Nikolas P. Robinson's Blog, page 17

Lushbutcher Volume 3: The Thick Black Line by Lucy Leitner

Lushbutcher is back, and she’s back with a vengeance. After the slaughter of St. Practice Day, she’s set her sights on Chucky Knight, the man who organized the pub crawl that threatened the innocent victims of those drunks and degenerates.
A sprawling estate patrolled by samurai, ninja, and martial artists of all stripes is all that stands between Lushbutcher and her conquest of the evil force behind so much drunken debauchery. Lesser people might turn away when faced with such seemingly insurmountable odds, but Lushbutcher has God on her side and the brilliant legs he led scientists and engineers to develop on her behalf. As Janey carves and slices her way through dozens of security personnel, leaving a trail of limbs and broken bodies behind her, it’s her confidence and unflinching faith in the righteousness of her cause that blind her to the threat she faces.
Will this finally be Lushbutcher’s mission that ends the scourge of drunken revelers terrorizing her city?
Or will this be the end of Lushbutcher’s vocation, as she finally meets her match?
You’ll have to read it to find out.
Excelsior!

This title and the other Godless League releases can be purchased at http://www.godless.com or by downloading the Godless app to your mobile device. The link is below:

Godless League #8 (Lushbutcher – "The Thick Black Line") by Lucy Leitner

Season’s Creepings by Theresa Derwin

If you’re looking for some new Christmas stories to read aloud in front of the crackling fire while everyone sips at hot chocolate, these might not be the stories you’re looking for. Do people still do things like that with their families? I’m just going to assume that they do. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe these are precisely the stories you want to read to children and extended family as everyone gathers for the holidays. I’m not one to judge those things.
Theresa Derwin has assembled a lovely collection of Christmas-themed horror with Seasons Creepings. Perhaps it is a bit unusual that I was reading this in February, but I didn’t judge you about sitting around a fire and reading these stories to your children, so I’d appreciate it if you extend me the same courtesy.
The collection begins with the amusing Fifty Hades of Grey. A group of middle-aged women gathers together to exchange Christmas gifts, but one of those presents isn’t quite the innocent gag gift that it seems. A lady doesn’t reach a certain age without knowing how to handle a surprise or two, though.
‘Twas the Night provides us with a new interpretation of the familiar poem, replete with scathing social commentary.
With The Red Queen, we’re introduced to a new acquaintance and admirer of Charles Dickens, as she nudges him along in the writing of A Christmas Carol. Some stories live on forever, and maybe it’s fitting that the authors do as well…assuming they keep writing.
Night of the Living Dead Turkey shares an epistolic account of the zombie apocalypse brought about by infected turkeys. Unfortunately, this zoonotic virus might be more dangerous than the standard avian flu.
For proof that revenge isn’t necessarily a dish best served cold, Last Christmas is a tale of infidelity, friendship, and the perfect holiday meal.
And finally, A Contemporary Christmas Carol provides us with a glimpse of Mr. Scrooge’s regrets as he witnesses his former life of wealth and comfort eroded thanks to the interference of ghosts and the writing of Dickens himself. Sometimes our characters aren’t quite as enthusiastic about what we put them through as we portray them as being, and this is a fine example of that.
Theresa Derwin has compiled a terrific little Christmas collection that’s sure to be perfect for the dysfunctional family gathering. I only wish I’d read this a couple of months ago instead of waiting until I’m either two months late or ten months early.

This title was released through http://www.godless.com as part of the AntiChristmas event for December of 2021. You can pick it up for yourself by going to the website or by downloading the Godless app to your mobile device. The link follows:

Season's Creepings by Theresa Derwin

Cleared Away by Regina Watts

Cleared Away is a truly unpleasant story. Were it not for the quality of the writing, I’d suggest there wouldn’t be anything redeeming in these few pages. Unfortunately for all of us, this story was written by Regina Watts, which means there’s plenty of quality in the prose. It should come as little surprise that this story–taking place in Nazi Germany–contains elements of rape, extreme violence, and anti-semitism. The reader should be prepared.
We experience the predations of Major Basilius as he turns his attentions toward a young Jewish girl recently transported to the concentration camp. With Watts at the helm, one should know to expect that there is nothing but brutality and degradation to follow.
There is nothing erotic or arousing in this story. If you’re looking for something like that, you’re in the wrong place, and you’ve picked up the wrong story.
Avoid reading the following if you want to avoid spoilers:
Though we find ourselves continually hoping for something to happen, some vengeance to be enacted against Basilius, Watts tears that hope away with each passing sentence. While this may be less satisfying for the reader, it’s altogether too authentic as far as the outcome is concerned. For most women in the position our young victim finds herself in, there was no salvation to be found. This young woman could have been any of the hundreds–or perhaps thousands–of victims who found themselves raped, abused, and tortured by those in power at concentration camps throughout Europe. Cleared Away is heartbreaking in its brutality and unrelenting, unflinching depiction of the treatment of this poor girl. At the same time, it’s important to remember that this is nothing compared to what was done to so many people in real life.

You can check this out for yourself by going to http://www.godless.com or by downloading the Godless app to your mobile device of choice. The link is below:

Cleared Away by Regina Watts

Beyond the Creek by Nico Bell

Beyond the Creek tells us the story of Alex Foster, a young woman who finally discovered the strength to escape from an abusive relationship when she learned she was pregnant. Starting over with nothing in a small forested town, Alex is desperate to provide a better life for her unborn child. She takes a job as a caregiver for Peter Nox, a recent stroke victim undergoing physical and speech therapy, and it seems like she might be on track to make a go of life away from her abusive ex.
Shrouded in mystery and the subject of rumors and superstitious whispers around town, the Nox family and their sprawling estate might be something more than Alex signed up for. Is it possible that she escaped from one monster in her life only to fall into the web of something far more terrifying? The answer to that question–and many others–may only be discovered beyond the creek on the property. Or are there answers to be found in the secret room beneath the Nox house?
Nico Bell spins a dizzying tale of survival, family, and motherhood that keeps the reader breathless as they follow Alex on her journey into the darkness. Drawing from Greek mythology, Bell provides us with something captivating and unpredictable as she guides us along with Alex to unravel the threads that threaten to bind her to a fate worse than anything we imagined as the story began.

You can purchase this for yourself by going to http://www.godless.com or by downloading the Godless app to your mobile device. The links are below:

Beyond the Creek by Nico Bell

Outrage Level 10 by Lucy Leitner

It should have been a better world. Adam Levine was dead. The oligarchy and patriarchy of the old world order were dismantled by revolutionaries. Direct democracy had replaced the corrupt justice system, allowing all citizens to participate as members of the jury of peers. Unfortunately, the future envisioned in Lucy Leitner’s Outrage Level 10 is not the utopia the people believe it to be.
Alex Malone is a throwback, a former enforcer on the ice with a history of drug abuse and brain damage as mementos of the days when hockey was still a sport. As with all violent and destructive forms of competition, hockey is no more. Malone’s former career has become a ridiculed and maligned memory of the brutality and uncivilized nature of the world before the revolution. There aren’t many options available to someone with Malone’s history, so he becomes a cop, a member of another institution with a tainted history of violence and cruelty, extant in this future America as little more than glorified meter maids and health inspectors.
When Malone’s psychiatrist injects him with a potential cure for his brain damage, Alex initially seems happier, and his memories appear to be returning. But are they his memories?
What unfolds from there is a high-intensity mystery, as Alex and his unlikely partners in crime seek to unravel a sinister plot that strikes at the very heart of the nation and threatens to display the utopian society for the savage and superficial dystopia it is.
Leitner does an excellent job of sharing this cautionary tale of a revolution compromised by not only the flawed and dangerous men guiding it but also by a society engrossed in social media and an unwillingness to recognize the lack of justice associated with the court of public opinion as a substitute for legitimate courtrooms. Differences of opinion are escalated to the point of being perceived as assaults, and “cancel culture” truly becomes a thing as citizens sentence one another to death for crimes against their fragile sensibilities.
Reading Outrage Level 10 reminded me of the way Lenin–and later Stalin–essentially took the reigns of the revolution’s government apparatus and steered the force it gifted them toward their political opponents and enemies of the state who did nothing more than offer dissenting opinions. In all respects, it applies here in America just as effectively. There’s a worthwhile message to be found in these pages, that the revolution doesn’t end when the old structures are taken away. A constant state of vigilance is required to keep the new structures honest and focused on the goals of the revolutionaries.

You can obtain a copy of this book by going to http://www.godless.com or by downloading the Godless app to your mobile device of choice. The links are below:

Outrage Level 10 by Lucy Leitner

The Lesser Dead by Christopher Buehlman, Narrated by Christopher Buehlman

While Christopher Buehlman doesn’t add anything new to the heavily-tread mythology of the vampire, what he does provide us with is a fresh and captivating story with characters that come to life–or undeath–and a gritty 1970s New York that feels tangible, even if we do spend a significant amount of our time in the sewers and subway tunnels beneath the city itself. The admittedly unreliable narration of the tale from Joseph H. Peacock is both entertaining and, at times, depressingly bleak.
A spoiled child from an affluent family in the early 20th century, Joey was accustomed to getting what he wanted, and when his mother insists that the cook who adores him has to go, Joey doesn’t take kindly to the replacement. A successfully implemented plan to remove the new cook from his household triggers the cascade of events that leads to Joey becoming a vampire at the young age of 14.
Forty years later, Joey lives beneath Manhattan with an eclectic assortment of other vampires when he first sees the children mesmerizing their victims on the subway. Concerned with the hazard these child vampires pose, Joey’s undead family begins the hunt for these strange and unexpected creatures. Monstrous, cruel, and driven by a sort of nightmarish glee, the children represent a greater threat than any of the other vampires imagined.
Buehlman weaves a fantastically disarming narrative filled with twists and turns that keep the reader reeling. Characters are developed only for the reader to discover that they have to dispel what they thought they knew. Minor details take on sinister connotations as new information gets revealed.
As a narrator for his book, Buehlman displays a keen talent for accents and speech patterns, thoroughly gifting his characters with distinct personalities that come through the tone and inflection of his voice. I’ve heard lower-quality narration from numerous “professional” narrators and voice actors in the past.

Darker Than You Think by Jack Williamson, Narrated by Jim Meskimen

Jack Williamson managed to craft a different sort of werewolf tale with Darker Than You Think, creating whole new mythology along the way and tethering it all with the cutting-edge science–and pseudoscience–available at the time the story was written. It’s a strange thing that more writers didn’t take his lead and incorporate elements of this mythology in novels written since the 1940s.
The narrative follows Will Barbee, a reporter with close ties to members of a concluded expedition into the Gobi desert. On scene when the leader of the expedition experiences a sudden, suspicious death just as he’s preparing to make a grave announcement regarding their discoveries, Barbee doggedly pursues the story he knows is there. What follows is a disorienting melange of waking life and dreams, the questionable nature of reality, and the blurred line where fact meets fiction.
At its core, Darker Than You Think is a tale of a millennia-long conflict between human beings and a close relative hiding in plain sight while preying on humanity. Centuries before, humankind had thought they won the war; but a rising tide of Homo lycanthropus has been utilizing advances in scientific understanding to build their numbers and grow in strength. Awaiting the emergence of the Child of Night who will lead them to a golden age for their kind, the lycanthropes have only one thing to fear, an ancient weapon humanity can use against them, recovered on the expedition to the deserts of Mongolia.
A race against time ensues as Will Barbee, led by the enchanting April Bell, struggles to discover the nature of this weapon and neutralize the threat it poses.
The pulpy writing style of the times is a refreshing transition from modern literature. Though the identity of the Child of Night was so predictable that any discerning reader will have it figured out shortly after the mystery is proposed, the story is still an enjoyable one. Will Barbee comes across as almost painfully stupid at times, and his denial of what he’s experienced is stretched far beyond what should be credible for even the most disoriented and frightened individual.
Jim Meskimen’s narration is perfectly suited for a book written in the 1940s, sounding almost like the narrator of the radio dramas popular at the time. He captures the feel of the times in a way a lot of narrators might struggle to embody.

Unbortion by Rowland Bercy Jr.

Unbortion begins with a trigger warning sensitive readers will be remiss to ignore. What follows that warning is a description of a late second-trimester surgical abortion procedure, including vacuum aspiration. Skipping past that scene will not spare the reader much, but it will potentially relieve them from the depiction that might be a specific trigger.
From there, Rowland Bercy Jr. takes the reader on a most peculiar and revolting adventure as the discarded and dismantled fetus, tethered by loose nerve fibers, drags itself through the city in search of the host who rejected it. Initially mistaken for spaghetti by a homeless man digging through a dumpster, our vengeance-seeking fetus attempts to take up residence in the man’s abdominal cavity, only to discover it’s an inhospitable place before forcing its way through his rectum and continuing its journey. It gets weirder from there.
In the end–despite the revolting details and the absurdity of the concept–Unbortion is a tale of rash decisions made out of fear, the unbreakable bond between a mother and her child, and forgiveness.
The anti-abortion sentiments underpinning the narrative made me think that Rowland has missed an opportunity by not pushing this book on the most vocal and ardent members of the anti-abortion crowd. For all of its extreme horror elements, I can’t help but suspect that he could manage to find a ready and willing audience for this book in a subsection of that demographic. I could even imagine a world wherein some of those people would push to have copies of Unbortion sitting in the waiting rooms and lobbies of places where abortions are conducted, in an attempt to change the minds of those intending to undergo such procedures. I’m only half-joking about that because he could be sitting on a virtual gold mine there.
While I’m not in the anti-abortion camp myself, that doesn’t make this any less enjoyable or the underlying message any less poignant.

The Ruins by Scott Smith, Narrated by Patrick Wilson

Scott Smith pulls no punches with The Ruins, delivering an increasingly disorienting barrage of horrors until the reader arrives at what can be the only conclusion this story could have. There will be no ersatz happy ending shoehorned into the tale Smith shares with the progressively uncomfortable reader. I must rip that bandage off right away. The Ruins is a horror story that mingles body horror with the terror of isolation and the unknowable.
While on vacation in Mexico, two couples befriend a German tourist who was on a holiday of his own with his brother. When Mathias’s brother doesn’t return from an archaeological dig he’d ventured off on, the two couples and another tourist–one of a trio of Greeks who speak no English–join Mathias in his search. The journey takes them deep into the jungle of the Yucatan, far from the beaches and resorts crowded with revelers.
Following a crudely drawn map, the group manages to find themselves approaching a vine-covered hill where Mayan locals accost them for unknown reasons, though seemingly attempting to keep the tourists from venturing any closer to the mound across the clearing. When one of the tourists backs into the vines while trying to capture a photo of the language barrier-hampered exchange taking place, the Mayans’ attempt to keep the six of them from approaching the hill transforms into a merciless bid to keep the tourists from venturing back across the clearing.
As misfortune and decreasing odds of survival strain the group’s optimism and belief they’ll walk away from this misadventure unscathed, it gradually becomes clear that they’re facing something insidious and terrifying that defies comprehension. Discovering the truth behind the Mayans’ desperate need to keep the six of them confined where they are, threatens to push the group of friends and acquaintances beyond the limits of what they can endure.
Scott Smith does an excellent job of balancing the threats, making the experience feel as claustrophobic and intense as he can without placing the reader in similar circumstances. Between the Mayans patrolling the perimeter of the hill, the diminishing supplies, the environment itself, and the terrifying life inhabiting the mound, it’s always up in the air which hazard will prove to be the deadliest.
Patrick Wilson’s narration is both professional and competent, effectively differentiating the characters and articulating the narrative. He also successfully tackles Mathias’s accent and aloof character without dropping the ball.

Zola by D. E. McCluskey

Anthony Zola was a terrible person. One need only look at the cruel joke of a name he saddled his only son with, Gordon. Gordon Zola, a childish gag and a pointed jab at his wife’s obsessive cheese consumption. Unfortunately for Andrea and Gordon Zola, that horrible appellation is the least of Anthony’s transgressions against his wife and child.
Years of abuse and manipulation from her husband had compressed Andrea’s life to the extent that her world revolved entirely around her monster of a husband and her socially isolated son. Just as she finally began transforming herself into a woman she could recognize when she looked in the mirror, a horrific discovery sent her life spiraling out of control. Anthony’s bonding time with their son has a far more sinister purpose than Andrea could have imagined, and the only solution is a drastic one.
Unhealthy codependence and unspeakable appetites become the crux of mother and son’s relationship, inexorably drawing Andrea and Gordon into further segregation from the world around them. As barbaric solutions become the only way the two of them can survive, Andrea and Gordon devolve into a bestial existence of filth and isolation that escalates until the heartbreakingly inevitable conclusion.
McCluskey provides readers with a poignant tale of family and intense psychological trauma through a medium rife with absurdity and graphic depictions of revolting inhumanity. Zola is a coming-of-age story for the perpetual adolescent; a depiction of acute arrested development in the form of Gordon Zola, a boy who grew into a man without ever having a chance to develop any life for himself under the aberrant safekeeping of his traumatized mother.
As easy as it might be to write this story off as being a steadily intensifying gross-out narrative–and there’s a lot to gross the reader out–there’s a whole lot of sadness and distressing truth to be found in these pages as well. McCluskey tells us the tale of a man who never had a chance to be anything but the monstrosity he became, all because of a father’s cruelty and a mother’s misguided love.

You can find this title at http://www.godless.com or by downloading the Godless app to your mobile device of choice. The link is below:

Zola by D.E. McCluskey