Michael Patrick Hicks's Blog, page 62

Review: The Pendle Curse by Catherine Cavendish

About The Pendle Curse

Four hundred years ago, ten convicted witches were hanged on Gallows Hill. Now they are back…for vengeance.

Laura Phillips’s grief at her husband’s sudden death shows no sign of passing. Even sleep brings her no peace. She experiences vivid, disturbing dreams of a dark, brooding hill, and a man—somehow out of time—who seems to know her. She discovers that the place she has dreamed about exists. Pendle Hill. And she knows she must go there.

But as soon as she arrives, the dream becomes a nightmare. She is caught up in a web of witchcraft and evil…and a curse that will not die.

About the Author

Hello, my name’s Catherine Cavendish and I write horror fiction, frequently reflecting my Gothic influences.

My latest novel – THE PENDLE CURSE – will be published in ebook and paperback by Samhain on February 3rd 2015. I was one of four winners of their first Horror Anthology Competition with my Gothic novella – LINDEN MANOR – which is available now as a standalone ebook and in the anthology – WHAT WAITS IN THE SHADOWS – published on October 7th, 2014.

My other titles include: SAVING GRACE DEVINE, THE SECOND WIFE, MISS ABIGAIL’S ROOM, THE DEVIL INSIDE HER, THE DEMONS OF CAMBIAN STREET, COLD REVENGE, and IN MY LADY’S CHAMBER.

All are available from Amazon

I live with a longsuffering husband in North Wales. Our home is in a building dating back to the mid 18th century which is haunted by a friendly ghost, who announces her presence by footsteps, switching lights on and strange phenomena involving the washing machine and the TV.

When not slaving over a hot computer, I enjoy wandering around Neolithic stone circles and visiting old haunted houses.

You can find me on my blog: http://www.catherinecavendish.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CatherineCavendishWriter?ref=hl

and on Twitter: https://twitter.com/Cat_Cavendish

My Thoughts

[Note: I received an advanced reader’s copy from the publisher via NetGalley for review.]

I’m kind of on the fence regarding Catherine Cavendish’s The Pendle Curse. This is not by any means a bad book, but it was a little too staid, a little too cozy, for my tastes.

The story is told between two narrators, Laura, who exists in the present-day, and James, a witch in the 1600s era of Pendle Hill. Laura has recently lost her husband and is haunted by him, both literally and emotionally. Needing a break from the mysterious haunting, she treks out to Pendle Hill, a site notorious for its history with witchcraft, and which has been appearing to her in her dreams.

As she spends more time in Pendle Hill and becomes familiar with the locals, she becomes aware that something is just not right. Still haunted and torn between a growing passion for the co-owner of the inn she is staying at and her love for her departed husband, she begins to experience even more otherworldly phenomena.

While Laura is a well-drawn character, I found myself more interested in the historical happenings of Pendle. James and his family, a coven a witches themselves, get the most action in the story, from summoning their familiars to faring against the accusations of their neighbors that plunge them into a witch trial. It’s good stuff, and Cavendish shines in a few particular spots with some nicely horrific scenes of both the supernatural and more human varieties.

There is a gothic flavor to the proceedings of The Pendle Curse, and the pacing is rather slow and deliberate. It struck me as a bit more of a cozy supernatural read, with a dash of romance, than an out-and-out horror show. But, as a I said it’s not a bad read by any means. The characters are strong and kept my attention throughout, and Cavendish does a great job handling the various aspects of witchcraft lore. She also puts a terrific twist on the finale that was both a logical conclusion to what had preceded it, while affirming my suspicions but still managing to surprise with a last-minute flip of the script.

Mostly, I just had a different set of expectations going into the book, my first from Cavendish, and I do prefer my horror to be more firmly geared toward the dark and grisly, rather than the gentler touch Cavendish uses to handle the material. So, I wasn’t quite satisfied by the overall story but I certainly don’t regret the investment in reading time. I’m giving this one a pretty solid 3-stars (out of 5, per the Goodreads and Amazon metrics) overall.

Buy The Pendle Curse At Amazon

Review: It’s Only Death by Lee Thompson

About It’s Only Death

Six years ago James blew town after killing his cop-father in a bank job gone bad. When his sister informs him that their mother’s health is fading fast, he returns home, wanting to make peace with her before she passes.

But James quickly finds there is little peace left for him at his childhood home.

His father’s old partner has been biding his time, waiting for a chance at retribution, and finally discovers James is back. But he’s only one of the many shady characters James must face if he is to survive the next few days.

Not only must James survive his return, he must also face the devastation he left behind, the shattered pieces of what remained of his life before he was forced to run.

Now his days on the run are over.

Upon the edge of reckoning, James’s past comes full circle to the final showdown with his personal demons and the devils that are closing in.

It’s Only Death is an explosive, gritty tale of urban crime and one man’s descent into the nightmares in the darkest recesses of our society.

About the Author

Lee Thompson is the author of the Suspense novels A BEAUTIFUL MADNESS (August 2014), IT’S ONLY DEATH (January 2015), and WITH FURY IN HAND (May 2015). The dominating threads weaved throughout his work are love, loss, and learning how to live again. A firm believer in the enduring power of the human spirit, Lee believes that stories, no matter their format, set us on the path of transformation. He is represented by the extraordinary Chip MacGregor of MacGregor Literary. Visit Lee’s website to discover more: http://www.leethompsonfiction.com

My Thoughts

I wasn’t completely sold on It’s Only Death, Lee Thompson’s foray into the crime genre for dark fiction publisher DarkFuse. My main stumbling block was what I couldn’t help but see as a flawed premise.

So, here’s the scoop – Once upon a time, James was a stupid teenager who hated his father, a cop. He robbed a bank and his father was one of the first responders, and James killed him and took some potshots at father’s partner, Don Gray. This incident put him on the lam and he spent ten years on the run. Now, his mother is on death’s door and he’s come back to town at his sister’s behest.

And the way this is executed was my central problem with the book. James makes his return known pretty quickly by getting into a clash with a biker gang in the middle of a strip club where his father’s former partner, Don Gray, pulls a side job for a local mob boss. This is also where pretty much everyone James knows, outside of his mother, works or hangs out. It doesn’t take long for seemingly every single person in Florida to know that James, a murderer on the run, is back in town to visit his dying mother. Gray, though, doesn’t arrest James because he wants to kill him instead, as soon as James’ mother passes.

But, surely there must be other police in Florida who would be willing to arrest this cop-killer who is routinely seen coming and going from his mother’s house and raising hell all around the neighborhood? And after getting into a second clash with the biker’s at his sister’s trailer park, which leads him to killing another biker and adding hit-and-run to his growing list of felonies, he actually drives back to the trailer park, now swarming with cops, with a stolen gun where his whole plan is to kill more bikers.

So, yeah…compounding the unlikely event that Florida cops would just allow a cop-killer to wander around freely, James is also pretty frigging stupid. Low-key isn’t his specialty, and he’s not much of a thinker. When his sister is kidnapped, his big plan is to set fire to building she might be in. I, mean, really?

This book was just too much of a frustrating mess for me, and stacked with implausibilities galore. Typically, it doesn’t take too long for criminals as stupid as James to get caught, but somehow he survived on the run for 10 years. I’m having a hard time buying that. And this book certainly doesn’t hold a candle to other crime thrillers, like Elmore Leonard, James Ellroy, Duane Swierczynski, or Charlie Huston. Despite a fairly well-done climax, the resolution to these tangled threads of It’s Only Death fail to make up for a muddled story.

Buy It’s Only Death At Amazon

2015 Reading Challenge: 1 Month Down, 11 More To Go

2015 will be my third year participating in the annual Goodreads Reading Challenge, with a goal of reading 50 books by the end of the year. Admittedly, it’s a fairly easy goal for me: in 2013 I read 52 books, and last year I read 86.

Now that January is over, here’s a run-down of the New Year’s first month of reads.

Books read: 9

Pages read: 2, 393

Longest read: The Great Zoo of China by Matthew Reilly (515 pages)

My ratings and reviews:

Two 5-star titles

Gemini Cell by Myke Cole
Atlanta Burns by Chuck Wendig

Four 4-star titles

Afterburn by Tim Curran
Island of the Forbidden by Hunter Shea
Blockbuster by Lisa von Biela
The Great Zoo of China by Matthew Reilly

Two 3-star titles

The Lurking Season by Kristopher Rufty
Winter at the Door by Sarah Graves

One 2-star title

It’s Only Death by Lee Thompson

I doubt I’ll be doing a monthly update on the reading challenge. I might only toss in an update around some particular benchmarks, like a six-month check-up, but we’ll see. All in all, I think January was a fairly strong month of reads and I was mostly happy with the titles I read.

It’s Only Death came close to going in the Did Not Finish pile, but I hate not finishing a book, regardless of its appeal to me. It was short, so I mustered on, and the ending was good enough despite how little I enjoyed getting there. So, a whole extra star to that title just for the fun gun-filled finish.

I’m hoping February treats me well, and maybe even a little bit better. I’d love to spend the month rolling around in nothing but 4 or 5 star titles! As far as the 3-star reads went, as well as all the others, I’m going by the Goodreads metric, so 3-stars means I Liked It and should not be construed as a negative. Frankly, I found The Lurking Season to be far more compelling and encouraging enough that I want to check out more of Rufty’s works. Winter At The Door was solid enough, but flawed and I probably won’t check out more of Graves’ work in the future. So, take that for what it’s worth…

How did your January reads stack up? Are you doing the Goodread Challenge, and if so, share your stats below!

SciFriday Link Roundup

Here’s a roundup of some cool happenings in the science community this week:

The Awesome

Phys.org shares news of the discovery of a gigantic ring system that is much, much larger than Saturn’s.

28 Months on Mars, from the New York Times.

Bill Nye: Screw Deflategate. You Should “Give a Fuck” About Climate Change Instead.

Fox News reports on the findings of a mysterious radio signal captured in real-time in outer space. This discovery was recently published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Marcus Woo explains Why We’re Looking for Alien Life on Moons, Not Just Planets for Wired.

io9 reports that Kepler scientists discovered a Freakishly Old System of Planets, which formed more than 11 billion years ago.

Miriam Kramer, staff writer for Space.com, reports that private space taxis are on track to launch in 2017. Boeing and SpaceX will be ferrying astronauts to the International Space Station, thanks to their contracts with NASA.

Popular Science reports that scientists were able to slow down the speed of light.

Also from Popular Sciences is this article about NASA’s intentions to put an aerial drone on Mars. Video on that below:

And, finally, scientists have, at long last, figured out how to unboil an egg, a discovery that could potentially slash the costs of the world’s biotech industry, and which “‘could transform industrial and research production of proteins,’ the researchers write in ChemBioChem”.

The Atrocious and Maddening

Many Americans reject evolution, deny climate change and find GM food unsafe.

Published in the journal Science, the survey found that 31% of the US public believed that humans had existed in their present form since the beginning, with a further 24% stating that humans had evolved under the guiding hand of a supreme being.

Ugh. Just, ugh. Poor shame, America, poor shame.

Just discovered that my short horror story CONSUMPTION ha...

Just discovered that my short horror story CONSUMPTION has been listed as a Kobo Next Read. CONVERGENCE shared this honor last year, so I am now two for two!

Review: The Lurking Season by Kristopher Rufty

About The Lurking Season

The legends were true. The creatures were real. And now they’re back!

People have whispered about the tiny humanoid creatures in the woods and cornfields of Doverton for decades. Three years ago a wildfire devoured much of the rural village, but as the ashes were cleared, more questions were uncovered—including abandoned houses, missing people and dead bodies. Since the fire seemed to wipe out the majority of the town’s woodland acres, the murmurs about the creatures have gone quiet. The residents have begun to rebuild their lives, trying to forget about the tragedy that nearly killed them all. Yet the mysteries remained unsolved.

Now a group of people will go there with good intentions, venturing into the dead heart of Doverton, thinking it’s safe. But they will find out that the legend was only sleeping. Now it’s awake. And ready to kill again.

About the Author

Kristopher Rufty is the author of Angel Board, The Lurkers, Pillowface, A Dark Autumn, and Oak Hollow. He has also written and directed the independent horror films Psycho Holocaust, Rags, and Wicked Wood.

He hosts Diabolical Radio, an internet radio show devoted to horror fiction and film.

But what he’s best at is being married to his high school sweetheart and the father of two crazy children who he loves dearly. Together, they reside in North Carolina with their hulk-like dog,Thor, and numerous cats.

For more about Kristopher Rufty, please visit his Website http://www.lastkristontheleft.blogspot.com

He can be found on Facebook and Twitter as well.

My Thoughts

[Note: I received an advanced reader’s copy from the publisher via NetGalley for review.]

Kristopher Rufty knows how to lay his hooks into a reader, and he really drew me in with a knockout closing to the first chapter, which introduces the tiny and wicked threat of the wonderfully named Haunchies. There’s just something about that name that I totally dig – it’s somewhat innocuous but carries a bit of mysterious weight, a certain edginess to it.

And these Haunchies…sheesh. Despite their diminutive stature, they’re as bloodthirsty and nasty as you’d expect and desire in a work of dark horror. Rufty doesn’t hold back, and, in fact, I’d dare say he brings every gruesome staple to the table here – there are impalings with rusty nails, stabbings, assaults, rape, and all kinds of other nasty business to curl your toes, including some truly creepy body horror that, on more than one occasion, made me squirm.

Let’s face it, though – if it weren’t for an interesting story and solid characters, this book would be nothing more than a bloody mess. And while there’s certainly an abundance of dirty deeds on display, the story at work was one I mostly appreciated, with some reservations. A group of social justice crusaders, many of whom have been victimized themselves, are working on rehabilitating an abandoned farmstead to serve as a recovery center for abused men and women. Only too late do they learn of the horrors surrounding their cheaply gotten property and of the fires that ravaged the now largely abandoned community of Doverton.

Although The Lurking Season is a sequel to Rufty’s earlier The Lurkers, I hadn’t read the prior installment and never felt like I was missing any vital information, and this book works well enough to stand on its own two-legs. The precipitating details are related as urban legends, and work to fill in both new reader’s like myself, as well as the book’s cast of characters (and based on the info given therein, I’m certainly compelled to check out The Lurkers one of these days).

As far as the characters go, well, I wasn’t quite as sold on them as I was on the story and the turbulence upending the Doverton farm. Aside from Heather and Erin, two of the book’s central females, I didn’t particularly latch onto anyone, although the severely victimized Brooke was one to root for, if only because of the perils she found herself thrust into. The book has a pretty large cast, too, with the point-of-view shifting between multiple characters, but most of them lack a sufficient amount of depth and serve only as fodder to get run through the meat-grinder.

Overall, I wasn’t completely blown-away by The Lurking Season, but I did find it be an engaging read and will certainly check out Rufty’s other books. The climax was suitably satisfactory, even though I found find a few moments to be stretching the bounds of credibility. However, those with sensitivities toward reading scenes of graphic sexual assault should be warned, as there are a number of rapes and threats of sexual violence throughout, which are quite disturbing.

Buy The Lurking Season at Amazon

Review: Gemini Cell by Myke Cole

About Gemini Cell

Publication Date: January 27, 2015

Myke Cole continues to blow the military fantasy genre wide open with an all-new epic adventure in his highly acclaimed Shadow Ops universe—set in the early days of the Great Reawakening, when magic first returns to the world and order begins to unravel…

US Navy SEAL Jim Schweitzer is a consummate professional, a fierce warrior, and a hard man to kill. But when he sees something he was never meant to see on a covert mission gone bad, he finds himself—and his family—in the crosshairs. Nothing means more to Jim than protecting his loved ones, but when the enemy brings the battle to his front door, he is overwhelmed and taken down.

That should be the end of the story. But Jim is raised from the dead by a sorcerer and recruited by a top secret unit dabbling in the occult, known only as the Gemini Cell. With powers he doesn’t understand, Jim is called back to duty—as the ultimate warrior. As he wrestles with a literal inner demon, Jim realizes his new superiors are determined to use him for their own ends and keep him in the dark—especially about the fates of his wife and son…

About the Author

As a secu­rity con­tractor, gov­ern­ment civilian and mil­i­tary officer, Myke Cole’s career has run the gamut from Coun­tert­er­rorism to Cyber War­fare to Fed­eral Law Enforce­ment. He’s done three tours in Iraq and was recalled to serve during the Deep­water Horizon oil spill.

All that con­flict can wear a guy out. Thank good­ness for fan­tasy novels, comic books, late night games of Dun­geons and Dragons and lots of angst fueled writing.

My Thoughts

[Note: I received an advanced reader’s copy from the publisher via NetGalley for review.]

Myke Cole is an author that’s been on my watch-list for a few years now. He first caught my attention with his debut, Shadow Ops: Control Point, which immediately garnered the quick pitch of X-Men Meets Black Hawk Down. Color me intrigued. But, for whatever reason, I never got around to reading the damn thing and it has sat in my TBR pile for going on three years. In that time, Cole has completed the Shadow Ops trilogy and is now working on expanding the world he created there.

So, imagine my surprise when I learned about Gemini Cell, the start of a prequel series to the Shadow Ops stuff. I had a perfectly good entry point now, without further adding to the backlog of a series already in progress, that was custom-built for a Cole newbie like myself. And let me tell you, this book is a terrific way to get in on the ground floor of Cole’s expanding story. There’s no learning curve required, and no knowledge needed of his previous works. It is the perfect entry point.

By the time I hit the 30% mark on this book, I was kicking myself for not having experienced any of Cole’s earlier work, because it was just that damn good. And the X-Men comparison? It may be less applicable to this particular story, but I will say fans of other comic book properties like Venom (particularly Rick Rememder’s recent run) or Spawn, with maybe a smidge of Robocop tossed in for good flavor, will be in for treat.

As a military vet, Cole is able to imbue a hearty dose of realism to the ops conducted by the book’s Navy SEALs and the going-ons of the Gemini Cell. But what he really nails are the little things, those deft touches that help this book shine, such as Schweitzer learning how to talk post-mortem. His body is dead, he has no pulse, no need for air, and no way to make his vocal chords vibrate to produce sound, unless he puts an incredible amount of will into it. It’s a terrific and thoughtful aspect that helps enrich the supernatural proceedings.

I also appreciated the stark contrasts between Schweitzer and the jinn he shares his corpse with – these two are polar opposites in everything from ego to combat styles. Cole plays this part of the story straight-up and avoids any worryingly hokey, mismatched buddy-cop hijinks, which would be an enormous disservice to the material. Rather, it’s dark and edgy and appropriately grim. It’s serious, dangerous business and readers who underestimate how well it works could be in for a vicious reprimand.

Gemini Cell was a terrific and brisk read, a real fun page turner. Think Vince Flynn plus a whole lot of magic mixed in and baked in hellfire, and you’ve got the gist of how awesome Myke Cole’s new series is shaping up to be. This book just has so many genre elements that I love, and Cole lovingly blends them together, that it makes for an easy recommendation. I haven’t read any of this author’s past works, but I aim to catch up fast. He’s just earned a new loyal reader in me.

Buy Gemini Cell At Amazon

‘Hannibal’ season 3 first trailer — exclusive

Michael Patrick Hicks:

EW has the first trailer for Hannibal season 3. And hot damn, it is exquisite. I think I’m in desperate need of a series rewatch.

Originally posted on Inside TV:

[ew_image url=”http://img2.timeinc.net/ew/i/2015/01/...” credit=”” align=”none”]Ready for an amuse-bouche from Hannibal season three?

Below is a teaser trailer with the first batch of footage from the third season of NBC’s acclaimed, cult-favorite thriller. The trailer shows Will Graham (Hugh Dancy) obsessively hunting Hannibal Lecter (Mads Mikkelsen) in what we assume is Florence, Italy.

Expect the new season to mine elements from Thomas Harris’ Hannibal novels, including Hannibal Rising and Red Dragon. According to showrunner Bryan Fuller, the series will mash up elements from the books in a unique way—including revealing a very different origin story for the good doctor.

Though you’re going to have to wait until summer for the main course, this video should at least give a little taste: 

View original 4 more words

Cover Reveal: No Way Home

For the past few months, I’ve been working with Lucas Bale and a team of other terrific up-and-coming sci-fi indie authors to produce an anthology. We are expecting it to hit shelves this March, so not too long of a wait, but still miles to go. At long last, though, I can finally share some official bits and pieces, and you get your first look at our final cover.

The art was designed by Jason Gurley, and it is full-on, non-stop bad ass.

Here’s a look, with the blurb below:

No Way Home.

Stories From Which There is No Escape.

Nothing terrifies us more than being stranded. Helpless, forsaken, cut-off. Locked in a place from which there is no escape, no way to get home.

A soldier trapped in an endless war, dies over and over, only to be awakened each time to fight again – one of the last remaining few seeking to save mankind from extinction.

In rural 70’s England, an RAF radio engineer returns to an abandoned military installation, but begins to suffer hallucinations, shifts in time and memories that are not his own.

A widower, one of ten thousand civilian space explorers, is sent alone to determine his assigned planet’s suitability for human colonisation, but stumbles across a woman who is part of the same program and shouldn’t be there at all.

A depressed woman in a poverty-stricken near-future America, where political apathy has allowed special interests to gain control of the country, takes part in a particularly unpleasant crowd-funding platform, established by the nation’s moneyed elite to engage the masses.

An assassin from the future, sent back in time to murder a woman, is left stranded when he fails in his mission and knows he will soon cease to exist.

These sometimes dark, sometimes heart-warming, but always insightful stories and more are to be found in No Way Home, where eight of the most exciting new voices in speculative fiction explore the mental, physical and even meta-physical boundaries that imprison us when we are lost.

Release date: March 2, 2015

This book will be 99 cents for the first 48 hours of its release, so be sure to mark your calendars and snag it immediately! You might also want to add it to your To Read list on Goodreads.

A few days ago, I hinted that we had one hell of an author contributing a foreword, and now the cat is officially out of the bag. Jennifer Foehner Wells, the awesome author of the ginormous science fiction best-seller Fluency, is helping us kick things off!

This project has been an enormous amount of fun, and I’m really damn excited to bring this one to readers. I think there is a heck of a lot to love in this collection, and I’ve had the pleasure of reading a few of these stories in advance. I’m ridiculously proud to have my short story, REVOLVER, appearing in print alongside the work of a whole bunch of wonderful authors, some of whom are making their big sci-fi debut right here in these pages.

If you haven’t already, be sure to check out the works of Bale, Wells, J.S. Collyer, S. Elliot Brandis, Harry Manners, S.W. Fairbrother, Nadine Matheson, and Alex Roddie, who’s making his sci-fi debut here under the pen-name A.S. Sinclair.

There will be more news on the release soon, but you might want to sign up for my newsletter, memFeed, for extra goodies as we get closer to our release date. Trust me, it will be well worth it.

And, if I can ask one last thing of you, please share this post far and wide and be sure to tell your friends and neighbors.

Review: Afterburn by Tim Curran

About Afterburn

Be quiet. Very quiet.

Don’t scream.

They can’t see you, but they can hear you.

And they’re coming.

Knocking at doors and reaching through windows, hungry to incinerate anything that moves, anything that breathes. Born in a searing hellstorm of radioactive dust, they own the night and if they touch you, they’ll burn the flesh from your bones.

Listen.

They’re coming now.

Don’t even whisper.

And don’t scream.

About the Author

Tim Curran lives in Michigan and is the author of the novels Skin Medicine, Hive, Dead Sea, and Skull Moon. Upcoming projects include the novels Resurrection, The Devil Next Door, and Hive 2, as well as The Corpse King, a novella from Cemetery Dance, and Four Rode Out, a collection of four weird-western novellas by Curran, Tim Lebbon, Brian Keene, and Steve Vernon. His short stories have appeared in such magazines as City Slab, Flesh&Blood, Book of Dark Wisdom, and Inhuman, as well as anthologies such as Flesh Feast, Shivers IV, High Seas Cthulhu, and, Vile Things. Find him on the web at:

http://www.corpseking.com

blog: http://satansmeatlocker.blogspot.com/

My Thoughts

A new Tim Curran release is always something to be excited about, but I couldn’t help feeling that Afterburn would have benefited from a shorter, more compact execution. There’s a five-star novella buried within this four-star (maybe 3.5 star) novel.

My main complaint is that Afterburn just gets too repetitive. The main threat in this story revolves around a group of hell wraiths terrorizing and incinerating the small town of Middleburg, Nebraska. The idea is nifty enough, but frankly, there’s just so many times you can read about some hapless victim getting cremated, and Curran pretty well covers all the bases, from exploding eyeballs to burning, popping fat, and human bodies rendered down to tallow and charred bones. There’s just a few too many instances of this, though, and it gets a little long in the tooth. And while the back half of the book works incredibly well, it also highlights just how bloated and unnecessary a few of the character vignettes in the front half were.

Curran spends a good amount of time hopping from character to character before finally settling on the main protagonists, which was another problem with the structure of the book’s opening, albeit a more minor one. I wasn’t quite sure who to root for for quite a while in the book’s early going’s as each new character that surfaced existed simply to show how prevalent and ominous the mysterious threat plaguing Middleburg really is. I can’t help but wonder how many of these characters were introduced and dispatched with just as quickly simply in an effort to increase the word count to novel length.

Still, Curran is able to explore his characters sufficiently well in their, too-frequently, limited page counts. Like Stephen King, Curran is a master of blue-collar horror works, taking regular Joes and shoving them through the meat grinder (sometimes literally, and explicitly detailed at that!) with supernatural prowess. In addition to Abby, we get small-town cops, a high school janitor, a real estate agent cheating on her spouse, and a crabby old bitty who has positioned herself as the neighborhood watch and tacky gossiper. As already noted, some get more minor roles than others in the local tapestry Curran shapes in Afterburn, but we get to know each of them well, sometimes to the detriment of a few of these lowlifes and ne’er-do-wells.

As with a lot of Curran books, though (at least the one I’ve read so far), once things get going there’s little letting up. And here, the action starts off from damn near page one as black rain fall across the town, followed by a burning, crystalline hail that slices and dices its way through any townsfolk unlucky enough to be outside at the time. Sixteen year old Abby is stuck inside babysitting and catching up on her favorite infomercials, and soon enough finds herself to be the caretaker not only for her neighbor’s newborn, but another boy whose parents were killed by the burning, yearning, hungry-for-more sentient incinerators.

The threat is damning and unstoppable, leading to a scorching, apocalyptic finale that really kicks this already-amped up story into overdrive. And while this isn’t the best work of Curran’s that I’ve read, it’s certainly worth a read-through.

Buy Afterburn At Amazon