madness. The characters are raw, pain-filled and clear and the story itself is unfurled with the casual unstopablility of an oncoming freight train.
But there’s a weight here that threatens to crush the reader as well as the characters.
Broaddus’s novella starts right at the end of things and offers little in the way of background, or explanation, instead focusing on each individual breakdown of an otherwise talented and intelligent black cast. The crew aren’t being crushed by the white network bigwig (despite his efforts at dominating them), though, it’s their own connection to parasitic performers of the past that pulls them into more than personal darkness. Here it feels like the odds are so astoundingly set against them that defying the curse of the black performer is like trying to defy the laws of physics.
Yet despite this immersive, and painfully open experience of being each character as hundreds of years of hatred and racism crushes down on them, the reader is left with the same feeling as someone who witnesses something beautiful or terribly in a quiet woods. It’s almost as if this pain is clear and known, but we are not supposed to speak of it, or even admit that we know it’s there.
The aura or spirit of this book far out shadows the actual story within the pages. It’s left me feeling not thrilled, or entertained, but uneasy, a perfect tone for a horror novella to strike, but one not that makes experiencing it an entirely pleasant experience.
21
Jul
Reviewed for MonsterLibrarian.com’s Werewolf Month.
Red by Paul Kane
Skullvines, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-9799673-5-1
Available: New
Red is a fairly short, straightforward retelling of “Little Red Riding Hood” that breaks both the monster and the fairy tale form back down to their horrific beginnings. Kane’s monstrous wolf is a creature out of our nightmares, all appetite, both sexual and digestive. He’s a true shapeshifter, a “wolf in sheep’s clothing” who takes on the forms of people around him in order to get closer to his victims. Also true to the first fairy tales, this isn’t a light-hearted tale with magical creatures that is tied up in a nice happy bow. It’s a brutal tale of stalking and hunger. The only down side is that it doesn’t deviate from the traditional story much, making it a simplistic and quickly read tale. Recommended for private collections due to the sexual content and cost vs. length factors.
Contains: Violence, gore, sex
Reviewed for MonsterLibrarian.com’s Werewolf Month 2009
Damnation Books, September 2009
Trade Paper Back: 978-1-61572-032-3 $8.29
Ebook: 978-1-61572-033-0 $4.50
While Symptoms of a Broken Heart is a solid fit into the shape shifter category, the “change” in this book is a metaphor for many of the characters’ innermost desires, rather than a power or curse. It’s an interesting application that is almost a throwback to older werewolf tales where the monster represented the fear of giving into such desires.
Lisa and her soon-to-be-married sister attend a Full Moon party, meant to be one last hurrah before they settle down, but they get more than they expect when it turns out to be an actual full moon party thrown by actual shape shifters. Tragedy strikes, and one sister is left alive and seeking the power of the attendees in order to save her own rear and cover up the other sister’s death.
This is a fast, hard read with two strong female leads, neither of which are flat stereotypical female characters or stereotypical horror-fiction lesbians. Erotic, dark and spiked with a creepy aftertaste that will stick with readers, this is a novelette worth snatching up.
Contains: graphic sex
Click to buy
Thin Them Out is short, tight chapbook that doesn’t so much tell a story, as set up two sides of a story.
On one hand you have the survivors of an unexplained zombie apocalypse, wound tight, desperate and ready to snap, no longer able to see whether the danger comes from the walking dead or the living around them.
On the other hand you have a most remarkable zombie whose thoughts and worries go beyond food and danger into places that are simplistically beautiful.
A fast read, buying a copy of Thin them Out is an easy, enjoyable way to support the small press.