Michael Patrick Hicks's Blog, page 14

You Can Still Be My Patron - Just Not On Patreon

A few weeks ago, after a months of contemplation, I finally decided to deactivate my Patreon account. So, in case you were wondering what happened to it, there you go. There was no drama, no maliciousness, none of that jazz. The reason I closed out my Patreon page was simply a lack of time to maintain it and a lot of personal guilt resulting from that lack of time.

When you start a Patreon, people donate money to your cause. They support you because they value your work as a creator, and that's certainly a wonderful, warm, fuzzy feeling to have. Each month, creators receive the hard-earned cash of their patrons, and it helps them create more things, put food on their table, keep the lights on, and in some remarkable cases provides them with a primary source of income to live off of. While plenty of patrons support artists simply because they value particular favorite creators, it's also with the expectation of rewards. I had defined various levels of support alongside various rewards, like an archive of all previously published works, exclusive behind the scenes stuff, excerpt, book cover reveals, that kind of stuff.

Toward the end of 2017, my wife and I welcomed our second child. Since then, time has been at a premium. Simply put, I don't have as much time for writing as I would like, and creating anything additional is simply out of the question. I also work full-time, which means I'm a part-time author...and nowadays that means really, really, really, really part-time. My writing schedule has withered down to about one day a week, and I'm lucky if I can count on having enough time to write a thousand words during that single session. This means it takes me forever to finish anything nowadays.

Having a Patreon account was simply one more avenue of maintenance. I had people paying me for goods I simply was not delivering. I was letting down my patrons, my supporters, those readers who liked my work well enough to pony up extra money each and every month for various additional rewards. I was failing them. Just logging into Patreon became a bit of a guilt-trip for me, knowing that I wasn't delivering for those on the higher end of the reward scale. I had no book cover reveals, because the big project I've been working on, for more than a year now, still isn't finished. The rough draft is almost there, and then it will be on to editing, and then cover design. That's a long way off. Even editing is a long time away, because that costs a significant amount of money to cover. 

All the rewards I had listed were easier to fulfill in 2017 when I only had one kid running wild and I had a bank of work to carry me through the year. In 2018, those same rewards are impossible for me to fulfill. I have no bank of work left, and no time to create additional new works to reward my patrons with. And yet they stuck with me, gave me their money...and I felt fucking terrible. I was taking money for nothing, and that's simply not in my work ethic. I was feeling guilty for not having enough time to follow through on my commitment to them. 

So, knowing that I was not going to be able to provide them with anything for the foreseeable future, and feeling pretty shitty about that, it was time to pull the plug on Patreon. While it's a wonderful resource, it was simply impossible for a part-time author like myself to maintain it. If ever I am fortunate enough to go full-time, I may consider rebooting my Patreon, but that's a long ways off.

If you were a Patreon supporter of mine, or are merely wondering the best ways to support my work these days, well here's how. Check out the Books link up above, follow the links, and go buy something. Read it, then post a review at the outlet you purchased from. Post that review on Goodreads. Blog about it. Share that review. Instagram the book. Spread it around. Share those links! Let people know what you thought about my work. If you liked it, tell a friend. If you hated it, recommend it to an enemy. These are the best ways to support me and my work as a creator. Buy, read, review. That's it. Nothing more is needed. 

Review: Walk the Sky by Robert Swartwood and David B. Silva [audiobook]

Walk the Sky

By Robert Swartwood, David B. Silva






My rating: 4 of 5 stars


My original WALK THE SKY audiobook review and many others can be found at Audiobook Reviewer.

In its opening moments, George and Clay, a pair of men on the run from the law and fleeing through the desert, come across a small boy lying near-death beneath the hot sun. The boy is the sole survivor of a massacre that wiped out a nearby town and when they take it upon themselves to care for the boy and investigate, George and Clay find themselves captured by bandits and tied up in jail. The men are to be sacrifices for the inhuman evils roaming the desert, the nightmarish creatures that wiped out the town and demand blood, creatures that only come out at night.

Co-written by Robert Swartwood and David B. Silva, Walk the Sky is a very well-done work of western horror. It’s also Silva’s final piece of work, having passed away in 2013 mere weeks after the publication of this title as a limited edition hardcover by Thunderstorm Books. As such, Walk the Sky is dedicated to Silva, who, as an editor, author, and Bram Stoker Award winner, has a long, and very rich, legacy within the horror genre. Silva was not just a friend and mentor to Swartwood, but a co-author on one other title they penned together, At the Meade Bed & Breakfast. Listening to Walk the Sky in audio format, it’s hard for me to tell where Swartwood’s style separates from Silva’s, and their prose blends together seamlessly. The end result is a perfectly engaging story filled with terrific characters, some of them quite smarmy, and a rich supernatural spine binding them all together.

On narrating duties is Matt Godfrey, whose soft, natural reading style is one I’m quickly becoming a fan of after listening previously to his smooth delivery of The Happy Man from Valancourt Books. His subdued Southern twang lends a certain richness and authenticity to this particular work, and his use of a rougher, gravelly voice for Clay lends to that character an air of American Western classicism that I quite enjoyed. All in all, this a polished and professional production.

Walk the Sky takes a number of Western genre tropes – outlaws on the run, gun-toting bandits, a town ruled by an iron fist – and twists them in a number of satisfying ways, with particular motives being wrenched in response to an ancient, mysterious force. Of the handful of supernatural historical horrors I’ve read thus far in 2018, Walk the Sky is easily my favorite, sitting tall in the saddle as the best of the bunch.

[Note: Audiobook provided for review by the audiobookreviewer.com]



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Interview: Jason Parent, author of They Feed

Jason Parent is an author who wears many different genre hats, having written horror, sci-fi, mysteries, and thrillers. A New England native, his debut novel, What Hides Within, a genre-bending dark comedy, was an EPIC and eFestival Independent Book Award finalist, and his work has earned acclaim from such outlets as Cemetery Dance and Cedar Hollow Horror Reviews. His short stories have appeared in the Halloween-themed Bad Apples anthologies, as well as Year's Best Hardcore Horror Volume 1. His latest novel, They Feed from Sinister Grin Press, is hot off the presses and available now. (You can read our review of They Feed here.)

Welcome to the High Fever Books blog, Jason! Tell us a bit about yourself and your background as an author. You studied at Barry University School of Law and were an attorney for several years. How did you discover you’d been bitten by the writing bug?

Still working as an attorney… sort of. It’s a skill that comes in handy sometimes. But writing is my passion. I tried it long ago as a tool to cope with something and didn’t really know what I was doing. But even as I moved on, my desire to write never did.

One of my favorites of your work is the short story DIA DE LOS MUERTOS, which appeared in Bad Apples 2. You’ve written a number of short stories, including a piece for the recently released Wrestle Maniacs, and novels, like you’re latest title, They Feed. Do you have a preference in terms of format? Are you more comfortable with short stories or novel-length work, and does your approach in writing differ between the two? Tell us a bit about your approach to the craft.

I come up with a story idea first, and the size of the idea will dictate the number of pages needed to represent it. I don’t have a preference—I enjoy writing short stories and novels, but I do find completing a novel much more rewarding. Lately, I’ve been typing up my first drafts of short stories, but for novels, I hand write them.

They Feed has all the earmarks of a classic creature feature in the making. A densely populated campground, a woman seeking revenge, and creatures who see it all as an all-you-can eat buffet for their bottomless stomachs. Where did this idea come from? What inspired this and what was your elevator pitch?

Two of my favorite movies are Night of the Creeps and Slither. This is, in part, an homage to those, but obviously I wanted to make my creatures my own. And I just wanted to write a fun story—fast-paced, action-packed, compelling characters, easy plot with a bit of a surprise to it. They Feed won’t win awards from the highbrow literary types, but it is a well-written wild ride through horror-filled fun.

Oh, it's definitely fun! I had a blast reading They Feed. That sucker kept me glued to my Kindle. What can you tell us about these creatures? Are they something you invented whole cloth or are they based or inspired by something in mythology or literature or, worse, reality?

Well they most closely resemble slugs or leeches, but what really interested me in their creation was their amorphous character. If I do more with the story, I will do more with that. So though Night of the Creeps and Slither have somewhat similar villains, Gloop and Gleep from the old Hanna Barbara cartoons might be more analogous.

I did love Gloop and Gleep.

Over the course of your writing career thus far, you’ve written horror, mysteries, and sci-fi. Horror blog The Haunted Reading Room said of you, “Jason Parent has a vast imagination, demonstrated in everything he writes.” What’s helped influence that imagination? What are some of the touchstones in books and/or film that inspire you?

80s horror and camp definitely influence my humor, and I do like to interject some dark humor where I can. Films like Evil Dead 2 and Fright Night, and also Tales from the Crypt, have definitely influenced my style. I’m not sure you can do anything today without someone saying it’s similar to something else. I know my writing style has been compared to some authors I’ve never read.

What can you do? Certainly not please them all. So I just try to write what I want to write, and if the idea is similar to something else, I give it my own spin and voice.

Give us all your links! Where can readers stalk you?

I am on Facebook and Twitter, and one could always sign up for my mailing list at my website, http://authorjasonparent.com/.

And of course I’m on Amazon and BookBub and… well you get the point. Readers can stalk me all they like, but they can also strike up a conversation if they don’t like lurking in the shadows.

Available Now

The night uncovers all we wish not to see.

A troubled man enters a dusky park before sunset. A young woman follows, hidden in shadow. Both have returned to the park to take back something the past has stolen from them, to make right six long years of suffering, and to find justice or perhaps redemption—or maybe they'll settle for some old-fashioned revenge.

But something evil is alive and awake in those woods, creatures that care nothing for human motivations. They’re driven by their own insatiable need: a ravenous, bottomless hunger.

The campgrounds are full tonight, and the creatures are starving. Before the night is over, they will feed.

An unrelenting tale of terror from Jason Parent, acclaimed author of People of the Sun and What Hides Within.

Buy They Feed on Amazon

Review: Stirring the Sheets by Chad Lutzke

Stirring the Sheets

By Chad Lutzke






My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Grief does strange things. It changes people, and can sometimes ensnare them at their worst. When my mother died, my wife and I attempted to help my dad through that initial day of loss by picking out a set of clothes for her to be buried in. This act was not well received, and my dad set about berating my wife, calling her a grave-robber for rummaging through my mother's belonging, and reducing her to tears. My father was at his lowest point and lashed out at us in anger, and that's now how I remember my mother's passing.

For Emmett, he remembers the his wife by the final impression she left on their bedsheets, unchanged in the year since her passing and occasionally freshened by a spray of her perfume, and a shrine of photographs he's made of her around the couch where he now sleeps. Emmett, a mortician, is mostly biding his time, waiting for his own passing and unable to escape the loss of his partner of 50 years. When the funeral home he works for receives the body of a 30-year-old woman who completed suicide, he is shocked to see a beautiful young face that is the spitting image of his wife in her heyday. Locked in grief and yearning to reconnect with his wife, Emmett steals the corpse and takes her home. Grief does strange things to people, and it can compel them to act in ways they would not normally consider.

Stirring the Sheets is a short, poignant novella about loss and grief and the way in which the bereaved struggle to cope or, in some cases, fail to cope. It's about finding some outlet for that loss, regardless of the consequences.

Chad Lutzke's writing is strong, his authorial voice powerful. For so short a work, Emmett looms large, so well depicted is he in his state of self-imposed exile and sadness. We get an immediate sense for who he is as a man, and just how deep his love ran, and continues to run, for his wife. He's an intimately relatable Everyman. Through Emmett, Lutzke is able to exhibit a well-researched looked at the art of mortuary science and the roles of various staff within a family-owned funeral parlor. Throughout the work as a whole, grief is explored in sympathetic and understanding tones, and even when Emmett impulsively acts out, it's a behavior rooted firmly within the character and in response to his own struggles with the world around him.

Stirring the Sheets is an incredibly well-written and authentic portrayal of a man who believes he's lost everything, and yearns for one last chance. His singular act of desperation is not about sex (and for those who may be leery, Stirring the Sheets is not about necrophilia and in fact presents no real objectionable content at all), but about loss and the torment he carries with each waking day. This is an emotionally raw work, one that wears its heart on its sleeve, highly honest and earnest, and utterly relatable.



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Review: The Listener by Robert McCammon [audiobook]

The Listener

By Robert McCammon






My rating: 5 of 5 stars


You ever finish a wonderful book, but aren't quite sure how to encapsulate your thoughts on it in a review, or what may be left to say after so many others have eloquently tread this same ground and said all the things already? This is the place I find myself in now, having just this morning finished listening to The Listener. This sucker's gotten a lot of positive press and plenty of wonderful reviews already, and I feel like I don't have much else to add. Still, I suppose I must try.

Simply put, Robert McCammon knocks it out of the park with this one. Set in post-Depression Louisiana, The Listener revolves around a kidnapping plot hatched by a pair of grifters who fancy themselves a Bonnie & Clyde duo. Their plan is to abduct the two children of a wealthy industrialist and hold them for ransom. Caught up in it all is Curtis Mayhew, a young black man with a supernatural gift. Curtis is a listener, and can communicate telepathically with others who share this special gift. He's been communicating with a ten-year-old girl, Nilla, and when she sends an urgent cry for help about a man with a gun, Curtis knows he has to help, damn the consequences.

The Listener is a slow-burn potboiler that places particular emphasis on its characters first and foremost. McCammon is meticulous and deliberate in his pacing, introducing us to each of the major players and their places in the world as they work to either scheme or merely eek out a living before becoming embroiled in this kidnapping. Each of these character's stories are paid off in beautiful and sometimes surprising ways as The Listener reaches it final denouement. This historical narrative is so perfectly constructed that nothing ever feels unnatural or out of place. Readers are eased into Curtis's life and his gift in such a way that, once his telepathy is used to full effect, it's every bit a natural part of the character as the air he breathes.

McCammon's writing is equally effective, his prose rife with lingo of the era, and he captures moments of human drama perfectly. There's humor and moments of sadness, as well as turns of violence that are both shocking and cinematic, and sequences of abuse that will have you ready to lunge out of your seat to restrain the psychopathic Donnie before he can inflict more harm on whoever dares to step near him.

Marc Vietor's voice captures the proceedings perfectly, hitting all the right pitches and tones of McCammon's literary style. His talents as a narrator are well-suited to the 1930s era of The Listener, with its hard-edged con-men and crazed women, as well as the softer, more rounded subtleties of gentle men like Curtis, who prize their brains far more than their fists. Vietor and McCammon make for a perfect pair here, and the audio edition of The Listener is a wonderful, and engrossing, production all around.

McCammon delivers a story that feels wholly authentic from start to finish, and The Listener just might be on the best books of the year. Highly recommended.



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Review: At the Mercy of Beasts by Ed Kurtz

At the Mercy of Beasts

By Ed Kurtz






My rating: 5 of 5 stars


At the Mercy of Beasts, the latest from Ed Kurtz, collects three historical horror novellas that run the gamut of early to late 1900s. While each of the stories are unrelated, this temporal aspect binds them together along with heady doses of monstrous weirdness and crisp writing throughout.

"Black's Red Gold" kicks things off as Kurtz takes us to an early 1900s oil drilling platform situated on a prospected bit of land that promises to make a pair of Texas oilmen rich. What they find instead could prove to be far more lucrative, and far more limited, a natural resource than mere oil. This curious discovery inflames the men's natural greed and drives this novella into a gruesome work of body horror and creature feature fun. Fans of Kurtz's previous novel Bleed should find lots to enjoy here, particularly as the gore kicks into high gear and the blood starts flowing. "Black's Red Gold" is also the most thematically rich of the three stories, providing a bit of subtle commentary on mankind's abuse of the Earth in order to exploit resources, and it's a mighty fine start to the collection. It's also my favorite of the three stories here.

"Kennon Road" takes us to post-war Philippines where a pair of grisly murders drives a disillusioned soldier to seek out the inhuman killer. Kurtz turns toward local lore in this one, probing the legend of Manananggal - a vampire-like creature that appears human in the day, but at night separates from its torso to fly in search of its prey. I was first introduced to the legend of the Manananggal in a short story by Rio Youers in the Seize the Night Anthology and immediately fell in love with this peculiar take on vampire lore, so I was quite pleased to see Kurtz tackle it as well.

"Deadheader" is the most contemporary of the three, set in 1977 as truck driver Pearlie takes on a cargo shipment filled with far more than she had bargained for, and picks up hitchhiker Ernie. As the two hit the road to make her delivery, they find themselves almost immediately under siege by flying terrors chasing them through the desert roads on the way to Mexico. "Deadheader" is easily the pulpiest of the three, and reading like a B-movie grindhouse carsploitation feature with its focus on car chases and on-the-road mayhem. What really sells it, though, is the human element, particularly in the case of Ernie, a veteran suffering from post-war trauma who is reluctantly forced into action while trying to escape the ghosts of his recent past. "Deadheader" isn't quite as thematically rich as "Black's Red Gold" but it sure is a lot of fun, and Kurtz packs in plenty of action for the short page count to keep things humming.

At the Mercy of Beasts is brimming with a rich sense of time and place for each of the three novellas gathered here, overflowing with all kinds of monsters, human and otherwise, and plenty of gore to satisfy horror fans. This one will have you at Kurtz's mercy the whole way through, and probably for a long time after with a lot of his other books. Trust me, though, there's worse fates to have than that.

[Note: I received an advanced copy of this title from Journalstone for review.]



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Review: The Happy Man by Eric C. Higgs [audiobook]

The Happy Man: A Tale of Horror

By Eric C. Higgs






My rating: 4 of 5 stars


My original THE HAPPY MAN: A TALE OF HORROR audiobook review and many others can be found at Audiobook Reviewer.

In the opening moments of Eric C. Higgs’s The Happy Man: A Tale of Horror, we learn of a murder – the Marsh family has been shot dead next door. We’re told this by Charles Ripley, whose first-person account gives us insight into the San Diego neighborhood he inhabits. The victims next door are not the only murders this neighborhood has seen recently, and Ripley recounts the events leading up to this penultimate act of violence. In fact, strange things have been brewing ever since the Marshes moved in…

Outside of his marriage, Ripley doesn’t have a lot of friends and few men he can connect with. He quickly bonds with the newly arrived Ruskin Marsh, and their wives form a fast friendship. As Ripley and Marsh become better acquainted with each other, Charles is introduced to a very rare work of writing from the sexual libertine Marquis de Sade. Entranced by Marsh’s own sexual exploits and lack of inhibitions, Ripley soon finds his own constraints diminishing and begins straying into extramarital affairs and, soon enough, darker exploits encouraged in de Sade’s writings.

Narrated by Matt Godfrey, The Happy Man is a slow-burn work of suburban horror that finely balances placidity with hair-raising, horrifying drama. This is a well-crafted work of psychosexual drama, and Godfrey’s reading of the material captures the feel of a neighborhood friend telling you a crazy story. At only a bit over 5 hours long, Godfrey keeps the narrative moving along nicely. Higgs, meanwhile, keeps the work grounded, and the moments of horror are never implausible or outlandish. Higgs earns each of his twists and turns by giving us believable characters and a pot-boiler narrative that slowly builds toward the inevitable.

Written in 1985, and recently reissued by Valancourt Books, The Happy Man taps into the anxiety of The Other with its themes of sexual promiscuity, casual drug use, fear of immigrants, and the rise of the Christian Right and their idea of what constitutes family values. While this latter is never overtly mentioned, given the period Higgs was writing in I can’t help but feel like much of this book is a response to the political climate surrounding it. Marsh is very much a hedonistic figure, the kind of guy Nancy Reagan would encourage you to Just Say No! to, and his arrival to this suburban neighborhood threatens to destroy everything his fellow yuppies hold dear, upsetting the balance of their perfectly coiffed all-American lifestyles. With its themes of racism and the sexual objectification of women, The Happy Man is very much a product of the 1980s, yet much of horrors its reacting to, and certainly expounding upon, still feel topical today. Higgs takes all the fears of 80s Evangelicalism and runs with them toward their worst-case finale – the destruction of families at the hands of an outsider. It’s telling, though, that while Mexican immigrants are often blamed for some of the seedier aspects of this white collar, upper-crust San Diego subdivision, the root cause of their problems lie much, much closer to home. Perhaps, in between the moments of eroticism and shocking violence, Higgs was trying to tell us something after all.



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Review: Forsaken (Unit 51 Book 2) by Michael McBride

Forsaken (A Unit 51 Novel)

By Michael McBride






My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Genre absolutists will have a field day trying to classifying Forsaken, the second in Michael McBride's Unit 51 series. Like its Subhumanpredecessor, McBride seamlessly blends scientific thrills with plenty of action, globe-hopping adventure, and some moments of delicious horror, all of which add up to a gripping read that's difficult to adequately categorize.

Having spent the bulk of Subhuman slowly unravelling this series's premise with methodical deliberation and stage-setting for the books to follow, McBride drops readers straight into the deep-end in Forsaken. Six months after the startling discoveries beneath the Antarctic research base Atlantis, readers are reunited with the Unit 51 team as the book's core of researchers have returned to their research and explorations. Soon enough, each are drawn back into the thick of things as alien encounters in the Antarctic and the discovery of a buried Mexican temple point toward a common threat, as well as the emergence of a new enemy that may be pining for the end of the world.

It has been a while since I read Subhuman, so it took me a fair bit of time to reconnect with the women and men of Unit 51 and to try and remember who's who. McBride tosses in a lot of characters, a fair number of whom are disposable and make little more than a one-off appearance in order to be killed in various and interesting ways to help shuffle the plot along from point A to point B. This isn't a bad thing, in and of itself, but it does gives the primary members of Unit 51 a sense of imperviousness. While these characters constantly find themselves in peril and get all kinds of banged up along the way, I never really got the impression that they were in mortal danger simply because McBride reserves the bulk of Forsaken's grisly deaths for more minor, tertiary Redshirt characters. Character development is pretty thin and minuscule all around, a complaint I had regarding Subhuman as well, but one that is ultimately pretty low priority for me given how well everything else is done in these books. McBride keeps the pace amped up with kinetic fervor that I ultimately didn't much mind the disposable cardboard cutouts caught up in the mayhem. I was too busy flipping pages to find out what comes next and having myself a grand old time reading.

Despite my inability to connect with any of the characters, I found myself loving Forsaken simply because it's an incredible amount of fun. Fun goes a long way for me, and I can always count on McBride to deliver an entertaining read. Once he hits the halfway mark, Forsaken becomes an incredible actioneer, chockfull of adventure that carries the story along to the finish at a breathless, breakneck pace. The narrative hops between the various Unit 51 crew, ping-ponging between their ordeals in the Antarctic and the simultaneous, violent encounters in Mexico as the researchers explore the booby-trapped temple, and it's at this point that Forsaken becomes impossible to put down. This sucker is a roller-coaster, fueled on adrenaline and gunpowder, and with just as many turns and narrative wrinkles to jostle the car in a number of exciting ways.

Books like the Unit 51 series typically come in two flavors - dumb fun, like Matthew Reilly's Scarecrow books, or propulsive adventures wrapped around scientific plausibilities, like James Rollins's Sigma series. McBride falls in the latter category, exhibiting a rich scientific acumen, medical know-how, and plenty of attention to detail that gives both Unit 51 titles smarts to spare, as well as enough of a real-world pedigree to make the most speculative aspects of the plot wholly convincing.

I also like the fact that the Unit 51 series is shaping up to be a cohesive series. These aren't stand-alone adventures with all new stories for each installment. Unlike the Sigma series, Unit 51 is a legit, and massive, single story being told over multiple books in what I presume will be a trilogy. It's a safe bet a third Unit 51 title will be on the way, and I can guarantee I'll be reading it as soon as I can sink my claws into a copy.

[Note: I received an advanced copy of this title from the author.]



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Review: City of the Dead by Brian Keene [audiobook]

City of the Dead: Author's Preferred Edition

By Brian Keene






My rating: 4 of 5 stars


My original City of the Dead: Author's Preferred Edition audiobook review and many others can be found at Audiobook Reviewer.

Set immediately following the final moments of Brian Keene’s Bram Stoker Award-winning The Rising, a small band of survivors manage to flee the zombie-infested suburbs of New Jersey. Their escape is not exactly scot-free, however, and Jim, Frankie, Martin, and Danny are hounded by a pursuing band of the undead who quite nearly finish them off. They’re rescued, though, and spirited away to Ramsey Tower, an impenetrable New York City skyscraper at the heart of the city where scores of survivors have found shelter and a chance at survival. Unfortunately for them, this rescue puts the survivors out of the frying pan and straight into the fire. Ramsey, an old, perverted, wealthy old tycoon with a reality TV show and dementia (hmmm…I wonder what other old, perverted, wealthy real estate tycoon with a crappy TV show and dementia Keene could have based Ramsey on?) will do anything to survive. Anything. And Ob, the undead leader of the zombie hordes, has set its eyes on Ramsey Tower and the death of everyone hiding within.

With the ground-rules of Keene’s zombie apocalypse well-established in The Rising, this Author’s Preferred Edition of City of the Dead ups the ante a fair deal and provides a wealth of gore, dismemberment, and mayhem. New York has become a necropolis, and in between all the flesh-chomping and headshots, Keene expounds on the goals of Ob and the demonic Siquissim. One of the things I’ve grown to appreciate about Keene’s The Rising series is the way the author infuses traditional zombie apocalypse tropes with a welcome dose of cosmic horror. Anybody looking for solid, edgy Romero-esque carnage will feel right at home with these two novels, and will likely appreciate the spark of originality Keene injects.

The Rising‘s narrator, Joe Hempel, returns to the microphone for City of the Dead to deliver a lively reading. Having narrated more than 150 books, Hempel has a comfortable, familiar reading style that makes for a companionable listen, one that’s smooth all the way through. His production skills are top-notch, as well, and you won’t find any blips or aberrations in the recording to yank you out of the story.

Readers who bemoaned the ending to The Rising can rest assured that Keene delivers a definitive finale to City of the Dead. Personally, I found the ending to The Rising to be very well-done, but I know there’s also a surprising number of readers out there who need every single thing spelled out for them and who are unable to infer details unless they’re beat over the head with them. Well, fear not – City of the Dead has an ending and nobody need fear the mistaken appearance of a cliffhanger!

City of the Dead takes all the best aspects of The Rising and plumbs its cosmic mythological depths a bit more. In some ways, it’s a nastier, darker, dirtier work than the prior story, but don’t say I didn’t warn you. Ramsey in particular is a real piece of work, and Keene gives his living characters enough warmth and humanity to stab you in the heart when you least expect it. Thankfully, Keene softens some of the considerable tension and long, violent action set-pieces with moments of dark humor, usually thanks to a cat named God, as well as a few scenes of heartwarming familial repartee. City of the Dead is definitely worth a visit, but I wouldn’t want to live there.



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Review: Breaking the World by Jerry Gordon

Breaking the World

By Jerry Gordon






My rating: 5 of 5 stars


I was twelve years old when the Waco siege was broadcast all over TV and David Koresh became a household name back in 1993. I wasn't much interested in the news or world affairs back then, but I remember seeing the burning Mount Carmel Center and the face of Koresh, a self-ascribed End Times prophet who, according to the FBI, was a gun runner operating a meth lab and holding the members of his cult hostage.

Much has been made in the intervening years as to the legitimacy of the government's claims in regards to Koresh's illicit activities within the compound (he may not have been an arms dealer, but he did have sexual relations with plenty of underage girls) and who initiated the violence that led to a 51-day siege that ended with Mount Carmel in flames and 80-some Branch Davidians dead, including Koresh.

Jerry Gordon drops readers right into the thick of the FBI's initial raid after an attempt to serve warrants is botched, as seen through the viewpoint of fifteen-year-old Cyrus. Cyrus and his friends are not believers, but jaded teenagers whose parents are fervent believers in Koresh's prophecies. According to Koresh, the Seven Seals are breaking. A meningitis outbreak across the Mexican border and the FBI siege are signs of the apocalypse, and Koresh has received word from God that this is it - the End of Days are upon them, and it begins right here and now at Mount Carmel.

At the center of Breaking the World is an intriguing question - what if Koresh was right? What if his apocalyptic prophecies were accurate and the portents surrounding Mount Caramel and the FBI siege signaled the breaking of the first two of the seven seals to unleash the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse?

Through Cyrus, Gordon gives us a highly intriguing viewpoint on the Branch Davidians and on Koresh himself. While Koresh is certainly firm in his beliefs, the majority of the Davidians are confused and astonished that the FBI would attack them, questioning why tanks and attack helicopters are being unleashed upon a church. That Cyrus and his friends are not themselves believers provides plenty of meat for an interesting character arc for each, and they find their own beliefs challenged as the siege wears on and becomes unquestionably apocalyptic in its own right. Even through the first-person perspective of Cyrus alone, that Gordon still manages to give us enough growth and insight into Breaking the World's other major players is a great achievement, particularly in regards to Cyrus's relationship with Koresh. Koresh fancies himself as a father figure to the cult's children, and this generates a tense relationship between him and Cyrus that plays out in intriguing ways. Gordon constantly forces us to question Koresh's sincerity, establishing another bit of tension between his fictional narrative and what we know (or think we know) of this real-life drama.

If Breaking the World had solely been about life within the Branch Davidian compound during the FBI standoff, I would have been perfectly content with this book. Gordon, however, ups the ante considerable with a mid-game twist that is a serious game changer. I have little doubt that some readers may hate this particular aspect, but it's one that dropped my jaw all the way to the floor and took me completely off guard. What Gordon does here is ballsy, of the big brassy kind, and I have to applaud him. It's a move that I'm fairly certain will land Breaking the World as one of my best reads of 2018, and I'll be thinking about this work for a good long while.

Breaking the World is not 100% perfect as the narrative loses a bit of steam late in the book's second half while Gordon sets up some pieces for the inevitable sequel. I will say, though, that I am eagerly anticipating the follow-up and seeing what comes next. What Gordon does right, he does with incredible exception, and few books have jolted me or left me clamoring for a follow-up quite like this.

[Note: I received an advanced copy of this title from Apex Book Company.]



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