Michael Patrick Hicks's Blog, page 19

Best Books of 2017

I'll spare you the commentary in favor of a straight-up pretty gallery cum list of what I felt were the best books of 2017. I read a lot of horror, far more than any other genre, and the majority of the 125 titles (thus far) I read over the course of 2017 were horror. As such, my list tilts heavily toward that genre, and if you've been following me for any length of time that's probably as should be expected. There may be a few surprises here though! 

Some notes:

1. Click on the image to be magically transported to my amazing review and Amazon Affiliate purchase links.

2. Please do not e-mail, message or @ me, as some have in the past, to badger, yell at, or insult me for including a book that I loved and you hated. This should be a no-brainer, and yet...

OK, here we go!

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#1

Review: Nanoshock by K.C. Alexander (SINless #2)

Nanoshock (SINless)

By K C Alexander






My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Nanoshock, the second in K.C. Alexander's SINless series, finds foul-mouthed Riko on the outs with both her corporate sponsor and her street-level gang of killers, her credibility shattered (likely beyond repair) for the murder of her teammate and lover, and an enemy operating in the shadows with the express purpose of killing her.

Alexander kicks things off in grand fashion with what might be the best opening line of 2017, and perhaps ever, with Riko musing, “You haven’t lived until you’ve fisted a nun under the cheap light of a neon Jesus.” It's the kind of wonderfully sacrilegious moment that makes my heart flutter, and lets readers know right off the bat what kind of book they're in store for. Yes, Nanoshock is irreverent, highly sexualized, and packed to the rim with over-the-top violence. Riko's particular brand of murder has her placed as a splatter specialist, the kind of job description that lets you know there won't be any clean, quiet kills to come. The action here is big and loud, much like Riko's mouth.

Frankly, though, Riko's mouth wears thin after a while. She's antisocial, presents more than her fair share of psychological and emotional disorders, makes a number of rash (and oftentimes poor) decisions, and if she's not busy killing would-be allies she's going out of her way to alienate everyone she comes into contact with in the most vulgar terms she can manage. I don't need my antiheroes to be all soft and cuddly, but Riko's shtick gets awfully tiresome awfully quick. While Alexander gives us a few moments of insight, digging beneath her character's rock-hard hide to show flashes of her softer side, they're few and far between. Most of the attention is on Riko being the biggest, the baddest, and the most hot-headed, hurting everyone she comes into contact with. She's unsympathetic to the max, and I found myself wondering why anybody in her world wants anything at all to do with her.

The attitude that defines and encapsulates Riko makes the book a bit of a slog to get through, and that's even before we get to the muddled narrative. Although the plot is fairly one-note, there's a load of back-and-forth violence to muddy the waters and give it the appearance of being more complex than it actually is.

As with Necrotech, solid answers to the Why of it all are sparse, but the climax is a well constructed and violent tour-de-force. In addition to staging some terrific action sequences and moments of wonderful gruesomeness (the infectious cybernetic blight of necrotech itself is a marvelous invention, and Alexander gives us plenty of gory details about it over these two novels, I'm still left wanting more), the author has constructed a beautifully dreary cyberpunk world. The dark and grimy streets Riko inhabits are well realized, the city itself so heavily polluted post-climate change that sunlight can't make it through the ever-present smog. In fact, it's a setting that is a perfect metaphor for Riko herself. Personally, I wouldn't mind a little bit more light getting through come book number three.

[Note: I received an advanced copy of this title from the publisher via NetGalley.]



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Review: Zero Day (The Hatching #3) by Ezekiel Boone

Zero Day: A Novel (The Hatching Series)



$26.00



By Ezekiel Boone






My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Ezekiel Boone draws his globe-trotting spider apocalypse trilogy to a close with Zero Day, wrapping things up with pyrotechnic flair. In the aftermath of The Spanish Protocol, large portions of the USA are wrecked beyond repair and the last-ditch effort to halt Spidergeddon have failed. Between the President, a team of scientists and engineers, and soldiers on the front-lines, the threat of these ancient, man-eating arachnids is sketched in with a few extra layers and a couple more wrinkles, but the focus is keenly on the people and a lot of their people problems. This, sadly, was my greatest hindrance in enjoying the book more. And don't get me wrong, I liked Zero Day, but I had higher expectations than this book could deliver.

While some of the trouble Boone's large cast runs into are certainly interesting, such as a military coup early on, others are less so. In one instance, we see a military unit stuck in traffic as they try to get their VIP engineers to a Radio Shack (because apparently there are still Radio Shacks around), and then make a stop for frozen yogurt. I kept waiting for a massive wave of spiders to wreck havoc with the vanilla custard and sprinkles, but sadly that never happened. And that, for me, is the biggest deficit in Zero Day - where the heck are the spiders? We hear a lot about the spiders, but we don't often get to see them. We're reminded pretty frequently about what a massive threat they are, but we rarely get to see the dangers they pose.

In book one, The Hatching, we got all kinds of spider mayhem and it was terrific. Skitter put a pause on the action and shoved the spiders into the background while the stage was set set for Zero Day. And along comes Zero Day, but the spiders are still mostly an afterthought. I wanted a massive arachnid apocalypse, with spiders and gore and mayhem galore. I wanted my Kindle to be dripping ichor! What I got were a lot of talking heads before a small spider attack lands around the 50% mark, and then all goes quiet again. Boone teases us with these horrors in small, glimmering fragments, but never fully delivers. By the time we get some serious action, the book is 80% done with.

I'll tell you what, though - that scene that kicks off the book's short shrifted and too easily resolved climax? Holy crap, is it ever a beautiful, creepy, crazy crawly sequence. That chapter right there, that's what I had wanted this whole book to be. It was fantastic. It was also, by then, a bit too little, too late. For the third book in a series about the spider apocalypse, I wanted more than teases to this whole sordid affair. I wanted way more spider attacks than could be delivered in, what amounted to, less than the book's final quarter. Where were all the spiders, damnit?! After the quiet interlude of Skitter, this sucker should have been wall-to-wall spider mayhem.

And yet, despite the large absence of arachnid horror, Boone still manages to create a compulsive page-turner, even if it promises far more than it delivers. The writing is crisp and propulsive, the pacing rapid-fire, which ultimately makes Zero Day an engaging read. The military coup is well done and interesting and the brief segments of spider attacks are fantastic. And even if the large cast of characters are not all well-served in this title, Boone at least gives the survivors a nice send-off by book's end. Zero Day, mostly, is a sweet, tidy finish to an otherwise fairly uneven trilogy.

[Note: I received an advanced copy of this title from the publisher via NetGalley.]



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Review: The Murders of Molly Southbourne by Tade Thompson

The Murders of Molly Southbourne



$8.60



By Tade Thompson






My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Every time Molly Southbourne bleeds, a new molly is born. With every opening of her flesh or her monthly period, a hole forms in the ground and a mysterious, murderous, doppelganger appears.

It's a fresh and bizarre concept played wonderfully straight by Tade Thompson, who delivers a smattering of scares and genuine creepiness alongside some soft sci-fi mojo in the book's latter half. But what really impressed me was the character of Molly herself.

Molly is a psychologically complex figure, and she left me thinking a lot about nature versus nurture. Because of her condition and the pseudo hemophiliac-like countermeasures of her life (furniture with no corners, for instance), as well as the rules she must live by (If you see yourself, run. Don't bleed. Blot, burn, bleach.), I couldn't help but wonder how much of Molly's behavior and quirks was a direct result of her odd condition and the fashion in which her parents were forced to nurture her, and how much was her natural state simply being given an outlet. Having to confront her evil twins on a routine basis, she is allowed to explore certain dark impulses that she might have otherwise repressed. Although Thompson doesn't delve deeply into such an exploration, it's still leaves me curious, and the mannerisms of several of the other mollys leaves it as a nagging question, a sort of mental puzzle box to explore without authorial hand-holding.

Equally impressive was the writing itself. Thompson runs a tight ship and infuses this novella with a startling amount of depth in such a short span of time, yet keeps the story moving fast. He pulls off character development and spectacle with equal aplomb, accomplishing so much with both in so few pages. This book is expert-level stuff all the way through. Although I have a few questions, and plenty of suspicions, about Molly, the biggest question is how the hell haven't I heard of Tade Thompson before, and how quickly can I buy more of his work?

[Note: I received an advanced copy of this title from the publisher via NetGalley.]



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Review: Into the Drowning Deep by Mira Grant

Into the Drowning Deep



$17.72



By Mira Grant






My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Set roughly a decade after the ill-fated research sojourn of the Atargartis (depicted in the novella Rolling in the Deep), the Imagine Entertainment network has once again set its eyes on the mermaid prize, assembling a new crew to set sail aboard the Melusine. Acting as right-hand man to the CEO of Imagine, Theo Blackwell has put together a crew of the world's foremost marine scientists, including Victoria (Tory) Stewart, sister to Anne, an Imagine corespondent whose life was claimed aboard the Atargartis; his ex-wife, Dr. Jillian Toth, the world's foremost expert on mermaid mythology and one of the few believers in the legitimacy of the Atargartis footage; and new Imagine correspondent, Olivia Sanderson, an autistic Olivia Munn-like figure who explores her world through the safety net of cosplay, a videocamera and constant reportage.

Into the Drowning Deep is both a sequel to, and a minor reboot of, Rolling in the Deep, and oftentimes feels like a deeper, expanded edition of that former novella. This is by no means a bad thing, though. While I enjoyed Rolling in the Deep a great deal, I also felt it was too short; it sped by too quickly and the characters didn't get a lot of attention before they were torn apart. In a lot of ways, this novel corrects some of the issues I had with Rolling in the Deep and is a better work for it.

At over four hundred pages, this is a pretty thick novel. Mira Grant spends plenty of time developing her large cast, providing us with plenty of richly diverse heroines to root for, and a few unsavories to cheer toward their demise. Equally rich, perhaps even richer, is the science itself. Grant has a terrific knack for taking the mermaids of mythological legend and giving them an incredibly strong scientific foundation and a real-world basis to exist. These creatures come across as a realistic and terrifying threat, and once the action heats up in the close quarters of the Melusine, there's a thick Jaws meets Aliens vibe that I flat-out loved. Few authors combine scientific realism with horrifying madness as well as Mira Grant. People looking for a natural successor to Michael Crichton would do well to read Grant's work immediately, and I suspect she'll be doing for mermaids what Crichton did for dinosaurs.

My only complaint is that the ending gets a bit rushed and some of the threats presented do not get the payoff they deserve. However, I'm weighing this against the implicit promise of the book's epilogue, and this novel's billing as the first book in what looks to be a new series (with Rolling in the Deep listed as a 0.5), that we'll be getting at least one more dose of mermaid mayhem somewhere down the pike. I'll be keeping my fingers crossed that such a release comes soon because, frankly, I need that sequel right freaking now.

[Note: I received an advanced copy of this title from the publisher via NetGalley.]



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Review: Rolling in the Deep by Mira Grant

Rolling in the Deep







By Mira Grant






My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Rolling in the Deep is, essentially, a found-footage horror movie committed to print. The Imagine Network, best-known for its chintzy monster movies and sci-fi programming, is taking a hit in the ratings. Faster than you can say Sharknado, they decide to break into the "hyper-reality" game with a documentary that's every bit as fictional as it is factual. Loaded up with a team of scientists, interns, and a mermaid performance troupe, the Atargatis cruises to the Mariana Trench to debunk or confirm the world's most enduring sea tale - are mermaid's real?

The story is broken down into five sections, each prefaced with a transcript from a documentary about the Atargatis and its missing crew, warning viewers about the footage they are about see...err, read. Whatever. Roughly the first three-quarters of the book are devoted to the various passengers, mostly the ship's captain, the documentary film crew, and the scientists. This is a quick, breezy read, paced well enough to hit the approximate run-time of a longer found-footage flick.

The downside to this, though, is that readers are not given much time to really get to know the people aboard the Atargatis or to really get into anybody's head. Thanks to the rules of found footage stories and the various documentarian notes coming up at regular intermissions, we know perfectly well that the fate of these men and women are sealed. Unfortunately, we're not given an opportunity to really get attached to any of these people, despite the slow burn toward the big finish. But that finish itself? Oh boy, does it ever get going; the mayhem really kicks things up a notch.

Besides the violent, frenetic climax, the thing I most appreciated about Rolling in the Deep was Mira Grant's focus on the science. She's an author who can take mythological premises like mermaids, or horror staples like zombies in her Newsflesh series, and give them enough scientific credibility to make it plausible. Here, we get plenty of discussion of how mermaids would be evolutionarily credible in light of things we already know about deep sea life (the use of bioluminescence and symbiosis in attracting prey, for instance). Personally, I love Grant's knack for taking what might otherwise be little more than a riff on B-movie horror tropes and elevating them with scientific rigor, grounding all that face-ripping, throat-tearing goodness in a measured bit of reality. By the time the monsters make their grand entrance, we're all but primed to accept their existence and welcome them into the world with arms spread wide.



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Review: Extinction War (The Extinction Cycle #7) by Nicholas Sansbury Smith

Extinction War (The Extinction Cycle)



$7.48



By Nicholas Sansbury Smith






My rating: 4 of 5 stars


In case the threat of the monstrous Variants and the pending extinction of the human race wasn't enough, Nicholas Sansbury Smith adds in some extra tension with the possibility of another civil war. Rogue, fanatical soldier Andrew Wood and his Resistance of Tyranny (ROT, an acronym that feels a bit too on-the-nose for this vicious homegrown squadron of terrorists) are attempting to undermine President Ringgold by unleashing the infectious Hemorrhage Virus bioweapon upon the nation's Safe Zone Territories, while executing some grand-scale revenge against the members of Ghost Team. The bulk of Ghost Team's Delta operators, however, are waging war against the Variants in France and seeking to save Europe.

Smith weaves a strong sci-fi-military-horror narrative using multiple plot threads and presenting shifting viewpoints from a handful of characters. Opening with a battle for survival, Wounded Warrior Reed Beckham fights his way through a Safe Zone now overrun with horrors, catapulting the story from one violent and dangerous encounter to the next. Extinction War hits the ground running, hardly pausing to allow readers or the book's characters a chance to catch their breath. This is a guns-ablazing, pedal to the metal post-apocalyptic actioneer that speeds its way through the end of the world.

While there's plenty of alpha male mayhem, it's Smith's presentation of the women that I enjoy the most. They're not only smart and capable characters in position of power, but function as a necessary counterbalance to the horrors of this world, oftentimes inhabiting the roles of humanity's saviors. Both Dr. Kate Lovato and President Ringgold are tough go-getters, but they're also determined to fix the egregious and deliberate actions made by men. Men created the Hemorrhage Virus and destroyed humanity, but it's ultimately up to the women to save the world while a lot of the men run assist. Cool beans.

Extinction War looks to be the big finish to The Extinction Cycle series, and Smith ties up the dangling plot threads pretty nicely. Not all of the characters we've grown to love and admire over the course of seven novels make it through unscathed, but the story resolves itself in a satisfactory way. Smith, of course, has kept his bases covered should his publisher and fans demand a book eight. Never count out Team Ghost, after all. But if this is indeed the series finale, it goes out on a good note. I really wouldn't mind this being the last book though, and am savoring the idea of the survivors finally having a chance to unwind and relax for a bit. They've more than earned a rest.

[Note: I received an advanced copy of this title from the publisher via NetGalley.]



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Review: DC House of Horror #1

DC House of Horror (2017) #1







By Keith Giffen, Brian Keene, Nick Cutter, Weston Ochse, Mary SanGiovanni, Bryan Smith, Edward Lee, Wrath White, Ronald Malfi






My rating: 5 of 5 stars


After reading five less-than-stellar Halloween-centric anthologies over the last few weeks, plus a hugely disappointing and long-awaited epic novel, I was feeling a bit burnt out on anthologies and prose in general. The time had come to catch up on some comics in the hopes of breaking out of my reading slump, and the title that most appealed to me just so happened to be -- wait for it! -- another anthology. But, fuck it. This is a comic book anthology, and only 80 pages at that (i.e. a quick read, plus a different format). I had high hopes going in, and this thing fucking delivered, giving me exactly what I had wanted in the wake of lingering disappointment and failure from previous anthologies.

Working from plots by Keith Giffen, eight horror authors have assembled to script, and in some cases completely flip the script on, DC's most famous characters, putting them through the filter of various horror genre staples. We've got psychotic killers, ghosts, a slam-bang creature feature, and more in these eerie comics and tales to astonish.

BUMP IN THE NIGHT by Edward Lee
Edward Lee kicks off this anthology in grand fashion, delivering a Superman story that’s quite a far cry from the traditional big blue Boy Scout mainstay of DC lore. Howard Porter’s art serves this alien invasion story pretty well. It’s a bit rough looking and nicely suited for the dark night ahead at the Kent farm. This was a perfect way to open up this House of Horrors, and also serves as a nice warning to readers that these stories will most definitely not be your typical takes on DC Comics superhero icons.
5/5 stars

MAN'S WORLD by Mary SanGiovanni
Mary SanGiovanni scripts a magnificent and powerful Wonder Woman in a violent story of possession. It’s quick and dirty, and I loved the heck out of it. 'Nuff said.
5/5 stars

CRAZY FOR YOU by Bryan Smith & Brian Keene
Bryan Smith and Brian Keene pen a fun ol’ story of snapped sanity and a whole lotta murder. Bryan Smith needs to write more Harley Quinn, be it in-continuity or more horror, I don’t care, just get him to do more with this psycho gal. Kyle Baker’s art is a bit more roughly sketched than I usually care for, though, but I think it serves the story nicely, giving illustration to a man's frenetic mind. Good, good stuff right here.
4/5 stars

LAST LAUGH by Nick Cutter
Nick Cutter writing a Vincent Price-like Batman? Oh sweet baby Jesus, fuck yes. Here, Cutter tackles the psychology of a man dressed like a bat, perpetually chasing a crazy killer clown. Rags Morales does a great job illustrating this descent into madness, and I dug the little touches he and colorist Lovern Kindzierski added to show the differences between the characters viewpoints.
4/5 stars

BLACKEST DAY by Brian Keene
Brian Keene blazes hell with the Justice League as they square off against an apocalyptic outbreak on Earth while trapped in their Watchtower moon base. It’s a fun, fast-paced story with plenty of carnage. Scott Kolins does a good job with the art duties, and there’s a good amount of guts spilled under his pencils. I've also got a particular hankering from some Keene-written Constantine now, because how awesome would that be? (The answer, by the way, is very. Hint, hint, DC Comics!)
4/5 stars

STRAY ARROW by Ronald Malfi
In the DC Rebirth, Green Arrow is a self-described Social Justice Warrior. Under Malfi's hand, he's a cold blood pscyho killer, in a city that drives its inhabitants insane. I had expected so much more from this pairing between author and superhero, and I think it could have been a lot better if the story’s femme fatale had gotten more room for development. The premise is dynamite, and I wish there had been more room to deliver on some of the story elements it hints at. Still, it's worth it for the wildly different spin on these familiar faces.
3/5 stars

UNMASKED by Wrath James White
Holy shit, y'all. A serial killer and a giant monster are tearing apart Gotham in Wrath James White’s story. From the story's opening narration about a victim who has been degloved, I knew I was going to be right at home here. There’s a lot of craziness jammed into a handful of pages, and artist Tom Raney really knocks it out of the park with his delivery of the script's biggest shocker scene. God damn, I loved this one!
5/5 stars

THE POSSESSION OF BILLY BATSON by Weston Ochse
Words have power and, in Weston Ochse’s script, one word in particular haunts Billy Batson. Howard Chaykin depicts 1970s New York and a punk-rocker-styled Batson with flair, keeping the story’s keyword in both the background, and front and center. Unfortunately there’s not a lot of depth to the story and it ends pretty abruptly. I must admit, though, I am not very familiar with the character in question here, which may have hindered my enjoyment a bit. The saving grace for me was the period-setting and how well rendered it was by Chaykin.
3/5 stars

Although I didn't flat-out love every story in DC House of Horror #1, I found all of them to make for a fun reading, and the ones that I loved, I loved deeply. Keene and Company put some truly wonderful and unexpected twists on DC Comics staples, bringing in oodles of darkness, morbidity, and depravity (or at least as much DC has allowed them to get away with. I would absolutely love to see House of Horror continue as a Mature Readers or Vertigo title.). For sheer entertainment value alone, and the consistency of goods delivered throughout,, this one gets a five-star from me. This is the most flat-out fun read of October.



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Review: Halloween Carnival Volume 5 [Edited by Brian James Freeman]

Halloween Carnival Volume 5







By Richard Chizmar, Lisa Tuttle, Norman Prentiss, Kevin Quigley






My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Editor Brian James Freeman serves up a final batch of Halloween-themed stories in this fifth volume of the Halloween Carnival series.

Whether or not these stories are more tricks than treats, or vice versa, is up to the reader. I will say that while I have enjoyed a number of the stories over the series run, I have not been a fan of the series overall. There were several tales I just did not like, and I would have appreciated a more balanced structure in these volumes.

As with prior installments, nearly fifty percent of the book is devoted to a single story (here it's PORK PIE HAT by Peter Straub), prefaced with a smattering of shorter stories. Here's what you get:

DEVIL'S NIGHT by Richard Chizmar
My first intro to Chizmar’s writing was his collaboration with Stephen King for Gwendy’s Button Box, but this short story really sealed the deal for me. Chizmar can write, man! Although set on Devil’s Night, this story of murder is purely human and very well crafted.
4/5 stars

THE LAST DARE by Lisa Tuttle
This second story is an ultra-weak attempt at telling a tale about a box and the children who go missing when confronted with it. It’s short, but also dull and takes forever to get nowhere.
1/5 stars

THE HALLOWEEN BLEED by Norman Prentiss
Norman Prentiss delivers a hell of a short story with a perfectly good Halloween twist. No details from me on this one, except to say that it's effective, creepy, and mysterious. It's also part of a series of short stories involving the mysterious Dr. Sibley, which means I've got some digging to do in order to find the rest of these stories and learn more about Sibley and his various encounters.
4/5 stars

SWING by Kevin Quigley
I know I read this one, but I'll be damned if I can tell you anything about it two days later... I have zero, and I do mean zero, recollection of it. Nothing. Not a single damn thing. Here's my notes from my Goodreads progress update:

Swing carried with an interesting premise, and while it was well written and had a few evocative scenes, it didn’t quite strike a proper chord with me. Maybe if it had been longer and given more room for the characters to breathe and develop it could have been really exceptional.

I'm going to skip rating this one. It seems I dug elements of it in the immediate post-reading, but whatever those were they weren't quite as evocative I had thought at the time.

No rating.

PORK PIE HAT by Peter Straub
Taking up the bulk of this anthology is a long short story from Peter Straub. It's well told and jazz fans will likely find a lot to enjoy here. I liked the story for what it was and dug the conversational nature of its delivery. Although it is set on Halloween and maybe involves some minor supernatural elements, as well as Hat's superstitions surrounding the holiday, it lacked the strong Halloween flavor I had been looking for. It's a good read, but it's not a good Halloween read with its lack of scares and chills. (Sadly, that's been a fairly common theme across this series as a whole...)
3/5 stars

After reading these five Halloween Carnival books back-to-back, I can pretty safely say I'm burn out on anthologies for a while. I can also pretty safely say that I did not get the Halloween scares I had wanted, and that this series, taken a whole, was pretty much a dud. Some good stories here and there, but I doubt I'll ever be returning for another trip through this particular carnival.

[Note: I received an advanced copy of this title from the publisher via NetGalley.]



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Review: The Store by Bentley Little [audiobook]

The Store







By Bentley Little






My rating: 4 of 5 stars


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

In the very late 1990s/early 2000s, I worked at a local big-box retail store for several years while attending college. Employees had to attend pointless, monthly bull sessions, apparently to remind us on a regular basis of how awesome this particular retail chain was and why it should be oh so meaningful to us meagerly paid employees. At one point, my department manager notified me that the higher-ups were preparing to fire me because I was putting in too many hours at school and not enough on the sales floor, trying to con customers into up-selling their CD purchases with overpriced protection plans. If I hadn’t already mentally checked out on that loathsome job, threatening to fire me for going to school was certainly the clincher.

Maybe it’s because of those years of personal dissatisfaction busting my hump for The Man that I was so able to completely relate to Bentley Little’s The Store. I dug the heck out of this book, and nearly all of it was totally on-point for me.

The small town of Juniper, Arizona is about to receive its first high-end, discount retail store – think Walmart and you’d be on the right track. While jogging past the soon-to-be-demolished, and once protected, land, Bill notices dead animals on the lot. (As one character states later, “The Store is built on blood!”) To say that’s merely the beginning of The Store’s impact on Juniper is to woefully undersell this retailer’s impact. Soon enough, the town’s small business owners are in a fight not just for their livelihoods, but for their very lives. The Store sweeps over Juniper like locusts, destroying everything – and everyone – in its path. And that’s just for starters!

The Store is very much a work of social horror, and it has an important message at its core regarding the nature of consumerism and capitalism and highly powerful and influential corporatism versus government. While there are supernatural elements at play throughout, the most frightening aspects of the story are the ones that are absolutely real. It’s positively sinister to watch how The Store corrupts Juniper and its inhabitants, its many various tentacles reaching into the community to sow both paranoia and complicity. The cult-like nature of The Store’s employees, the manager’s fervent dedication to the retail outlet, and the bullying nature of a mega-wealthy retail giant and its corporate lobbying against a small-town local government are all disquietingly familiar. Although some of these horrors operate on a metaphorical level, they still resound a little too close for comfort.

Despite some scenes of violence and one unsettling and graphic sex scene, The Store is a work of quiet horror, and Little ensnares readers with a heavy, dark atmosphere and a highly unsettling tone exacerbated by small-town politics and plenty of personal conflicts. David Stifel excels at narrating Little’s writing, luring listeners in with his friendly, relatable tone, even as a sense of creeping dread mounts. He has a quiet approach that works perfectly in tandem with the material he is reading, giving the listening experience a personable intimacy. As a combined force, Little and Stifel certainly sank their hooks in deep for me, and I was appropriately wowed by both.

The Store was my first experience with Bentley Little’s work, and while it’s not entirely perfect (although I found it to be a little too long, I wish a bit more focus had been paid on fleshing out some of the supernatural elements) it was certainly highly satisfying. Little is now an author whose work I’ll be checking out more of in the future.

[Audiobook provided for review by the audiobookreviewer.com]



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