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Category: Horror

Review: Red, White and Blood by Christopher Farnsworth

[ 2 ] April 23, 2012

Reviewed by Caleb Shadis

Cade is back! And so is the Boogeyman! You heard right, the Boogeyman really exists and most of those stories you heard about the hook on the mirror and the escaped felon on the loose murdering away are the work of the Boogeyman. Cade has sent him to hell many times but his followers keep calling him back. This time he’s got a little extra help and he’s set his sights higher. Cade keeps thwarting him so he’s going to make Cade pay; his first order of business is to make Cade fail by assassinating the President.

It is reelection time and the president’s numbers are slipping. So the president and his staff decide to do a bus tour of the Midwest to try and boost his popularity. Then a brutal murder with two victims is discovered at one of the party’s branches. A message in blood is scrawled on the walls, “It’s good to be back”. It’s not the first time Cade has seen this message.

Red, White, and Blood is the third Nathaniel Cade book in the series and it’s just as good as the previous two. While the first two were a little more tongue-in-cheek and made me laugh at times, Red, White, and Blood got straight down to business.

Farnsworth still pays homage to Lovecraft with hints of Cthulhu popping up. He also seems to be giving the slasher movie makers of the 70s and 80s a nod. I enjoyed the fast-paced vampire story but the first two books took themselves less seriously. I personally hope that that sense of humor comes back in the fourth installment.

Rating: ★★★★☆ 

Also by Christopher Farnsworth: The President’s Vampire & Blood Oath

Caleb is a software engineer and amature woodworker living in southern Minnesota. He has more hobbies than he has time or money for, and enjoys his quiet time reading.

A review copy was provided free of any obligation by Putnam Adult. No monetary or any other form of compensation was received.

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Review: The Leaping by Tom Fletcher

[ 5 ] April 14, 2012

Reviewed by Amanda Schafer

Jack and Francis live in a house with several of their friends from college. Most of them work at the same place, but on different shifts. Late one night, Jack sees their boss, Kenny, in an alley with blood all over him; Jack pretends not to notice out of fear.

Jack’s girlfriend, Jennifer, is a girl with a sad past whom he met at work. Jennifer decides to buy a house up on a mountain, and Jack agrees to go with her. Francis has fallen for Jennifer, but tries not to show it. When the gang decides to throw Jack a birthday party up at the new house, strange things start to happen. Jack and Jennifer notice some strange things about their new house as well, but they ignore them. Sadly, they shouldn’t have ignored them because when people start disappearing from the party, they are all shocked at what they find. After tracking bloody prints and horrifying screams, they come across The Leaping.

When I first started reading The Leaping, I was immediately put off by the amount of foul language that seems to permeate the pages. As a person who reads primarily Christian fiction, I knew this book would be a stretch for me in terms of genre. I’m not naïve or sheltered enough to be shocked by a few bad words, but The Leaping had an over-abundance of words that seemed to be just randomly placed for the simple sake of having curse words in the text. The author seemed to put them there “just because” he could. However, the more I read, the more humorous the book became to me. I kept picturing a B-movie that was terribly low-budget with poor acting. The plot was thin, the characters poorly developed, and the idea so ludicrous it couldn’t be believed.

I’ve never read anything by Tom Fletcher before this book and I have no plans to read anything by him again. The only thing that was more annoying than The Leaping was seeing (at the end of the book) that there is already a sequel out with the same plot ideas.

Rating: ★★☆☆☆ 

Amanda lives in Missouri with her engineering husband, two sons, and one daughter. In between homeschooling and keeping up with church activities she loves to read Christian Fiction, Women’s Fiction, and any Chick-Lit. She never goes anywhere without a book to read!

Review copy was provided free of any obligation by Quercus. No monetary or any other form of compensation was received.

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Review: Like Death by Tim Waggoner

[ 5 ] March 7, 2012

Reviewed by Caleb Shadis

Like Death was not what I was expecting. I was expecting dark fantasy, while this book can only be classified as fairly dark supernatural horror. I actually found it a bit disturbing and was debating if I could make it through the book. I will say that the story did come together very well by the end.

Scott Raymond is possibly going insane, or is being driven insane. He already has issues – he is the sole survivor of a massacre and his family was killed in front of him. Scott has managed to block out almost the entire episode except for the bits and pieces that come back in dreams or flashes of memory.

Scott is recently estranged from his wife and son. His wife initiated the separation because she could see his violence slowly escalating. She partly blamed it on his childhood trauma, and partly on the job he chose for himself. He writes about true crime and all the grisly details.

Now, after following his family to a new town, Scott’s actions appear very stalkerish and he’s on the trail of a new story. When he tries to research the disappearance of a little girl, he meets an interesting woman who leads him down a rabbit hole. And it’s a trip that would make the Divine Comedy seem like a jolly jaunt.

Overall, Like Death was a very disturbing read. It was very well done and put together, but the story had a lot of very vividly described gruesome scenes. It was definitely not for the faint of heart, nor for the squeamish. It took me over half-way through the book before the last piece clicked and I had a good understanding of what was going on and where it was likely to be going. After that point, it flowed much better for me and I could almost enjoy the story. In the end, I thought Like Death was rather brilliant but enjoyed is not the word I would use to describe my experience in reading it.

Rating: ★★★½☆ 

Caleb is a software engineer and amature woodworker living in southern Minnesota. He has more hobbies than he has time or money for, and enjoys his quiet time reading.

The review copy of this book was provided free of any obligation by Apex Publications. No monetary or any other form of compensation was received.

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Review: Plain Fear by Leanna Ellis

[ 3 ] January 19, 2012

Reviewed by Jodi Horsley

Plain Fear: Forsaken by Leanna Ellis is an interesting piece of fiction. It combines Amish community and vampires in a captivating, unique story. The lead character, Hannah, is unable to move on with her grief after her love Jacob dies in an unfortunate farm accident. At least that is what everyone is told. Jacob is buried quickly and the family moves to Ohio. Everyone that is, except Jacob’s brother, Levi.

Levi is unable to move forward either, but his reasons are entirely different than Hannah’s. Although Levi is aware of how much Hannah loved his brother, he cannot help but fall in love with her. He also knows how his brother actually died and is prepared to take the secret to his grave.

Two years after Jacob’s “death” a rash of strange, gruesome murders and a missing Amish teen bring Detective Roc Girouard to the Amish community of Promise, Pennsylvania to investigate. These strange murders are a reminder to him of how he lost his Emily.

A stranger comes to the Promise, Pennsylvania and he brings along a secret as well. This secret will force Hannah to make a choice between the dark and the light. Levi will also be forced to confront that which he has been trying to hide while remaining true to his family.

Plain Fear is not a book I would normally read. This is the first book I’ve read where the lead characters were Amish, but, being a vampire fan, reading the description peaked my interest. The book moves a bit slowly at first; I feel like it could have been about 100 pages shorter. Also, I feel that the character of Roc Girouard could have been more developed. Still, I enjoyed it.

Rating: ★★★☆☆ 

Jodi lives in the western suburbs of Illinois with her husband, her elementary school daughter, and preschool boy/girl twins. She is an avid reader and loves losing herself in a good book. She has a Master’s in Information Technology and has been a WAHM mom for 4 years now.

Review copy was provided free of any obligation by Sourcebooks Landmark. No monetary or any other form of compensation was received.

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Review: The Thirteen Hallows by Michael Scott & Colette Freedman

[ 4 ] January 4, 2012

Reviewed by Sarah Lelonek

The Thirteen Hallows by Michael Scott and Colette Freedman is a dark novel that follows many different characters who are associated with the Thirteen Hallows of Britain. The novel bounces between present day and ancient times to give the reader a full understanding of the great power these seemingly ordinary objects possess.

The Thirteen Hallows is more of a sinister thriller than anything else. Between the elderly Hallows Keepers being brutally murdered and talk of demons preying on human souls, the reader is transported into a world of mysteriously dark and somewhat disturbing magic.

However, the story becomes hard to follow early on. Scott and Freedman take the liberty of using short novels traveling between eight to ten different characters. I found myself flipping backward between chapters to remember which one I was now reading about. Once I was able to get a hold of all the players, I found they were fairly well developed. Sarah Miller and Owen Walker, the two main characters, were complex and easy to relate to. Miller came from an over-bearing mother who wouldn’t let her live her own life, while Walker came from a broken family. I did want to see longer, or combined chapters, so that I could relate and connect with the characters earlier in the book.

Along the same lines, the passages written in italics about the history of the Hallows grew redundant and unnecessary. I felt that the talk of the Demonkind ended up being stale by the end of the book. Every passage seemed the same: the demons were strong and wanted to be released while a young boy worked hard to keep them at bay. Toward the end of the novel I even found myself speed reading and skipping portions to get to the present day action.

On the other hand, Scott and Freedman did a very good job with building the suspense. The entire novel circles around the idea that someone is bringing together the Thirteen Hallows on All Hallows Eve, Halloween for short. If these hallows are brought together, the world as we know it could very well end. While the suspense build up was executed nicely, the end result was sub-par in my opinion. The last few chapters are the shortest in the novel, while I wanted them to be the longest to get sense of the action that was taking place.

All in all, The Thirteen Hallows was a good read. It’s not a long novel, and the writing itself is easy to follow. I liked the haunting feel and the few twists kept me on my toes. The descriptions were spot on and the character development was very descriptive. My only wish is that there was more to read in a less jumbled manner so that I could be truly transported to modern Britain with a touch of past magic.

Rating: ★★★☆☆ 

Sarah Emily Lelonek has a BA in English Literature from Kent State University. She is planning on attending Graduate School for English Rhetoric and Composition. She enjoys traveling and gaming while on breaks from working on her novel.

Review copy was provided free of any obligation by Tor Books. No monetary or any other form of compensation was received.

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Review: Harbor by John Lindqvist

[ 5 ] January 3, 2012

Reviewed by Krista Castner

Harbor, John Lindqvist’s third book translated from Swedish to English, missed the mark for me. It was billed as a horror story but was too long and meandering to keep my attention for long. I really struggled to finish reading the book and when I finally read the last page, I thought to myself, “Really? That’s it?” 

Lindqvist is the author of the phenomenally successful vampire book, Let Me In, which I haven’t read yet. I have read his book Handling the Undead. I was pleasantly surprised about how thought provoking this zombie book was. I did not enjoy Harbor nearly as much.

The book is set on Domar, a small island off the coast of Sweden. In 512 pages you learn the story of how this island rose out of the sea centimeter by centimeter over the ages and how man came to live on the island. Water plays a major part in this story. We are introduced to Anders and Cecilia as teenagers who summer on the island. Then we fast forward 20 years as the now married couple take their 6 year-old daughter, Maja, out across the ice to visit an island with a large lighthouse. Maja mysteriously disappears, and no trace of her is ever found. Anders becomes a drunken wreck over the next few years and finally returns to the island of Domar to see if being near his grandmother and closer to nature can help him sort out his issues.

There’s a separate storyline about Simon, his grandmother’s long-time boyfriend who is a retired magician. Decades ago he found a slug-like creature he named ‘Spiritus’. He keeps the creature in a matchbox he carries with him in his breast pocket, and keeps it alive by spitting on it daily. In return it gives his some supernatural control over the water all around him. The rest of the story is Anders’ obsession about his loss of Maja. Strange things start to happen in his cabin and we don’t really know if they’re drunken hallucinations or Maja actually trying to contact him from wherever she’s been taken.

I wasn’t too intrigued by any of the storylines. I just kept waiting for something interesting to happen. There seemed to be a lot of folks unhappy and wallowing in self-pity or self-destructive behavior. The ending wrapped up the storylines, but it wasn’t very surprising, nor was there much explanation about why the plot even evolved the way it did.

I didn’t care about these characters nearly as much as I did for the characters in Handling the Undead. It felt like Lindqvist couldn’t decide if he was writing an evolutionary history of the Swedish galapagos, or a horror story. Consequently it didn’t succeed on either level.

Rating: ★★☆☆☆ 

Krista lives just outside the urban sprawl of Portland, Oregon. Lamentably, her work as a technical writer and business analyst often interferes with her reading which is a true passion.

Review copy was provided free of any obligation by Thomas Dunne Books. No monetary or any other form of compensation was received.

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Review: The Night Eternal by Guillermo Del Toro & Chuck Hogan

[ 4 ] December 28, 2011

Reviewed by Elizabeth Talbott

Vampires have taken over the globe. The internet and cell phones are outlawed. Nuclear bombs are disarmed. The air is extremely polluted, shrinking daylight hours to only a couple each day. People with desirable blood types are put into farms to be bred or bled. Humanity, however, keeps going as it always has, getting used to their vampire overlords’ demands.

Ephraim Goodweather is broken. His wife has been turned into a vampire and she frequently stalks and torments him. His son is missing and he has no idea if he’s alive, or dead, or a vampire. In addition to all this, he has turned to drugs and alcohol to dull his feelings and survive day to day. His small group of friends is the only hope that human race has left to save themselves. They plan to find the Master’s place of origin and nuke it, destroying him and all of his offspring. Can Ephraim hold it together long enough to destroy his mortal enemy or will he simply drown in his own sorrow?

The Night Eternal is the third and final book in the Strain trilogy. I loved both of the previous books and had high expectations for this one. I was a little disappointed, but many great things did continue from the first two books. As always, the characters were completely fleshed out and multidimensional. The most compelling character to me was Mr. Quinlan, the only born vampire in existence. He was born during the reign of Caligula and his only goal was to destroy the Master, which would result in his own death. His back story is fascinating and his enigmatic presence in the earlier books becomes more understandable.

The other triumphs of this book were the action sequences and a sustained high level of suspense throughout. The characters’ adventures took them from blood farms to the houses of the rich to the bowels of abandoned universities to a dark, ominous island.

The Night Eternal lost me when it broke from the other books and maintained a distinctly fantasy and mythology based origin for the vampires and relied on ridiculous moments of deus ex machina to solve their problems. I loved that the first two books had detailed, scientific explanations for vampire biology and behavior that the main characters figured out in order to defeat them. These explanations were fascinating and something I had never seen before in vampire novels. The new, magic material in the third book just shattered the past science fiction basis. There are fallen angels, prophecies galore, and at least a few instances of deus ex machina, which is one of the worst writing tropes. It cheapened the story for me and I was disappointed that a great science fiction series suddenly changed into a mediocre fantasy.

Overall, I enjoyed The Night Eternal if I ignored the ridiculous prophecies and magical nonsense. The writing remained excellent beyond that and the characters stayed true to themselves. I would recommend that fans of this series ascertain if they can tolerate the change in tone before reading.

Rating: ★★★½☆ 

Check out Elizabeth’s review of the second book in the series, The Fall

Elizabeth is a student at Cal State Long Beach. She laughs a lot, loves cats, and lives for music and books. You can read her blog here: http://titania86-fishmuffins.blogspot.com/.

Review copy was provided free of any obligation by William Morrow. No monetary or any other form of compensation was received.

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Review: Vacation by Matthew Costello

[ 7 ] December 19, 2011

Reviewed by Jenna Arthur

What happens to us when the world become a global crisis center? When we can no longer rely on our humanity or morality? When humans become predators – Can Heads – and must fight their own species, what do we do? We fight!

When one man and his family have finally had enough, they seek refuge in a much needed vacation. NYPD cop, Jack Murphy, horribly wounded by a flash Can Head attack, leaves home with his wife and two children to a place so far away from the big city it promises to be safer. Or is it?

The camp promises fun, safety and a family atmosphere, but Jack quickly realizes that he has bitten off more than he can chew. When the ones protecting you become the ones who can make you disappear, what can you do? With Can Heads closing in and Camp Paterville quickly becoming the family’s worst nightmare, Jack must fight for his family and learn the real truth behind their vacation.

Matthew Costello’s Vacation was action packed from beginning to end. Though it was not entirely what I expected, it was an interesting read. The amount of violent rage put into the Can Heads was intriguing while the combination of this rage and cannibalism of some other survivors seemed a little bit too much.

Vacation is a plethora of sci-fi meets horror meets action, and will appeal to many readers across the board. The book is disturbing and dark yet leaves you feeling for the family and wondering if they will make it to the very end.

Rating: ★★★½☆ 

Jenna lives in the bustling city of Pittsburgh, PA with her fiance and her two beautiful cats. Along with her passion for reading and the literary world, she is also an artist, writer, environmental activist, creative coordinator and aspiring culinary genius. She believes there is nothing better to her then a good book, and lives one cover to the next.

Review copies were provided free of any obligation by Thomas Dunne Books. No monetary or any other form of compensation was received.

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