Horror World Book Reviews
April, 2010

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SNOW by Ronald Malfi; Dorchester Publishing (Leisure Imprint); 2010; 311 pgs.; $7.99

Leisure Publishing is having one hell of a run; in the past few months they’ve released some of the best horror in the trade.   From the likes of James Wrath White, Gord Rollo, Graham Masterton, and Ray Garton., and now with Snow, Leisure has not only continued with this success streak, they have released what should eventually be considered a classic in the genre.   And while Malfi might be considered a relatively new writer in dark fiction, but he may just have written one of the most exciting and entertaining horror novels in the past few years.

Snow is a throw back to some of the best horror writing of the late 70’s and early 80’s, and as you read along in Snow, it will call to mind some of the work by the best two horror writers of that era, Stephen King and Peter Straub.  Like those two novelists, he doesn’t promote his terror with extreme horror or depraved sexual antics.  Instead, Malfi’s fiction will have you at the edge of your seat with its action, plotting, and great characterization.  The characters in Snow feel real; they are an everyman who is put into a bad situation, hell, we really believe it could be us their shoes.  His action is nonstop and extremely visual; it feels as if there is a movie playing in your head as your eyes flit across the pages of Snow.  And like any good movie, we don’t want it to end.

In Snow, we meet Todd Curry while he’s waiting in an airport to find out if his flight is cancelled because of a fierce snowstorm raging in the area.  Todd really needs to get on this flight so he can see his young son, who he has let down so many times before, and he can’t bare to let him down again.  While waiting for word on the flight, Todd meets Kate in a bar, a fellow passenger who also needs to get home quickly.  After a pleasant conversation they part, with Todd going back to the airline counter where he learns his flight has indeed been canceled.   Todd needs to figure out a way to get back home quickly, and then it occurs to him to rent a car.

When Todd gets to the car rental booth he learns that all the 4 wheel drive vehicles have been rented, but fortunately, the last one was rented to Kate, who invites him and another couple along with her for the long drive home in the snowstorm.   Todd agrees, only if he can drive.  After only a few hours he wonders if they made a mistake trying to get home in the storm, he can barely see the front of the vehicle the snow is so heavy.  Then somehow, Todd makes out the figure of a man standing on the highway ahead, and when trying to avoid him, he crashes the vehicle.  After determining everyone in the vehicle is o.k. they approach the man who seems disoriented and not dressed properly for the snowstorm.  This man tells Todd that he too has crashed and that he’s looking for his young daughter who’s disappeared in the snowstorm.

It becomes apparent that there is something very odd about the man and his story, so after a brief search for the girl and after a confrontation with the man, all four occupants of the vehicle decide to find help, then trek through the woods seeking shelter.   What they find is a small isolated town in the countryside, completely dark, with small fires set ablaze in the main street.  And what this group discovers in the town is one hell of a horror story.

With Snow, Malfi has written a novel that is absolutely brilliant; seasoned readers of horror novels would be hard pressed to find any missteps.   Malfi focuses on his action-oriented plot like a laser beam, keeping the back-stories of his characters lean and weaving them seamlessly into the narrative.  The author also never lets up on the tension.  From the moment the group leaves the airport, to the novels explosive conclusion, we are captivated by their struggles, we just can’t look away.  Readers never know what’s going to happen next, and who lives and dies.

Snow is a must read for every lover of horror fiction and is very highly recommended, you really don’t want to pass this one by.  And once you’ve finished Snow, you should look up Malfi’s contribution in New Dark Voices 2 called Borealis, for even more icy horror that will chill you to the bone.

                                                                      
--T. T. Zuma

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THE NOBODY by Tom Piccirilli; Tasmaniac Publications, $10.00, 123 pages, 2009

The Nobody by Tom Piccirilli is a novella that was published in early 2009 by Steve Clark’s Tasmaniac Publications in Australia, which is also publishing Tom’s newest story, The Last Deep Breath, later this year.  Let me say right up front that The Nobody is filled with such intensity that it made me grind my teeth together as I rushed to finish it.  I don’t know if that’s good or bad.  My dentist keeps telling me I’m not going to have any teeth left if I keep reading these types of books.  I told him to blame the authors for being such a damn good writers. 

Anyway, this is the story of man named—well, we never really know his actual name, only that he’s referred to as Cryer, due to his insistent crying while healing from a serious head wound in the hospital.  You see he used to be an overweight family man with a sizable tire around his waist.  He came home one night after pigging out on fast-food hamburgers and fries, only to find his teenage daughter gutted in the living room, lying in a pool of her own blood.  His wife was upstairs in the bathtub, tied up with masking tape around her wrists and mouth, and her throat cut from ear to ear.  As Cryer hurries through the bathroom door, he sees the killer escaping out the opened window.  When he grabs the man, he gets three inches of a steel-bladed knife embedded into his forehead for his trouble.  Cryer should’ve died that night with his wife and daughter, but he didn’t.  Instead, he ended up in a hospital until his insurance ran out and then a state-run facility for several months, losing ninety pounds in the process, becoming unrecognizable to those who once knew him, and gaining strength and power in his two hands.  He had no memory of his past or who he was.  The only thing Cryer knows for sure is that there was a big hole of emptiness inside his gut and that he intends to find and kill the person who took his family away.  But first, he has to get out of the place he’s in before the hunting process can begin, and he will find the killer.  Of that one thing he’s absolutely sure of, if nothing else.

Tom Piccirilli first became known for his horror fiction (Hexes and The Deceased) several years ago, and then shifted to writing crime-noir thrillers (The Fever Kill, The Dead Letters, November Mourns, The Midnight Road, The Cold Spot, and The Coldest Mile), proving how talented an author he really is.  Not many authors can write well in different genres, but Tom Pic is the man.  In fact, he not only does well, he excels in writing the best fiction he can, offering his readers tightly packed stories filled with taut suspense, characters who aren’t afraid to take a bullet to get their revenge, and sharp dialogue that’s lean and mean.  He certainly does this with The Nobody, creating a sympathetic everyday man who’s lost his family in the most violent way, barely survived a deaf-delivered blow to the head, and who now has amnesia.  There’s also something else this vividly drawn character has.  It’s the will to slowly get better and then hunt down the killer so he can squeeze the life of him as he grips the man’s neck in both hands.  That’s what stays in the forefront of Cryer’s mind, giving him the strength to live for one very precious moment of revenge.  After that, nothing else matters.

Dark and violent with hardcore revenge as its central theme, The Nobody is one of the best novellas I’ve read in the last decade.  If you haven’t read anything by Tom Piccirilli before, then you’re in for a treat because this guy writes like a fired .44 magnum bullet—he’s fast and he knocks you right out of your little white cotton bobby socks with the first round!  Few writers can do it as good as the Pic.  Read this book and find out why he’s one of the most sought after authors in the dark suspense genre.     

--Wayne C. Rogers

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THE ZOMBIE COMBAT MANUAL, by Roger Ma; Berkley Books, 2010; 320 pages; $14.00

Zombies…so are we sick of them yet? Well I’m not. I still love the shuffling, smelly guys. That is, as long as they are in good movies, video games and books. Luckily that is the case with this book, despite my surprise. Yes, I must admit that when I first heard about this book I thought it would just be a riff on Max Brooks’ awesome THE ZOMBIE SURVIVAL GUIDE and as such it would be pamphlet sized at best. So imagine my surprise when I got it and saw that it over 300 pages. My mind reeled at that, I mean how far could they carry a single joke? Well then imagine my surprise carried to the tenth power after reading Mr. Ma’s very funny book and not only never getting bored with it, but completely loving it. I know, I’m as surprised as you are, but let me explain.

Roger Ma tackles the topic of fighting the undead in desperate hand to hand combat very seriously and that is one of the reasons this book is so funny. He obviously knows the basics of fighting well, or else he aced his research because when he tells you the pros and cons between using a baseball bat to cave in a zombie’s skull, or attempting a decapitation with a machete, you believe he knows what he’s talking about. Roger also does his best to cover all the bases you could possibly think of when going hand to gnashing choppers against the living impaired.      

The book begins with popular misconceptions of zombies, like zombies only eat brains or that they can be trained. Next is a crash course in undead anatomy so that anyone tussling with the recently risen knows what to look out for and where to hit the capering corpse where it will do the most damage. There is even a handy chart on the speed of zombies in various states of decay and disrepair. Want to know how fast a legless ghoul can crawl after you? The answer is one mile an hour.

Real world melee weapons and fighting techniques are spotlighted and how they would affect an opponent that can’t feel pain. Mr. Ma is partial to tomahawks and pitchforks, so if you’re a Native American farmer then you should be hell on wheels come the zombie apocalypse. As for fighting styles, both long and medium range fighting is covered in detail, as in unarmed and CQC, or close-quarters combat; the fancy fighting made popular in the BOURNE movies. But one word of advice, don’t every try beating up a zombie with a rolled up magazine like Matt Damon did in his movie. Trust me, you’ll lose.

There are plenty more bloody bon-bons sprinkled throughout this book. There are interviews with those that went toe to toe with zombies and lived to tell the tale. Exercise regiments that will whip you into fighting shape for Z Day including how to turn your calves into iron for that all important stomping on the head of a fallen zombie in order to keep it down. There are also an abundance of illustrations, most of them hilarious, all of them informative. The step by step diagram showing precisely how to insert, twist, and then remove an ice pick from the ear of a zombie I found to be very educational.  

In closing there are three reasons for you to buy this book. First, you are a die hard zombie fan. Second, you like well written and very dry humor. Third, there’s a horde of zombies banging on your front door right now. If you fall into any of these three criteria then do yourself a favor and get THE ZOMBIE COMBAT MANUAL today.

- Brian M. Sammons

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DEAD BAIT by Various Authors; www.severedpress.com; 2009; 277 pgs.; $14.95

Have you ever been to one of those inexpensive dinner buffets where for one low price you could eat as much as you want?    If so, do you remember your first look at the buffet tables at a distance?  How you marveled at all the food in those pans, and how your mouth watered just looking at it!   But afterward, when you were piling all that food into your oversized plate, did you notice that maybe it didn’t look as good close up?  But what the heck, it was cheap, so you went for it.  Then, when you got back to your table and started eating, you might have noticed that the flavor of all the food was a bit bland.  Strangely, it all tasted the same.  And it didn’t matter what you were eating, after a while, there was a sameness to it, even the meat tasted just like the vegetables.  In a way, Dead Bait reminds me of one of those buffets.

Dead Bait is anthology with 19 stories that all evolve around fish of some kind, and while the concept might appear to be a great one, it soon becomes apparent that it’s rather restricting.  And that’s because once you start reading Dead Bait, all the stories tend to blend into each other.  

In addition to the fish theme, there are other common threads that run through quite a few of these stories; nuclear/biohazard waste, and murder/revenge.   Not those these are bad themes to have in an anthology about bad fish, its just that it gets a bit old reading story after story about how the fish became mutated from man’s pollution, and how the characters are either feeding to the fish someone they don’t love, or how the characters want to kill the fish because it killed someone they did love. 

To be fair there is some variety to the tales, there are lots of different species of fish in the book to center stories around.   Of course it has the usual suspects consisting of catfish, carp, shark, eels, and sand crabs.  But Dead Bait also offers some change ups by presenting were-fish, vampire-fish, zombie-fish, and giant lobsters.  And I should mention that there is a mer-fish that makes a cameo appearance.

Though the stories in Dead Bait might start to feel familiar after a while, most of them are worthy reads (some in need of a good editor however).  Highlights include; Fox Goes Fission by Ron Leming, about a lonely Park Ranger that fishes a creepy lake to catch the entity responsible for his wife and daughters death; The Old Man and the Puddle by Hayden Williams, about an insane man who fishes a lake to catch the fish responsible for his fathers death; Blood in the River about a vampire who turns into a fish and kills people, and Lobster Stew by Gregory L. Norris, about a man who purchases a 60 pound lobster without realizing that something in the sea with a trident wants it back. 

As mentioned, most of these stories are highly entertaining on their own and would be much more enjoyable if they didn’t follow one other in an anthology.  So I would recommend purchasing Dead Bait and taking your time reading them, space them out if you can.  Maybe you could reward yourself with reading a single story between novels.   It might one way to keep these fish stories fresh.

-- T. T. Zuma

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OCTOBER DARK by David Herter, Earthling Publications, 560 pp, $50.00

There were moments during my reading of David Herter's OCTOBER DARK (Book #5 in Earthling Publications annual Halloween Series) where I thought I was in the process of discovering a masterpiece of the genre. This feeling is rare, to be sure, and that in itself should speak volumes about Herter's work here. Books that I have had that feeling about before include such Stephen King classics as The Stand, 'Salem's Lot, The Shining, and IT, Peter Straub's Ghost Story, William Peter Blatty's The Exorcist, and Brian Keene's The Rising, all longtime personal favorites that have stood up to numerous readings, offering up rich new rewards each time. OCTOBER DARK is a dense, massive tome that, like an onion, invites the reader to peel away it's many layers in their quest to get to the book's dark heart.

Herter's narrative unfurls in two different eras: 1931 & 1977, in the wonderfully mythic metropolis of Grenton, which exists in an unnamed state. On Halloween, 1931, famed King Kong animator Willis H. O'Brien prepares to fulfill a deal with a Devil: The mysterious Mr. Mordaunt, a legendary figure who holds the key to the secret history of the cinema. An unexpected betrayal leads to unimaginable consequences for O'Brien and Grenton, setting in motion events that will culminate nearly 5 decades later, on Halloween evening, 1977. Thirteen-year-old friends Jim and Will find themselves caught up in the struggle to contain Mordaunt's evil, and to prevent him from using the power of modern cinema to revive a force more powerful than anything the world has seen before.

As I said, the book has moments, quite a few of them, in fact, that border on brilliance. Unfortunately, they get buried in so much extraneous material that they seem few and far between. OCTOBER DARK suffers from a lack of clear storytelling focus. Anyone discussing the books I mentioned above can easily tell you what the hero was struggling against: Vampires, Demons, the end of the world.  OCTOBER DARK's protagonists struggle against Mordaunt simply because. If there was a compelling reason to prevent Mordaunt from resurrecting his lost love, it was buried in Herter's seemingly endless exposition and descriptions. There's a great book here, but it could have used a trim by 200 or so pages. Herter never really makes Mordaunt's motivation clear, and without a solid foundation of villainy, the book's breakneck race to stop him seems a little bit hollow. There's also an extended excursion to another reality towards the end of the book that stopped the momentum dead, and a muddled final confrontation that seems very anti-climactic. I am also at a complete loss regarding the (Seemingly...) important character of Mr. Bone.  Where did he get his powers from, who exactly is he, and why do we learn so little about him? All of these things conspire to make a potentially GREAT book merely very good, and that's a shame. There's a lot to like within the pages of this book, especially for fans of Ray Bradbury, and stop-motion animation. The city of Grenton is a wonderfully evocative creation, with it's ruined, haunted canals and it's art-deco towers.  Herter does an amazing job of bringing Grenton to life, and it's as mush of a character as Jim and Will.

You coulda been a contender, OCTOBER DARK.  As it stands, we'll have to settle for a flawed masterpiece.

--Daniel Reilly

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Black Static Magazine #14/#15; TTA press.  TTApress.com. 64pp; $3.95 (British).

The reviews of this magazine are beginning to get redundant.  Why?  It’s consistently the best horror fiction magazine outside of the States and easily in the top two in the world.  Articles, interviews, stories, and reviews – all repeatedly are top notch and never fail to entertain and inform. 

The bottom line? Try it.  The chance a horror aficionado doesn’t fall for its high quality is smaller than The Lost Symbol being called high literature.  The best thing (other than the other qualities noted above)?  TTA Press cranks it out every two months like clockwork.  Each is just as good as the previous issue.

In issue #14, Black Static features UK author Gary McMahon along with in depth reviews of a novel and novella.  His “Teen Spirit” follows, giving readers a taste of his writing.  The opening news section is up to date and fascinating in terms of upcoming books, conferences, and writer news. Christopher Fowler’s “Interference” column is as ascerbic as always and takes on a few films (his “The Eleventh Day” story follows). Afterwards, readers are treated to Stephen Volk’s “Electric Darkness” column, which is constantly insightful, this time regarding how horrific horror can or should be.
Other stories included by Maurice Broaddus, Paul Finch & Rosanne Rabinowitz. 
In the review section, DVD giveaways are plentiful in addition to in-depth analyses and several books are examined.
In issue #15, writer extraordinaire Alexandra Sokoloff is featured, fittingly during women in horror month (or just Celebrating Women’s Month).  A truly gifted author and person, she discusses her craft, the business, and women in dark fiction while her fiction is reviewed.    Missing from #14 but thankfully here is Mike O’Driscoll “Night’s Plutonian Shore,” a column that tackles issues facing the horror industry today. Censorship “The Creeping Silence” is handled well here (a very scary reality).  Stories by James Cooper, Simon Kurt Unsworth, Alan Scott Laney, Daniel Kaysen, and Sarah Singleton brighten the issue with a cover reminiscent of “Donnie Darko.”

One final note – the artwork, both on the cover and preceding each story is one of the highlights of each issue and showcase several artists.

--  Dave Simms

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Crescent, by Phil Rossi; Dragon Press; 2010, 297 pgs.; $ 13.57

I’d like to start off this review by saying that I’m not overly fond of science fiction.  My biggest problem with the genre is that authors have a tendency to use names for their characters that are virtually unpronounceable.  For some reason, if I can’t say a characters name I have difficulty connecting emotionally with them, in my mind they become objects rather than personalities.  I also have difficulty when the plot revolves around distant planets or galaxies when the terrain becomes so complicated that you need to draw a map for constant reference just to follow along with the story line.  

For me, the best science fiction novels are written in the mold of Arthur C. Clark’s 2001: A Space Odyssey.  The characters names in that novel were simple to remember and the story took place in our solar system.  Who doesn’t remember the names in that book?  There is no tongue twisting or brain teasing when remembering HAL, or Dave’s name, or that the action took place on Discovery One and the Moon.  So when I read the blurbs for Crescent and it was described as a science fiction/horror hybrid, I was a little reluctant to take it on.

I am pleased to pass along that for those who share my problems with the genre, that the three main protagonists’ in Crescent have the easily recognizable names of Marisa, Ina, and Gerald.  And it gets better; the spaceship Gerald pilots is called Bean, the space station where most of the action takes place is called Crescent, and thankfully, the bad guy is named Kendall.   So if you’re like me, unpronounceable names and locations are one obstacle you won’t have to battle while reading Crescent.

As in most space opera’s, Crescent’s plot is a variation of a Wild West story where an inscrutable, but somewhat loveable good guy gets thrown into a situation where he battles the evil sheriff.  In between these battles, the hero goes to bars, gets thrown in the hoosegow, and falls in love with the local cutie.  What sets Crescent apart from the stereotypical western is that you also get some cool monsters thrown into the mix along with an old hag who may be immortal.

In Crescent, we meet Gerard, a scrappy space salvage pilot who lands on Crescent Station while he’s a little down on his luck, but that appears to change from almost the minute he arrives.  Not only does Gerard get laid by an old girl friend seconds after docking his ship on Crescent Station, the Mayor of the station soon approaches him with some salvage jobs.  Of course these jobs seem a bit suspicious to Gerard, but he’s the kind of guy that will do anything for buck, including taking a few prohibited side jobs from a doctor and his beautiful daughter who also live on board.  

Gerard seems to be doing well on Crescent, and why not?  He’s making a pile of money while having his way with two different women.  But the situation changes rapidly.  Both of his sex partners have become possessed by some evil entities and Crescent Station’s citizens are becoming increasingly violent.  We soon learn that there are three entities, each a different color, that are trying to come into Crescent Station from a parallel universe, with one of them, called The Black, having been stuck half in and half out of our universe for some time.  This Black entities goal is to get some of the people on the station to bring over a red entity and a violet entity, so they can all meld and wreck havoc among us.  In the meantime, The Black is causing as much mayhem as it can by forcing the Stations occupants into brawling, shootouts, and even self-amputations.

I should mention there’s one good thing about the Black entity, it makes you horny as hell once it posses you.   So when reading Crescent, be prepared for lots of straight and kinky sex going on at the Station, with and without partners.  

From what I could gather, this novel had its genesis as a pod cast, and in my opinion, the author did a pretty good job with its translation to a novel.  There is plenty of dialogue in the book, copious amounts of action, and it has a pretty even flow to it; all of the same ingredients you would find in an absorbing radio play.  The story itself is exciting and intriguing, and Rossi’s main characters are well developed so readers should have no trouble identifying with them. 

While Crescent doesn’t break any new ground, readers nonetheless will find themselves curious as to what happens next, even if they have a feeling they can already guess.  And while I did enjoy Crescent quite a bit, I do have two quibbles with the novel.  The first is that I found a few editing errors that took me out of the story momentarily.  And secondly, Rossi is a little weak at building up to the moments of horror.  The horror scenes in the novel were sometimes abrupt, lacking the tension needed to make them more effective.

All in all, I would happily recommend to those readers who enjoy science fiction with a liberal dose of horror to pick up Crescent, I don’t think they would be disappointed.

T. T. Zuma

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WEREWOLF SMACKDOWN, By Mario Acevedo; Eos, 2010; 406 pgs; $14.99

I am ashamed to admit it, but I am a Johnny come lately to the weird, wild, hardboiled, and often raunchy world of vampire P.I. Felix Gomez. I had heard of the character before, but I was always too busy reading other things to bother with yet another vampire book. You see, my appreciation of the fanged fiends and waned in direct proportion to their oversaturation in the public and their reinvention as sex symbols, be they glittering or otherwise. So another vamp more interested in boning than biting really didn’t scream “must read” at me. Then I got sent Mario Acevedo’s latest Felix book, Werewolf Smackdown and I felt that I had to give the rather silly titled tome a try. And baby, am I glad I did.

Felix Gomez is a great character and that is despite him being a blood sucker. You see, my tastes in vamps are for the more monstrous and fiendish and less for the pretty boy, emo undead. I like my vampires to be more Salem’s Lot and 30 Days of Night rather than Twilight and Vampire Lestat. Now Felix is more funny than feral and more romantic than rotting, but he won me over nevertheless and that speaks volumes for the depth of the character. First he’s an out and out smartass and so am I, so right away I liked him. Second, he loves to have sex and wouldn’t you know it, so do I? Now only if I was Latino, and a private investigator, oh and undead, it would be like this book was written about me. Ok seriously, Felix is a great, funny, well fleshed out character. Mr. Acevedo does such a good job in writing the vampire sleuth that even though this was my first introduction to the character and his world I never felt lost or confused like you can when jumping into most other series with five books already under their belt. Within a few chapters I had a good grasp on the character and his history, yet the current events were never overshadowed by chunks of exposition of the past. That’s a good thing, because the things going on in this book demand full attention.

Smackdown has the Colorado based P.I. heading down to Charleston, South Carolina for a bit of lycanthropic southern hospitability. Felix finds himself in the middle of a brewing werewolf civil war when the old alpha wolf leader in that part of the country dies under mysterious circumstances, leaving two rivals to the throne that both want Felix to help them by killing the other guy. That is something Felix wants no part of for many reasons. For one, vamps and werewolves don’t mix. For another, and larger reason, when the fur starts to fly in this fight it is sure to blow the lid off of the “Great Secret”, an ancient pact made to hide the fact that the supernatural is real to the human world. If that happens then its game over for all of the unnatural kind because while werewolves and vampires are scary, flamethrowers, miniguns loaded with silver bullets, jet fighters, and nuclear weapons are even scarier. Unfortunately for all involved, an old foe thought long dead from Felix’s past may be involved in fermenting the werewolf war for the sole purpose of exposing the secret world to the humans. This causes the P.I. to get involved and disarm the ticking time bomb of a situation before it goes off. After all, if everyone knew Felix was a vampire it might greatly hamper his sex life. Well, except with the Twilight fans, but most of them are underage.       

One of the things I liked most about this book is that Mario Acevedo does a good job in keeping the action grounded in the noir rather than the nightmarish. Yes there are vampires and werewolves, and even some hot and weird vampire on werewolf sex, but the surreal usually takes a backseat to the investigation of the mystery, the off kilter humor, and the wonderful smartass attitude of Felix. This was a smart decision because it is these things that make Werewolf Smackdown stand out as something other than yet another sexy vampire novel. In fact, I was so taken with this book and it’s likable protagonist that I plan to get all of Mario’s books in this series. If they are just half as good as this one, I’ll be very happy indeed. For a novel that came out of nowhere at me, and one I didn’t think very much of before starting it, that is saying a lot. If you want a weird, funny, and sexy P.I. tale that just happens to have supernatural critters in it, then I highly recommended Werewolf Smackdown.

--Brian M. Sammons

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DEAD HOUSE, by Keith Luethke; Living Dead Press, 2009; 215 pgs; $15.99

The subtitle for this book is, A Zombie Ghost Story, so with a tagline like that I just had to give this one a read. So I did and I enjoyed it, for the most part. There are a few points of contention I had with this book while reading it, but that just might be a matter of differing personal taste. So in an effort to give this book the benefit of a doubt I’ll do my best to describe both the things that I liked and disliked about this The Changeling meets Night of the Living Dead mash up and let you decide.

The story is about the titular house and with a name like that you know the place has got to have a history. That history being that the house was owned by a mortician and that several bodies disappeared there over the years. Living in that house now are the descendents of the undertaker, one is Randolph, a bitter old man, and the other is his strapping, kindhearted son, Victor. Into the same small upstate New York town of Stormville comes pretty, perky, but troubled goth girl Kirsten and her father and stepmother. The two teens are the leads of the tale and both are suffering from guilt. Kristen is haunted by the death of her mother while Victor blames himself for the recent loss of his girlfriend. The two come together as more and more zombies begin to pop up on rainy nights, and in a town called Stormville, you can bet it rains a lot. As the story goes on a few twists and turns come in to liven things up. Some work out well, like icky truth behind the growing undead menace, and even the nature of these zombies I thought was a fresh take on the very popular subgenre. These aren’t your usual flesh or brain eating corpses.  Also the role the ghost mentioned in the book’s subtitle plays was well done and enjoyable. However other additions weren’t handled nearly as well. A pair of cops are introduced about a third of the way into the novel that are pretty unbelievable and don’t really add anything. Worst yet is a rather ridiculous subplot involving Kristen’s father and stepmother. I won’t say anymore than that, but you’ll know it when you read it.       

Those slight story stumbles aside, perhaps my biggest gripe with Dead House was its incredibly fast pace. Normally I like a quick read, but while reading this book I often felt like I was going to blackout from pulling too many G’s. Yes, that’s pilot talk for going way wicked fast. Case in point, five paragraphs into the prologue and the first capering corpse pulls its self out of the muddy earth to go for a stroll. Talk about not wasting any time. Furthermore, just twenty-four pages in and five chapters had gone by, introducing nine characters, not including the wandering zombie. This breakneck speed meant that things were brought up and often dismissed so quickly that many of the characters never seem fully developed. Further, entire scenes and plot points were often lost in the rush and more than once I had to go back to a previous chapter to get something that was only briefly mentioned at best. Now I mention this not because I thought Dead House was a bad book. If that was the case then I’d be happy it was over quickly. No at its heart I thought it was a good story, and the two young protagonists I enjoyed a lot, I just wish the author had taken his time to flesh out his story more. I don’t know if he had a hard word limit he had to keep the book under or he was just in a hurry to be done with it, but neither explanation is a satisfactory one.    

Lastly I feel that I should give a word of warning about some of the graphic content in this book. While the violence and bloodshed is actually very mild for a zombie tale, the sex scenes are another matter entirely. Not only are they steamy and graphic, but many of them are non-consensual. More than one character gets raped and sometimes more than once. Now in today’s horror market this really isn’t all that shocking, but I thought that I owed it to the more gentle readers out there to give them the heads up just in case such things upset them. So consider yourself warned.   

My final words on Dead House are these; I liked it. It was a fun, fast read, although in my opinion it was too fast. If you were raised on MTV-style jump cuts and think that most novels are too slow, then this very well might be your favorite book ever. There were a few unbelievable parts, but hey it’s a story about ghosts and zombies so I guess that’s to be expected. On the whole I enjoyed Mr. Luethke style, I just wish that for forth coming novels he slows the pace a tad and explains things a bit more. If you are looking for a very quick read chock full of zombies, ghosts, lots of contemporary references to horror books and movies, and sadistic sexual predators of all types, then Dead House is the book for you.

--Brian M. Sammons

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Hungry For Your Love: An Anthology of Zombie Romance edited by Lori Perkins; Ravenous Romance; $6.99 for Kindle.

It had to happen.  In the aftermath of the zombie resurgence, whether it was the cheesy movies of the 1980’s, the cool anthologies by Skipp and Spector (and most recently by Chris Golden), or the mashups like PRIDE, PREJUDICE, & ZOMBIES, the inevitable has emerged. 

The first zombie romance anthology.  Yes, he’ll love you to pieces or  think you’re so cute he could eat you up.  Maybe ever time after making sweet love, she’ll feel he left a little of himself inside of her each time (I borrowed that from a Facebook comment). One will wonder how to read this, how to take it.  Is it comedy? Serious? Sexy? I’m sure there will be many responses and they’ll vary as much there are Romero knockoffs.

Why read it? There are some interesting tales inside which will draw laughs, giggles, maybe a scare or two, and possibly a rise from the animated section of the readership. John Skipp (writing as Gina McQueen) and Brian Keene, zombie masters themselves, lend stories here which are interesting as always.  Perhaps the biggest surprise (and a good one at that) is the contribution by Michael Marshall Smith who likely has not written a bad story yet.

If you’re looking for a rise, something to stuff your Kindle, try a little bit of the dead love.

--Dave Simms

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Many thanks to Dylan at Monster Librarian for putting this together

 

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