Gilbert M. Stack's Blog, page 79

Occultober Day 28 Cryptid Zoo by Gerry Griffiths

Occultober Day 28 Cryptid Zoo by Gerry Griffiths

Gerry Griffiths knows how to set up a horror story. In this novel about an eccentric zoo featuring legendary creatures like the sasquatch, the thunderbird, and the kraken in a Jurassic Park style environment, the first half of the novel is all about creating that feeling of uh-oh. As our main family tours the exhibits and the guide happily talks about how this animal is super bright, likes to solve problems, and can survive out of the water for short periods of time, the reader is happily imagining how all of those precious little talents are going to turn into a nightmare for the characters in about fifty pages. It’s a tremendous amount of fun, and Griffiths sets the stage for a couple dozen of these bizarre creatures to get loose and wreak havoc on our cast of tourists and zoo employees.

 

When the animals begin their inevitable escape the tension grows dramatically. The first deaths begin to occur, followed by the first narrow escapes, until finally the expected chaos is rolling across the zoo and our various groups of heroes are struggling valiantly to survive. I only have two complaints. The first is that I just can’t imagine that any zoo would set up its electronic locks to open if the power went out. I mean, think about that for a moment. Zoos do not want the lions and tigers (or in this case, the flying snakes and the Chupacabra) escaping every time there was a power outage. And it wasn’t necessary. The first breakouts had already occurred in completely believable ways. Those monsters could have ended up freeing the others as a natural result of their destructive behavior.

 

My second complaint is that the novel ends too quickly. There is a ton going on and it’s all really interesting and I would have liked to see a lot more of it. The cryptids were already introduced and I could have happily read another hundred pages of our cast of heroes surviving their encounters with them. But then, many of the monsters escape into the wild so maybe Griffiths ended it where he did so he could have a sequel.

 

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Occultober Day 27: Cupcakes, Trinkets and Other Deadly Magic by Meghan Ciana Doidge

Occultober Day 27: Cupcakes, Trinkets and Other Deadly Magic by Meghan Ciana Doidge

Doidge has a lot of fun with the reader in this first book of her Dowser series, playing with the urban fantasy tradition of mixing romance with the genre to set the reader up for some very big surprises. In doing so she creates a vibrant setting mixing witches, werewolves, vampires and other supernatural creatures. Her heroine, Jade, is an extremely weak witch who is more interested in making cupcakes than magic. She’s bullied mercilessly by her sister—but doesn’t seem to recognize what is happening. And she’s unintentionally become a person of interest into a secret investigation into the death of several werewolves.

 

The story is frankly a lot of fun, but it took me a while to truly accept Jade’s character. I suspect that, like me, the average reader will figure out who the bad guys are and what they’re up to within the first few chapters, but Jade is really slow to put the pieces together. However, I decided by the end of the book that that was the result of really good characterization on the part of the author. I don’t want to give away the ending, so I’ll try to be indirect and subtle. The problem is that we often blind ourselves to the truth of those around us and while frustrating, it is actually very realistic to let our preconceptions force us to overlook what’s really happening.

 

Doidge has a nice setup here for future stories which will hopefully explore the mysterious half of Jade’s heritage and help the reader understand how it interweaves with the trinkets she is constantly crafting. It’s a mystery I would very much like to see resolved.

 

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Occultober Day 26 Life and Other Dreams by Richard Dee

Occultober Day 26 Life and Other Dreams by Richard Dee

I’m not quite certain that this is truly an Occultober story, but it’s strange enough—shall we say, magical enough, that I thought I would go ahead and include it. It certainly is an excellent story whether it is technically supernatural in nature or not.

 

In fact, it’s two stories in one, mixing an excellent sf tale with a contemporary psychological drama. Rick dreams when he goes to sleep—that sounds pretty ordinary until you realize he’s dreaming another man’s life in extraordinary detail. That man happens to live six hundred years in the future on another planet and beginning to end of the novel, you’ll never be certain if that future is real or not—because the evidence clearly points in both directions.

 

What is clear is that Rick’s jealous wife can’t handle her husband’s dreams and invents a wild fantasy that they are proof that he is being unfaithful to her. She’s a complex and highly manipulative woman who happily takes their marriage off the deep end to validate her delusion. As she wrecks Rick’s life in this world, his dream life faces catastrophe as well. But are the two sets of events connected? And if they are, can Rick save both the women he loves on both planets. I think this one will continue to trouble you after you finish reading it.

 

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Occultober Day 25 Blood Ties by Gilbert M. Stack

Occultober Day 25 Blood Ties by Gilbert M. Stack

One of the things that made Dracula so effective is that it began by taking an English man out of his normal world and placing him in what was effectively another world—Transylvania, which was described in almost medieval terms. I wanted to recapture that sense of helplessness that comes from being dropped into a foreign environment way outside a person’s comfort zone when I wrote Blood Ties. So, I take a capable lawyer with some baggage, throw in a grieving son who is not thinking very clearly, and rip their world apart in the ancestral home of the paranormal adventure. My tag line for this one is: In the quest for immortality, a relative is a terrible thing to waste.

 

Here’s the blurb: It seemed like such an easy case. All attorney Liz Dunn had to do was escort Ryan Hart to meet his long lost uncle in the tiny country of Carpathia on the Transylvanian border. Ryan stood to gain a ten-million-dollar estate. Liz wanted the hefty check that would keep her law firm in the black. But Ryan’s dying uncle, the enigmatic Stefan Carpathios, planned to get something far more sinister in return. In an ancient land where legends come to life, Liz is about to discover that the world is much more complex than she believed and a blood tie can be an exceedingly dangerous thing.

 

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Occultober Day 24 Deep Night by Ambrose Ibsen

Occultober Day 24 Deep Night by Ambrose Ibsen

Deep Night is a supernatural detective story that plays fair with the reader even as it offers a healthy portion of make-the-hairs-stand-up-on-the-back-of-your-neck terror. As with all good horror novels, author Ambrose Ibsen builds the reader’s feelings of unease slowly and with a brilliant mechanism that absolutely everyone can relate to. A woman is awakened in the middle of the night by a tapping on her window. Just think about that for a moment. It’s almost midnight and she’s shaken from her sleep by a quiet tap tap tap on her bedroom windowpane When she builds the courage to peak outside, no one is at her window, but she catches sight of a figure watching her from the street. She quite sensibly calls the police, but the responding officer doesn’t find anything. The next night, matters progress further and when the police again come up empty handed, the woman goes in search of a private investigator to discover who is harassing her.

 

Enter Harlan Ulrich, formerly of Toledo. He’s lazy and uninterested in the case until his landlord increases his rent and he realizes if he doesn’t earn some money fast he’s going to lose his office. It was in many ways an unfortunate way to introduce the character because it made Ulrich initially unlikeable. We, the reader, knows this woman desperately needs help and he seems uncaring about her predicament. Fortunately, Ulrich quickly wins the reader back by sticking with the case when it immediately goes bad. You see, Ulrich quickly uncovers evidence that the client’s nocturnal visitor is not human.

 

From this point forward, the novel revolves around the investigation into why the client is being harassed by a supernatural creature. The creature’s appearance is quickly connected to a painting the woman has just acquired so Ulrich opens his investigation by looking into the painting’s origins and how it came into the woman’s possession. This investigation did not take the direction I initially assumed it would, and that’s always a good thing. Not all of the twists and turns in the rest of the novel were as surprising, but when an author fairly provides the clues to a mystery, he has to risk readers putting the pieces together faster than his detective does.

 

This novel is boosted by the excellent vocal talents of narrator, Kyle Tait. He provides excellent pacing and clearly discernable voices for all the characters. His low voice and quiet style added significantly to the tension Ibsen builds in the story as the scope of the supernatural problem is uncovered. If you like solid detective stories with a healthy (or should that be “unhealthy”) dose of the supernatural, you’ll enjoy Deep Night. I intend to read the next mystery in this series.

 

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Occultober Day 23 Bad Things by Jasper Tripp

Occultober Day 23 Bad Things by Jasper Tripp

Aliens return to Occult-tober with Jasper Tripp’s Bad Things. If you decide to read this novel, be prepared to fasten your seatbelt because you’re in for a wild ride. Aliens have come to the town of Slagstone, Montana and it’s up to the small-town sheriff, his cheerleading coach girlfriend, and a family of crazy survivalists to save the whole world from alien conquest. There frankly isn’t a lot to this plot that you haven’t seen a dozen times before, but Tripp puts it together with lovable characters and a heck of a lot of action. It’s loads of fun from start to finish and I’m very glad I read it.

 

I wanted to give this novel five stars for the sheer pleasure of the experience but the truth is there are a couple of flaws in the book that make me hold it down to four. The first is that the way the aliens propagate never really makes sense to me. I don’t want to say more because it would spoil a surprise toward the end of the book, but it seemed to me that the rules for making more aliens that were setup early on are broken near the end and that doesn’t sit well with me.

 

My second problem was much more serious. There are a lot of encounters with the big bad guy across the room while our heroes are shooting up the aliens. They identify him. They watch him do bad things. They exchange meaningful glances. But nobody ever takes a shot at him and that doesn’t make a lot of sense. Since he’s needed for the end of the story, I wouldn’t have minded him ducking out of the way, or one of the other aliens taking the hit for him, but it’s hard to understand why nobody tired to send a bullet his way in multiple scenes.

 

I think these problems are serious, but they only slightly tarnish a really fun story. So if you’re looking for a lot of hearty action in the alien invasion subgenre, you’ll be glad you read Bad Things.

 

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Occultober Day 22: Hotel Megalodon by Rich Chesler

Occultober Day 22: Hotel Megalodon by Rich Chesler

On Day 22, we leave the supernatural for the pre-historic intruding upon the present day. I read Hotel Megaldon because the blurb reminded me of the old disaster movies—The Poseidon Adventure and The Towering Inferno—and I was right. Hotel Megalodon is a very fancy, one of a kind, underwater hotel built on a reef in Fiji. Unfortunately, the building of the hotel right on the edge of an extremely deep underwater chasm has attracted the attention of a sixty-foot beast that the world thought had died out sixty million years ago. What follows is a sort of Jaws on steroids. Chesler had me on the edge of my seat from the very beginning as the prehistoric shark begins making its first appearances and James White, the owner of the new hotel, refuses to believe that anything is going wrong with his grand opening.

 

White makes a great villain for this story—in many ways much better than the megalodon who is only a force of nature—not evil. Even as disaster strikes and people start to die, White is more interested in covering up the problem than in saving people’s lives. Worse, he has no problem trying to murder, Coco, our heroine to further his schemes. Every bit of the attempt to rescue the hotel guests is complicated by White’s sociopathic nature and it adds substantially to the stress.

 

Coco makes a great heroine. She’s intelligent and brave if sometimes more than a bit rash and foolish. It’s easy to care what happens to her because she cares what’s happening to everyone. In fact, she over cares at a couple of points and it is my major problem with the story. After nearly dying helping several people escape to the shore, Coco herself gets free and immediately goes back to the hotel to see if she can help anyone else. By this time the hotel is cut off and underwater, so returning wasn’t easy, but that’s not my problem with her move. She makes no effort to alert people to what’s happening. Yes, there have been some reports from the guests she rescued, but one would think that a marine biologist and employee of the hotel might be more successful in raising public attention to the danger the remaining guests and staff are facing. There is never any talk about getting naval help (even if it were to say, no ships could arrive for forty-eight hours) and not nearly enough attention given to the reporters who are on scene trying to understand what’s gone wrong.

 

That being said, this is an action-packed adventure which gives 99% of its attention to the action. The ending was also not at all what I was expecting, but I liked it very much. If you think Jaws isn’t scary enough to keep you out of the water, you might want to book a room at Hotel Megalodon.

 

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Occultober Day 21 Zombies and Chainsaws by Mike Evans

Occultober Day 21 Zombies and Chainsaws by Mike Evans

For Day 21, we return to the zombie subgenre. Question: What do you get when you combine an illegal chemical dump in a graveyard and a group of expert tree removal specialists? Answer: Mike Evans’ descriptively titled novel, Zombies and Chainsaws—an action-packed extravaganza of four men trying to fight their way out of the zombie apocalypse. I’ve read a great many novels built upon the zombie theme and for sheer fun, this one stacked up well. As with most books in this genre, I knew the plot before I listened to the first words of the story and judged the book by the three-fold test of character, action, and realism. Evans goes to town on the first two tests. His characters worked for me. Many were sympathetic, which meant I cared what happened to them, and others work as people I hoped the zombies would get their hands on. The action was also top notch. Chainsaws don’t appear in these books that often and Evans convinced me that they were the Excalibers of anti-zombie weaponry. It was only in the “realism” category that the novel had any problems. For example, I suspect that one call in the early 1980s to the CDC claiming that zombies are over-running a small midwestern town would not have been taken seriously—but ultimately it’s a small complaint. If you want a fast-paced, action-filled, zombie novel that requires absolutely no thinking to enjoy, you should take a look at Zombies and Chainsaws.

 

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Occultober Day 20 The Man from Rome by Dylan James Quarles

Occultober Day 20 The Man from Rome by Dylan James Quarles

The Man from Rome is one of the most unique paranormal novels I have ever read. It’s a story about deep and abiding hate. The kind of hate that only grows over time and finds no price too great if it holds the promise of vengeance. It is perhaps ironic that the triggering incident of this raging animosity was a very small act of rejection.

 

In the ancient past, before the humble beginnings of the city of Rome, two immortals met. The first (the goddess, Diana) attempted to seduce the other (he who will become the Man from Rome) who drove her away with the warning that she and her kind (i.e. the other gods) should stay away from what will become Rome. Instead of listening, Diana decides to destroy the man who threatened her. Some three thousand or more years later, she is still trying. But this time she has a particularly insidious plan…

 

This whole book felt like a spy-thriller to me, but one with supernatural characters at least two of whom are close to immortal. The cast is wonderful. The Man from Rome himself is properly enigmatic and occasionally extraordinarily frightening. His enemies are intriguing as well, and the weapon they have chosen to use on him—taken out of the pages of mythology—was absolutely fascinating. The humans drawn into the conflict are both extremely sympathetic as they seek to be something more than sacrificial pawns. The plot was extremely well thought out, the action is pulse-pounding, and the mystery intriguing. And while I knew very little about the geography of the city of Rome before I started reading, the author succeeded in making me feel transported to that ancient city. If you’re looking for a fast-paced adventure with a lot of twists and turns, I think you’ll enjoy The Man from Rome.

 

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Occultober Day 19 I Was a Teenaged Weredeer and An American Weredeer in Michigan by C.T. Phipps and Michael Suttkus

Occultober Day 19 I Was a Teenaged Weredeer and An American Weredeer in Michigan by C.T. Phipps and Michael Suttkus

Urban fantasy loves its lycanthropes, but I had never come across a weredeer before. I mean, take a moment to think about it—deer are not carnivorous and so just don’t come to mind when you think about ravenous half-man-half-animal monsters seeking human flesh. And—the weredeer don’t do that in this novel either, but they still make for a fascinating protagonist in a world where the carnivorous types of were-creatures also exist.

 

The setting is also well thought out with different sorts of were-creatures living together in a world that includes vampires, ghosts, old gods, and lots of monsters. (I suppose I should consider were-creatures monsters too, but since the heroine is one, they don’t come off feeling that way.) This is a world where something new is being discovered at every turn and where the crime is deeply intertwined with a highly credible setting.

 

I Was a Teenaged Weredeer is a fast-moving romp that mixes a very serious, thoroughly engaging mystery with a lot of snarky teenaged attitude and about five million pop references that really solidified the setting and the story. An American Weredeer in Michigan gives you more of the same. Honestly, I couldn’t figure out how Jane was going to get out of all the messes she wandered into, but the cast is so much fun—especially the gun with the angel in it—that I wouldn’t have minded her taking twice as long to resolve the problems in both novels. Phipps and Suttkus have found a wonderfully light-hearted way to deal with some very dark issues and I think it’s this tone that puts this series head and shoulders above so many other urban fantasies. I’ve just never read anything else in the genre that feels like these stories.

 

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