Gilbert M. Stack's Blog, page 27

Occultober Day 26 Relic by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child

Occultober Day 26 Relic by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child

There are all kinds of scary, and Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child are masters at building the creepiest kinds of tension.

 

Relic starts out in the Amazon where a scientific expedition has just gone badly awry. It has split up just as one of the scientists is convinced that critical discoveries are being made. He believes he has discovered a tribe thought to be extinct and discovered a critical relic of their religious beliefs—a strangely horrific idol. In addition, one of his two remaining companions has disappeared, and he decides to send his third companion back to civilization with their discoveries and his notes while he searches for the lost man. We stay with him long enough for him to meet his end.

 

The novel then follows the crate of discoveries to a warehouse in South America where something kills a man in a rather frightening scene. We then move to NYC and the Museum of Natural History where more murders follow, the police become involved, and FBI Agent Pendergast makes his appearance. The first third of the story is all about establishing that a killer is loose in the area of the museum, quite possibly even living in the unmapped subterranean tunnels beneath the six-block edifice. It’s very well done. The museum leadership only cares about their multi-million-dollar exhibit that is about to occur, and they are doing everything they can to frustrate the investigation out of fear that it will generate bad publicity.

 

The second third takes the novel in a horror or science fiction direction as evidence begins to pile up that the murderer may not be human. This is really well done and continues to flesh out the cast. We have a grad student, her wheelchair bound professor, a curator in charge of the exhibit, a journalist working on a book on the exhibit, a bunch of side characters whom one suspects might be wearing red shirts, and finally, the easy to hate museum leadership. As more information is uncovered despite the active efforts of the museum leadership, a very dark and scary picture begins to develop that suggests that the opening night of the exhibit will have more in common with ringing the dinner bell for a monster than creating a high society social event.

 

Finally, in the third section, everything goes to hell as our heroes’ fears prove very correct and disaster strikes the exhibit. All of that groundwork pays dividends here in a very fast paced ending in which death and mayhem are everywhere and you’re really not certain who will live or die. But that’s still not the best part of the novel. That comes in the very last chapter where an alternate, even more horrific explanation of the museum beast is put forth, and that, quite happily, sets up a sequel which is every bit as powerful.

 

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...

 

If you’re interested in Relic, why not join the discussion on my author page at Facebook? https://www.facebook.com/GilbertStack...

 

 

Occultober Day 25 High Above the Waters by Gilbert M. Stack

Occultober Day 25 High Above the Waters by Gilbert M. Stack

Marcus Hunter won’t stay dead; he stalks his bridge all bloody red.

Throws people off on stormy nights; and smiles as they scream in fright.

 

As a pregnant fifteen-year-old, Autumn Fields learned firsthand that the town ghost was more than a creepy legend. Rejected by her boyfriend and beaten bloody by her father, Autumn climbed out onto the old railroad bridge at the edge of town to kill herself, but a mysterious figure talked her into running away instead. Sixteen years later, she’s come back to Prospect with her daughter to learn if there really is such a thing as a ghost on Hunter’s Bridge…

 

Ghosts are not a creature you usually find at the center of an urban fantasy novel—which might explain why I chose to put one at the heart of my book, High Above the Waters. The novel is a standalone story that intersects sixty years later with some of the characters and events of my Pembroke Steel series. It was a lot of fun to write, and it continues to haunt me years after I finished it.

 

High Above the Waters is available on Amazon and Kindle Unlimited.

 

Https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07...

 

If you’re interested in High Above the Waters, why not join the discussion on my author page at Facebook? https://www.facebook.com/GilbertStack...

 

Occultober Day 24 Grave Reservations by Cherie Priest

Occultober Day 24 Grave Reservations by Cherie Priest

My next Occultober pick is not spooky, but it is a great example of what can be done with a little paranormal psychic activity. It focuses on a psychic travel agent who gets herself into a little bit of trouble when she changes her client’s flight reservations without telling him. He’s really upset—until the plane crashes. Then she has some explaining to do. And since the client is a cop who has a cold case that could use a good psychic, the rest is history.

 

The mystery itself is something you can find in any of a thousand books, but it’s the clever use of the psychic talent that makes this story stand out and explains why I picked it for Occultober. After hiding her abilities her whole life, the psychic is starting to come out of her closet by singing at her local bar in an event she calls Clairvoyant Karaoke. It’s a cute idea that helps to advance the story. People in the audience ask her to sing a song and she chooses one that always proves to be meaningful for them. It was both a sweet idea and fun to watch her starting to understand the limits of her ability.

 

There’s nothing profound in this novel, and that’s a relief. What Cherie Priest gives the reader is an enjoyable quirky mystery with just a touch of romance.

 

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08...

 

If you’re interested in Grave Reservations, why not join the discussion on my author page at Facebook? https://www.facebook.com/GilbertStack...

 

Occultober Day 23 The Junkie Quatrain by Peter Clines

Occultober Day 23 The Junkie Quatrain by Peter Clines

Peter Clines has earned his zombie spurs with his superhero zombie universe series, Ex. Now in the Junkie Quatrain he has created a whole new zombie apocalypse which he introduces in 4 sharp novellas. There’s a lot to love here, so let me take you through them point by point.

 

First, the zombies are great. They aren’t the walking dead, but the shattered remains of a virus-ridden humanity. They’re fast and they will chase you until they drop from exhaustion. They are ravenous, eating anything that moves. They have a pack mentality—but not every zombie gets to be part of the pack and they turn mercilessly on their own at the first sign of injury or other weakness. And best of all, Clines realizes this is not sustainable. Hunger and the elements will eventually end this zombie threat (or at least greatly reduce it). And because it was caused by a virus it is potentially curable. All of this makes these zombies feel very different from most other series.

 

Second, civilization hasn’t fully collapsed. The CDC is still working, trying to find a cure. Enclaves have developed. At one point, we learn that the U.S. is looking at 92 million deaths—horrific, but not The Walking Dead. There is still hope that civilization can be saved or at least salvaged.

 

Third, Clines gives us great characters in each of the novellas. These are people we can sympathize with (and in at least one case that was very surprising). They also have challenges that make sense, and it was easy to imagine myself in their positions in most of the cases.

 

Best, however, was the way that each of the novellas intersected with the others. This really pushed this collection over the top into a simply great story and shows how thoroughly Clines thought everything out. It also means, however that the story does not advance very far chronologically. Clines better be planning to write volume 2.

 

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...

 

If you’re interested in The Junkie Quatrain, why not join the discussion on my author page at Facebook? https://www.facebook.com/GilbertStack...

 

Occultober Day 22 The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving

Occultober Day 22 The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving

As we start the final week of Occultober, I want to spotlight one of the first spooky stories most Americans ever encounter—and one of the earliest written in the United States—The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving. My generation probably knows this story best because of the Disney animated cartoon, but the actual tale is better, more sophisticated if not genuinely scary. It’s the tale of Ichabod Crane, a geeky superstitious schoolteacher, who runs afoul of a physically tough local man and his gang of friends when both men decide to woo the daughter of a wealthy farmer. Things do not end well for Ichabod, but was he the victim of his rival or of the legendary headless horseman?

 

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07...

 

If you’re interested in The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, why not join the discussion on my author page at Facebook? https://www.facebook.com/GilbertStack...

 

Occultober Day 21 Deadman's Road by Joe R. Lansdale

Occultober Day 21 Deadman’s Road by Joe R. Lansdale

To close out the third week of Occultober we have an excellent collection of Weird West style stories about a minister who travels about doing God’s will by stamping out supernatural evil. There are five stories in the collection:

 

Dead in the West: This is the longest and best developed of the tales. It introduces Reverend Mercer, a gunman with demons of his own who is angry at God even as he does the lord’s work by stomping out genuine evil. He’s a likeable character, even while his very harsh view of the world is a bit disturbing. After some introductory material, the story shoots into high gear when the dead start to rise and prey on the townsfolk. It’s just a little bit of damage around the perimeter of the town the first night, but it is obvious things are going to get much worse for the unsuspecting town. Mercer learns that the town he is in was cursed because it murdered a native American medicine man and his African-American wife. The medicine man curses the town and pulls a demon into himself. He kills the guilty, but doesn’t stop there, until only Mercer, a young boy, a doctor and his daughter and the town’s preacher stand in the way of the demon’s vengeance. It’s a very good story.

 

Deadman’s Road: Mercer runs into another curse—a strange demonic possession with weird black bees. Once again, its’ a good story that went in a slightly different direction than I expected.

 

The Gentleman’s Hotel: In this story, Mercer fights werewolves in a hotel full of ghosts. The ghosts really give the story a unique feel for a werewolf tale. It’s a good take on a familiar theme.

 

Crawling Sky: Mercer saves a man from being tortured because a Cthulhu-esq character killed his wife. He then goes to deal with the monster. Like all the stories in this collection, it’s a lot of fun, even if there is a little more exposition than the others.

 

The Dark Down There: Goblins are in the mines and Mercer has to dig them out. But the best part was actually Mercer dealing with the miners before he reached the technical monster. A fine conclusion to a fine series.

 

Mercer makes an excellent protagonist for this style of story. He’s got major flaws, is angry at God, and still does what he perceives to be God’s will in seeking out and smiting evil.

 

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08...

 

If you’re interested in Deadman’s Road (also called Deadman’s Crossing), why not join the discussion on my author page at Facebook? https://www.facebook.com/GilbertStack...

 

Occultober Day 20 Masks by Gilbert M. Stack

Occultober Day 20 Masks by Gilbert M. Stack

This morning, on the twentieth day of Occultober, I’d like to introduce my newest novel and the fourth book in my Preternatural series, Masks.

 

The vast majority of urban fantasies follow women who find themselves enmeshed in the world of the supernatural that forces them to discover or develop special abilities that they possess (often not knowing about them as the opening novel begins). They might be shape changers, witches, vampires, or have the power to raise the dead. I decided to go another route with Preternatural. The stories are told almost completely from the perspective of two individuals without any magical powers. One is Joanna Donovan, a tough as nails, extremely smart, police officer who was kicked out of Chicago for showing bias against vampires when she survived their attempt to murder her by shooting them with blessed ammunition. The other is Sam Winter, a nineteen-year-old girl who’s trying to raise money for college by taking photographs of the all-too-frequent preternatural incidents that happen in her small town. So, unlike most series, the heroines of Preternatural don’t have any special advantages when it comes to surviving the wide array of dangers they face in each book. They have to do it the old-fashioned way with brains and courage and skill.

 

In the previous novel, Hadrian’s Well survived the zombie apocalypse, but just because the dead are back in their graves doesn’t mean life is getting easier there. Record rainfalls have resulted in widespread flooding and something in the water is killing people. Or is it in the water? Part of the problem in Hadrian’s Well is that the preternatural isn’t always what it seems. Many wear masks that let them move about in human society like they’re normal people. Human threats also abound as politics within and without the town handicap Undersheriff Donovan as she struggles to track the monsters down. As the body count rises, will Donovan and her understrength department be able to look beyond the masks and stem another tide of terror?

 

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0B...

 

If you’re interested in Masks, why not join the discussion on my author page at Facebook? https://www.facebook.com/GilbertStack...

 

 

Occultober Day 19 Make Me No Grave by Hayley Stone

Occultober Day 19 Make Me No Grave by Hayley Stone

The Wild West is home to a particular style of western in which magic and the unworldly exist. That’s the tone of Make Me No Grave, a powerful western about a rigidly proper lawman and a lady bandit known as the bloodthirsty “Grizzly Queen”. The story opens with the lawman having captured the bandit queen and having troubles with a local sheriff and his mob who want to lynch her rather than bring her to trial. Matters get bloody and the lawman’s life is saved by his prisoner, embarking the reader on a strange journey in which I rarely had any idea where the story was going, but still found it totally compelling.

 

So, there’s a little magic, a dead president, an assassin, murdered civilians, violent posses, native peoples in need of help, and rival gangs spicing up this story. Through it all, this strange relationship between the lawman and the most notorious woman in the west continues to develop, and moral lines blurs as the reader tries to figure out if this a tale of justice or a tale of redemption or something else entirely. Whatever it ultimately is (and we do find out by the end of the novel) it’s a tremendously interesting book.

 

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07...

 

If you’re interested in Make Me No Grave, why not join the discussion on my author page at Facebook? https://www.facebook.com/GilbertStack...

 

Occultober Day 18 Trail of the Hana K'ilo by Channing Whitaker

Occultober Day 18 Trail of the Hana K’ilo by Channing Whitaker

In Occultober 2020 I spotlighted One Night in Drake Mansion, the first book in the Skeptical Detective series in which Whitaker’s hero explores whether or not a famous haunted house is in fact haunted. The second book in the series takes a very different tone heading off into the remote regions of Alaska as Harlan Holt reluctantly agrees to look into the disappearance of a colleague whose “academic” specialty he despises. The missing man was obsessed with proving that cryptids exist and goes missing in Alaska while trying to find a water beast known in legend as the Hana K’ilo. A local blog insists that several disappearances in the region are the result of the Hana K’ilo hunting. Harlan doesn’t want to be involved, but can’t turn away from the mystery. So, he changes his plans to take his girlfriend to Hawaii over the winter break and instead brings her to remote Alaska without telling her why they are really going there.

 

There are tons of good elements to this story. One of the things Whitaker does best is introduce many legends (all with different names) that could be inspired by the same cryptid—the Hana K’ilo—but could also just be simple “scare kids away from the water” style tales. He also has a group of tourists and staff at this lodge who all make you wonder what’s really going on with them. Finally, he is very convincing in his details of the danger of winter in Alaska, and it is easy to imagine that this rough and freezing terrain is going to be very important to the conclusion of the story.

 

At the heart of the novel are a series of very complex secrets and relationships that Harlan has to navigate—including the one with his girlfriend. I have to admit that the clues were all there, but I was shocked by how they all fit together. It was a very satisfying—if sometimes slow moving—mystery.

 

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07...

 

If you’re interested in Trail of the Hana K’ilo, why not join the discussion on my author page at Facebook? https://www.facebook.com/GilbertStack...

 

Occultober Day 17 Cthulhu Reloaded by David Conyers

Occultober Day 17 Cthulhu Reloaded by David Conyers

Cthulhu is back as Occultober continues with this particularly well thought out modern series of adventures. Conyers has given a lot of thought as to how Cthulhu and the Elder Gods might interact with a modern society. What makes this book so good is that it is comprised of several short novella that follow the same character, an Australian Intelligence Officer, over the course of a couple of decades of his career. We watch him discover the other worldly, and get pulled deeper and deeper into the insanity. Each story is interesting in and of itself, but as they progress and the conspiracies grow and the monsters and their manipulations get revealed, everything becomes so much more troubling. Earth is on a terrible path toward destruction and it’s not clear that anything can divert it from its doom.

 

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B09...

 

If you’re interested in Cthuhu Reloaded, why not join the discussion on my author page at Facebook? https://www.facebook.com/GilbertStack...