A Bunch of Book Reviews

I haven't blogged much in the past few months and now I have a lot of books to review. So I'm going to review them in groups rather than a post per book because otherwise I won't get around to reviewing them all.

Slugs by Shaun Hutson

I thought this book about human-eating slugs would be more entertaining than it actually was. The main character - the health inspector, which he is referred to in the novel so much that I don't remember his name - was so dull. The characters were all one-dimensional, boring and I really didn't care if they were eaten alive by slugs or not.  And the explanation behind why slugs suddenly grew teeth and started taking bites out of people made no sense.

Okay, I guess maybe I expected too much from a book about killer slugs. I didn't completely hate it - there are a few good, gory scenes that I enjoyed. If you read it with low expectations then you might like it more than I did.

This was also made into a 1988 film of the same name. I haven't seen it but I think the story might work better as a movie.

Rating: 3/5

Mandibles by Jeff Strand

This is another book about killer insects, this time ants.

I enjoyed Mandibles much more than Slugs. It's funnier, has more interesting characters and the existence of the giant killer ants is explained better and actually makes sense (as much as the thought of insects eating humans can I suppose).

The Kindle edition is available for only $2.99.

Rating: 4/5

Stranglehold by Jack Ketchum

As I've already said before on this blog, Jack Ketchum is my favourite horror author. So when Crossroad Press started releasing some of Ketchum's novels as cheap e-books, I was thrilled and bought a bunch of them for my Kindle - including this one.

Stranglehold reminds me a bit of The Girl Next Door because they both deal with child abuse, only this book isn't quite as gruesome. It's still very disturbing and realistic though. I don't want to give too much away about this book so I'm simply going to say it's amazing and I think all horror fans should read it.

Rating: 5/5

The Nightrunners by Joe R. Lansdale

This book is a lot like the movie Straw Dogs, but with a supernatural twist.
After a woman, Becky, is raped, she goes on a vacation to a cabin with her husband, Montgomery, to help them forget about it. Montgomery feels bad about his inability to protect his wife and claims to be a pacifist to cover up the fact that he's a coward.

The man who raped her is sent to prison and hangs himself. But he was the leader of a gang that is involved with an evil entity called The God of the Razor. It wants death and destruction - and for them to finish what they started and kill Becky.

The Nightrunners is incredible - definitely one of the best horror novels I've ever read. It's suspenseful, has an interesting plot and likable characters. If you haven't already read it, do it now!

This is the first book by horror legend Joe R. Lansdale I've read, but after reading The Nightrunners, I'll definitely be reading more. I bought The Complete Drive-In because I heard it was good, but have yet to read it.

Rating: 5/5

Ghoul by Brian Keene

Like It by Stephen King, Ghoul is a coming-of-age tale where a group of kids battles a monster. The trio of boys in this book make a clubhouse in a cemetery where they come across a ghoul.

I loved everything about this book - I even liked it more than It (which I found to be waaay too long and boring in spots). I highly recommend it to all horror fans.

Ghoul was made into a movie for Chiller which aired April 13 starring Nolan Gould (Luke on Modern Family), but unfortunately I couldn't watch it because Chiller isn't available in Canada. Hopefully it comes out on DVD soon so I can watch it. Has anyone seen it? I'm curious if it was as good as the book.

Rating: 5/5

Suffer the Flesh by Monica J. O'Rourke

I actually hadn't read anything by Monica J. O'Rourke when I interviewed her last year for Women in Horror Recognition Month. In the interview she said "My co-author (Wrath James White) said he approached me to write Poisoning Eros with him after reading Suffer the Flesh because he was shocked a woman had written it. I get that a lot, how people are surprised a woman could write something so extreme. I’ve been told I 'write like a guy.'" That made me want to seek out her work even more. When Suffer the Flesh was released as an e-book for a mere $2.99, I bought and read it immediately.

I can definitely see how others could be surprised that a woman wrote it. Suffer the Flesh is extremely gory and features many rape scenes. It's about an overweight woman (Zoey) who is captured off the street in New York after browsing the self-help/diet section of a bookstore and is taken to a secret research centre where they "help" women lose weight by raping and torturing them. 

I enjoyed this book a lot. It was suspenseful - I couldn't stop reading because I wanted to find out how (or if) Zoey would get out of this situation. I also found Zoey to be a very sympathetic character. I could relate to her weight loss struggles and hoped she would get out of there alive. I recommend this book for people who can handle extreme gore - including sadistic rape.

Rating: 4/5 

Dismember by Daniel Pyle

This is a backwoods novel with a twist. When a young boy is "rescued" by a man who lives in the woods after surviving a car wreck he has no idea that worst is yet to come.

Then the narrative moves forward several years and the boy has become a man not unlike his captor. Now he's looking for a new family to replace his.

The only thing I enjoyed about this novel was the first chapter. The plot is boring and excruciating slow. It took me a whole month to read Dismember and I struggled to finish it. There's no action or suspense. Other than the car accident in the beginning, there are maybe two deaths in the whole book. With a title like Dismember and a cover with a bloody axe, I expected it to have much more gore.

If you're still interested, it's available for Kindle for $3.99, but I recommend skipping this one.

Rating: 2/5

Super Fetus by Adam Pepper

When a fetus realizes its mother's intentions of having an abortion it begins working out so it can stand a chance against the doctor. But when it defeats the doctor its mother takes matters into her own hands....

Super Fetus was the first bizarro book I've read and I enjoyed it a lot. Weird and disturbing yet highly entertaining. At times I would be laughing, then read the next few pages and stop reading in disgust. Well, there were only a few moments in the book that I found gross, but they were very gory/disturbing (just thinking about them now makes me shudder). Recommended for horror fans looking for something different and humorous.

Rating: 4/5

BOOK REVIEW: Urban Gothic by Brian Keene

Being a huge Brian Keene, fan I had been looking forward to Urban Gothic for months before it was released. But it took me almost six months to finish reading it. I got halfway through and gave up. It actually turned me off horror for awhile and made me wonder why I preferred gore and monsters over interesting characters. I don't, what I want is for my horror novels to have it all: fascinating characters that I don't want to see die, monsters and gore. But Urban Gothic focused more on the characters' torture than on their description and development. Eventually I got back to reading Urban Gothic (obviously, or else I wouldn't be reviewing it now) and found the second half to be better than the first.

Three young couples attend a rap concert and on the way home their car breaks down in a bad neighbourhood. When a group of young black men approach them, they become frightened and run away, hiding in an abandoned house. Or so they think - the house is actually inhabited by a family of mutant creatures.

The plot is a familiar one, but I didn't mind because it's a plot I love (almost) every time I encounter it. It's similar to Brian Keene's last novel, Castaways, which was also about monsters killing and eating people, but had a different setting (a tropical island).

The pace moves fairly quick, having the first mutant sighting/teen killing by the end of Chapter One. But the teens' efforts to hide or escape get old fast. Eventually Urban Gothic becomes dull and monotonous, which was the point I stopped reading. But when I picked the book up again months later, I was surprised to find that it wasn't as bad as I remembered. And it introduced a few fresh plot developments (killer mutant babies, for instance), which kept me reading to the end.

As I already mentioned, the area of the novel most lacking are the characters. Keene gives virtually no back story on them, making me careless about what happens to them and wonder why I should read any further. And because of this, I couldn't tell any of them apart. I spent the entire novel trying to identify Kerri from Heather, having to flip back to previous chapters to remember.

But I liked the group of black young men. They were the only interesting, non-stereotypical characters in the story and Urban Gothic would've been better if Keene focused on them more instead of the teens. And I did find the mutants (and mutant babies) disturbing.

It's not a bad novel, especially if gore interests you more than compelling characters. But if you're looking for a good mutant cannibal novel, I would stick with Ketchum's Off Season.

Rating: 3/5

BOOK NEWS: Urban Gothic

Brian Keene's new novel Urban Gothic is in stock on Amazon. I read the first few chapters on there and I can't wait to read the rest. Here's the description on the back of the book:

When their car broke down in a dangerous neighbourhood of the inner city, Kerri and her friends thought they would find shelter in the old dark row house. They thought it was abandoned. They thought they would be safe there until morning. They were wrong on all counts. The residents of the row house live in the cellar and rarely come out in the light of day. They're far worse than anything on the streets outside. And they don't like intruders. Before the sun comes up, Kerri and her friends will fight for their very lives...though death is only part of their nightmare.

I can't wait to read this. It sounds sort of like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre or The People Under The Stairs, which would make an interesting book. And all the reviews I've read rave about it and say it's Keene's best so far. We'll see....

BOOK REVIEW: Castaways by Brian Keene

I already mentioned how excited I was to read Brian Keene's new novel, Castaways. This is Keene's tribute to Richard Laymon, spawned from a short story featured in the anthology In Laymon's Terms and Keene's own anthology, Fear of Gravity.

Castaways is a reality show like Survivor. But the contestants don't know they're sharing an island with beasts. And since there are no other animals on the island, the monsters plan to have a great feast of human meat. But that's just for the men. They have something else in store for the women - they're planning to breed with them to save their dying, inbred species.

The plot isn't very original, but I was willing to overlook that because I love Brian Keene. You can definitely tell that it's an homage to Richard Laymon. There's tons of blood and gore. Lots of descriptions of ripping skin off and eating organs. And too many descriptions of the monsters' penises. I get that they were trying to breed, but how many times do you have to mention them? We get the picture, move on.

The pace is slow for the first few chapters, bogged down by explanations of how the reality show works. It's unnecessary for everyone who has seen Survivor and makes the beginning boring. But after that, the pace picks up.

The characters also slow down the story. There are too many to keep track of, and most of them have their own back story, even though they get killed off immediately. The book is too short (about 300 pages) for 10+ characters. I couldn't keep track of who was who, until the beasts narrowed down the contestants.

Also, all of the characters were stereotypes. I know that reality shows choose stereotypes, but I thought that Keene would make them deeper than they appear. Nope. There's the average guy, the girl next door, the bimbo, the token black guy and black girl, and more. But none of these characters are fleshed out more.

Except for the main character's apparent interest in cryptozoology. How convenient, he can identify what the creatures on the island are. I know sometimes books use things that make no sense to further the plot, but making cryptozoology his hobby is just ridiculous.

I don't want to give anything away, so all I will say about the ending is that it was disappointing. Everything was wrapped up too nicely. I had some ideas of how it could end, but unfortunately none of those happened.

But it did keep my interest and it was very gory. While it could've been much better, it wasn't that bad, and will keep you entertained if you can get over the slow beginning, the many stereotypical characters and the let-down ending.

Rating: 3/5

BOOK NEWS: Castaways

I know this is old news, but I wanted to post something about it anyway because I'm so excited about it! Brian Keene's next novel, Castaways, will be released from Leisure January 27, 2009. Here's the blurb:

They came to the deserted island to compete on a popular reality television show. Each one of them hoped to be the last to leave. Now, they’re just hoping to stay alive, because one of them isn’t who he seems, and the island isn’t as deserted as it appears. The men will be slaughtered. The women will be kept alive as captives. And before it is over, the survivors will turn on each other. Night is falling, the creatures are coming, and rescue is so very far away…

Survivor+horror=awesome

I can't wait! With all these great new horror books being released from Leisure, I think I might as well join the book club. There's an early review on The Horror Fiction Review which you can read here.