Michael Patrick Hicks's Blog, page 22

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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Review: Halloween Carnival Volume 4 [Edited by Brian James Freeman]

Halloween Carnival Volume 4







By Kealan Patrick Burke, Ray Garton, Bev Vincent, C.A. Suleiman






My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Volume 4 of the Halloween Carnival series edited by Brian Freeman follows the same basic pattern as previous entries - five authors, five stories, all revolving around the Halloween holiday. Presented here are the following:

THE MANNEQUIN CHALLENGE by Kealan Patrick Burke
I can relate to Theo, Burke's central character and the office outcast attending his job's Halloween party when he’d rather be at home. I’m not sure I’d behave the same way, though, if confronted by a roomful of frozen, mannequin-like party-goers. The story itself is strange, with no explanations as to why and how, but it’s a fun little distraction. It's WTF quotient is very high, and, as with with every one of his works I've read, Burke proves to be a hell of writer even if this particular story wasn't one of my favorites.
3/5 stars

ACROSS THE TRACKS by Ray Garton
Ray Garton’s an author I’ve been wanting to try, and this story was a solid intro to his writing. A group of bullied kids in search of candy stumble upon a very strange Halloween party. The depiction of bullying and cruelty among children struck a particular chord with me. I had to deal with my share of bullies in school, and I found the ordeals this particular pack of teens face to ring true. While I never had to deal with torments like the ones depicted here, I found the kids and their situation very familiar and relatable. This one hit all the right notes for me, and I’ll be reading more of Garton’s work for sure.
4/5 stars

THE HALLOWEEN TREE by Bev Vincent
I couldn’t get into The Halloween Tree, unfortunately. It was a little too one-note, and not very exciting or scary. It’s another story following some kids trick or treating and facing their fears, but it pales in comparison to Garton’s story, and there’s just not much happening with either the plot or the characters.
2/5 stars

PUMPKIN EATER by C. A. Suleiman
What do you when you love Halloween, but your partner does not? This story of spousal dissatisfaction, was enjoyable, but there's not any real surprises packed into its short page count. It's entirely predictable, but Suleiman's characters sure made it all pretty darn entertaining.
3/5 stars

WHEN THE LEAVES FALL by Paul Melniczek
Haverville is a strange town, but everyone knows not to trespass on farmer Graver's land. Leave it to two kids to defy that small nugget of common knowledge on Halloween, though. What they discover will change their lives forever! WHEN THE LEAVES FALL was a pretty dry note to end this anthology on, and slightly more than half of this book's page count are dedicated to this particular story. It's slow and plodding, and asks way more questions than it can, or is even willing to, answer, but the biggest problem is how dull it all is. Even for a (longer) short story, I still found it a slog to get through.
2/5 stars

Having read now four of the five Halloween Carnival books back-to-back, I feel like I'm getting burned out on anthologies, and this series in particular. But there's only one more entry to go, and I'm determined to finish these. So, onto Volume 5...

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



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Review: Halloween Carnival Volume 3 [Edited by Brian James Freeman]

Halloween Carnival Volume 3







By Kelley Armstrong, Kate Maruyama, Michael McBride, Taylor Grant






My rating: 4 of 5 stars


As with volumes one and two, Halloween Carnival Volume 3 collects five short stories centered around, as the title would imply, Halloween. Here's what's what:

THE WAY LOST by Kelley Armstrong
Kelly Armstrong kicks this anthology off on a strong note. Every Halloween, a child in Franklin goes missing. I've only read a few short stories by Armstrong, all of which I've enjoyed immensely, and she does a great job setting a particular mood here, and ends the story on a high note - and a very creepy one at that!
5/5 stars

LA CALAVERA by Kate Maruyama
DNF. Got about halfway through it and found myself severely bored by what felt more like a romance story than Halloween horror. No scares, no tension, no point. Moving on...
No rating

THE DEVIL'S DUE by Michael McBride
I'm not going to lie - one of the reasons I was interested in this series of Halloween Carnival books was because of McBride's involvement in this volume (Kealan Patrick Burke, Norman Prentiss, and Richard Chizmar were some more great reasons to invest some time in this series). I've become a big fan of McBride's work in short order over the last couple years, and this story reminded me a little bit of his Snowblind novellas (always good). Here, McBride delivers a fantastic tale of a small town that, every Halloween, offers up one its children in sacrifice. There's lots of chills and suspense in this one!
5/5 stars

A THOUSAND ROOMS OF DARKNESS by Taylor Grant
This story might have the catchiest title in this anthology. Thankfully, the story isn’t half-bad either. Grant sends up some pretty wild swerves in the finale, and it took me a bit to reorient myself to sudden changes. Overall, it was pretty solidly done and kept me hooked throughout.
4/5 stars

THE LAST NIGHT OF OCTOBER by Greg Chapman
Every Halloween, there's a knock on Gerald's door from a Trick or Treater unlike any of the other neighborhood kids. Now wheelchair bound and infirm, Gerald tries to shoo away his nurse before sunset, but the two quickly find themselves entrenched and in a struggle for survival. Chapman dishes out a really effective ghost story and I dug the heck out of this one! Good stuff all around.
4/5 stars

Halloween Carnival Volume 3 was probably the most consistent and on-point in terms of quality from this series thus far. I found myself enjoying the stories quite a lot more than in Volume 2, and the anthology keeps a pretty high standard of stories and talent for the majority of its page-count.

Now on to Volume 4!

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



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Review: Halloween Carnival Volume 2 [Edited By Brian James Freeman]

Halloween Carnival Volume 2







By Glen Hirshberg, Lee Thomas, Holly Newstein, Del James






My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Brian James Freeman continues to set loose a handful of authors to explore some Halloween horrors in Halloween Carnival Volume 2. As with the prior volume, there are five authors with five stories, all centered around the best holiday on the calendar, although some of these tales are more strongly pumpkin spiced than others...

MR. DARK'S CARNIVAL by Glen Hirshberg
Hirshberg kicks off the volume with a wonderfully written short story filled with the rich lore of Mr. Dark's Carnival, as presented to us via a college historian who lives for Halloween. His favorite holiday, unfortunately, is tainted by the sudden suicide of a former PhD student who had previously been collaborating with him. I loved Hirshberg's prose, but couldn't completely buy into the twist ending and abrupt finish to this one.
4/5 stars

THE FACTS IN THE CASE OF MY SISTER by Lee Thomas
Halloween lingers deeply in the background of Thomas's short story, and the only ghouls to be found here are of the awful human variety. While it lacked that certain Halloweenish flavor, the story itself is damn good and involves a brother reminiscing about better times while his sister lays in her death bed. Although they've had a severe falling out and hadn't spoken to each out in years, he may be responsible for her current state of affairs, even if unknowingly. I dug this little powerhouse of a short story.
4/5 stars

MISCHIEF NIGHT by Holly Newstein
After two solid shorts, I guess it was time for this anthology to slow down a bit. Unfortunately, I didn't find Newstein's story to be anything special. While it's not bad, it's not wonderful either and it felt fairly contrived. It’s set on the night before Halloween, and involves an inadvertent home invasion after a prank-playing kid seeks shelter. It’s kinda bland, and like the prior story, with its lack of overt supernatural influences, it just doesn’t scream Halloween to me...
3/5 stars

THE GHOST MAKER by Del James
A low-life hitman gets invited to a Halloween party and frets about his costume. That’s seriously it, and it takes a long time before we even get to that part--long enough that I had to double-check and make sure I had opened the right Kindle book and was still reading a Halloween anthology. While there's some good one-liners, the story is instantly forgettable and the Halloween aspect feels like a poorly tacked-on afterthought.
1/5 stars

THE PUMPKIN BOY by Al Sarrantonio
After several stories disappointingly lacking in the Halloween spirit, Sarrantonio makes up for it in spades with his pumpkin-headed boy Frankenstein. There's kidnappings, a possible serial killer on the loose, urban legends, Halloween carnivals, and a nifty little culprit behind all these shenanigans affecting Orangefield. Thank goodness somebody remembered to bring the Halloween spirit with them!
4/5 stars

While this second entry in the Carnival series is significantly weaker than the prior installment, there's at least a few saving graces. My main complaint is that I just didn't get a strong enough sense of Halloween throughout, and some of the authors do little more than pay meagre lip service to the holiday.

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



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Review: Halloween Carnival Volume 1 [Edited by Brian James Freeman]

Halloween Carnival Volume 1







By Robert McCammon, Kevin Lucia, John R. Little, Lisa Morton






My rating: 4 of 5 stars


If you're looking for some Halloween goodness to get you in the spirit, volume one of Halloween Carnival is a pretty good place to start. Edited by Brian James Freeman, this one's a strong anthology overall, with more hits than misses, and I enjoyed four out of the five stories within. Aside from McCammon, I hadn't read any of the other authors involved, and I'm planning on checking out more work from the bulk of them. On that score, too, this anthology is a pretty big win for me. Since there's only five stories collected here, let's break it down!

STRANGE CANDY by Robert McCammon
Our first stop in this Carnival and pretty a wonderful opening at that. Here, readers are confronted with the eternal dilemma: What do you do when you find a strange, unwrapped hand-shaped piece of sugar-coated candy at the bottom of your Halloween loot bag? EAT IT! Obviously. I was expecting something macabre and ghoulish, but McCammon travels another route entirely. The tenderness at the heart of this story surprised me. It's pretty rare that I come across a Halloween Feel Good story, and this one certainly worked well (although it felt a bit too repetitive given the shortness of the story, but I'm OK giving it a pass all things considered).
4/5 stars.

THE RAGE OF ACHILLES by Kevin Lucia
I haven’t read Kevin Lucia before, but after THE RAGE OF ACHILLES I’m gonna have to dive into his catalog of works. It's also another heavy emotional hitter, but one that's on the opposite end of the spectrum after McCammon's story. This was a wonderfully tragic story about a father’s loss and a priest's commitment to his church's worshipers. I gotta say, this one was really well done!
5/5 stars.

DEMON AIR by John R. Little
It's here that Halloween Carnival hits a jolting, disruptive bit of turbulence. This one was just flat-out lame, with too many coincidental things crammed into so brief a story. A demonic airplane ride (!) should not be this boring. Cool premise, but goddamnit, the author just didn't know what to do with it, how to execute it, how to end it, nothing. There's no cohesiveness, the pacing was crap, and it feels like the author figured out he had no clue what to do with the story and abruptly ended it. The only saving grace to DEMON AIR was its brevity.
1/5 stars.

LA HACIENDA DE LOS MUERTOS by Lisa Morton
Unlike DEMON AIR, Lisa Morton's LA HACIENDA DE LOS MUERTOS good and truly worked for me. A washed up American actor heads down to Mexico to co-star in a horror film and finds himself stuck in a real-life horror adventure. This one's set in the 1950s, and I could pretty easily imagine this as a classic black-and-white horror film with plenty of deep shadows. I dug it.
4/5 stars.

#MAKEHALLOWEENSCARYAGAIN by Mark Allan Gunnells
This one's a novella and comprises 50% of Halloween Carnival's page count. Thankfully it's time well spent! Like Morton's story, this one gave me a strong cinematic vibe with it's focus on a modern-day slasher story. After a fledgling horror writer makes a Facebook post with an off-the-cuff hashtag, #MakeHalloweenScaryAgain, he finds out his post has gone viral in a wholly unanticipated way. This was fun story, and although I had the killer pegged pretty early on this didn't dampen my enjoyment and I had a good time watching everything unravel.
4/5 stars.

Now on to Volume Two!

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



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Audiobook Review: Feral by James DeMonaco and B. K. Evenson

Feral



$10.20



By James DeMonaco, B. K. Evenson






My rating: 1 of 5 stars


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

I got my first inklings that Feral, by James DeMonaco (creator of The Purge franchise) and BK Evenson, was going to be a troublesome narrative right from the very start. Allie, a high school girl who the male authors want to make sure we understand sleeps in the nude, wakes up to a text message prompting her to click an innocuous link, which ends up taking her to a site where she can watch her best friend having sex. It’s clear to Allie that her friend is being secretly filmed, and she’s awfully gutted over this discovery. Thankfully, after Allie tells her friend that the boyfriend had invaded her privacy, secretly filmed them having sex, and then mass mailed the video to their entire high school, the bestie is totally OK with all this! It’s awesome news, in fact, the bestest thing ever since chocolate and Pornhub. She’s gonna be so popular now, like OMG! And then, on an otherwise completely unrelated note, the apocalypse hits.

So, look, I had some issues with Feral. In order to discuss them, I’m going to issue a BIG OL’ SPOILER WARNING FOR HERE ON OUT. Please consider yourself warned. Cool? Cool.


The apocalypse takes the form of a bioengineered virus that affects only the men and turns them feral. Once infected, they possess super-strength, super-speed, and are super, super-violent. The target of their rage is any and all women, and faster than you can say GamerGate, these rabid dudebros are ripping apart cheerleaders, attacking teachers, and beating their wives to death with their bare hands. Allie manages to escape the school, and then we cut to three years later, where the world has turned into basically ever single other zombie story ever told. The women keep themselves secluded in camps, occasionally sending sorties out into the demolished towns, where the threat of crazed, killer men lurks around every corner.

Feral has an awesome premise, and it could have been something special, something that could have paralleled and spoken to the inequities women face and the abuse some of them endure at the hands of men. And for a little while, it does! There are flashes of insight here and there, moments where I thought the authors were going to strive for meaning and use the horror, as horror often does, to make some kind of relevant social commentary. Unfortunately, this all gets squandered as DeMonaco and Evenson opt to travel far more mundane roads, regurgitating every single zombie trope imaginable, while somehow avoiding so much of the commentary baked into the far better stories told by George A. Romero. While the ferals aren’t exactly zombies, there’s not a whole lot to distinguish them either, and this book is built like a frigging zombie story almost right from the get-go.

Allie, for her part, has adapted well to the apocalypse and is a brilliant heroine – she’s smart, she’s tough, and she’s a brilliant tactician. The end of the world suits her and has given her purpose and meaning. She’s a bad-ass feral/zombie killer. Apparently, she also has a sister, but Kim is such an unimportant figure in this book that both Allie and the authors often forget about her entirely. Anywho. Allie’s awesome, an epitome of girl power and a survivor.

Never fear, though! There’s still one man in the whole human race who is uninfected, and he’s here to help restore gender stereotypes and save all these women-folk who have been faring for themselves just fine without him for three years now. Once Sam shows up, tough-girl Allie quickly becomes a damsel in distress, one who requires Sam’s rescuing not once, not twice, not three times, but four! Kinda makes you wonder how Allie was able to cope and survive at all lo these several manless years without a big tough guy to keep her safe.

Sam’s been abused by women, though, as the search for a cure and the continuation of the human species has brought him into contact with some unsavory survivors. You know how I said there wasn’t any kind of social commentary here? Well, I might’ve been a smidge wrong. Evenson and DeMonaco attempt to, in the grand tradition of zombie narratives, draw some parallels between ferals and the survivors. Turns out that by using their heartless scientific method to try and create a vaccine, the women are little better than the crazed, bloodthirsty men seeking to rape and kill them. Luckily, Sam and Allie have insta-love and his high cheek bones and her thick, lustrous hair just might save the world after all.

Fucking really.

On the narrative front, Feral is a steaming, mendacious, tone-deaf pile of scat. On the narration front, it’s actually pretty well done and the story’s shifting points-of-view are told by different women. Structurally, this book is also a mess, with some chapters in third-person omniscient and others in first-person, usually for little rhyme or reason, and mostly just because, with occasional narration shift between Allie and Kim, when the authors or Allie can spare a moment’s thought for the poor, burgeoning twelve-year-old actress. The narrators are solid and adept in their readings, and I didn’t find any flaws in their delivery of the material or in the production of the audiobook itself. I just wish they would have had far better material to narrate.

Feral is well-packaged and well-narrated, but ultimately it’s just not very good. At its core, it’s essentially little more than poorly done Young Adult fiction strapped into a zombie harness. There are no shocks and even fewer surprises, other than how badly this whole damn mess was conceived and executed.

[Audiobook provided for review by audiobookreviewer.com.]



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Review: The Halloween Children by Brian Freeman and Norman Prentiss

The Halloween Children







By Brian James Freeman, Norman Prentiss






My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I received a copy of this title from the publisher via NetGalley over the summer, but given the awful state of affairs with my perpetual TBR stack I didn't manage to get to this novella until now. But damn if October certainly isn't a mighty fine time to read something like The Halloween Children.

Early on in this story, authors Brian James Freeman and Norman Prentiss write about how an apartment complex is the perfect setting for a haunted house. You don't need an ancient Native American graveyard or a scene of senseless mass slaughter (although they certainly help!). Apartment complexes present a transitory population, often times with rapid turnover, various cultures, ethnicities, and beliefs - a virtual melting pot, really, for ghoulish horrors to develop and mingle over years or decades.

Or this bit of stage-setting could just be ramblings of insanity told by the damned...

The Halloween Children is a multi-POV narrative, with the chapters structured as interrogation interviews, recordings made by Harris (the apartment complex's handyman), his wife's journal, and e-mails from a college student recently moved into the complex. Between these various devices, Freeman and Prentiss keep the tension ratcheted up high and left me guessing as to who the ultimate culprit - or culprits - were in this story of madness.

Between some solid scares, psychological shenanigans, and brief yet brutal depictions of horrifying violence, this one's a winner. I found The Halloween Children to be a perfect kick-off to this season of the witch.



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