Category Archives: Horror

books, Horror, Reviews, Zombies

The First Days (As the World Dies 1) by Rhiannon Frater

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Stars: 2 out of 5

This was rather disappointing. I’m always on the lookout for a good zombie story, and this one had promise. The first chapter sure packed an emotional punch. Two women thrown together by circumstances and desperately trying to survive in a world gone mad overnight. It looked like it would be a bloody and scary romp through rural Texas fighting zombies and finding strength and friendship in each other. And it was just that for the first 100 pages or so. But once they rescue Jenni’s stepson and join the other survivors, thigs quickly degenerate.

All of a sudden, instead of being decisive, smart and brave, these girls just give up all of their initiative to the first male figure they encounter. It’s like they switch off their brains and switch on their hormones. Big man will protect me! I don’t have to think anymore. I just have to spread my legs! Jenni is the biggest offender on that front. And the whole story becomes this weird love square between Katie, Jenni, Travis and Juan. Did we really need that? The world is literally ending around them, why do I have to read about who hooks up with whom?

Not to mention how false that reads. I mean Katie just witnessed her beloved wife, the one she literally describes as her whole world, become a zombie and try to eat her face off. That was not even a week ago. And suddenly she has strange feelings for Travis and is doubting her sexuality? What happened to loss and grief and time to process the enormity of what happened? Jenni witnessed her abusive husband kill and eat both her children and barely escaped with her life. Yet as soon as she sees an attractive man, she switches off her brain and starts thinking only with her nether parts. But the least said about Jenni the better. Her characterization is problematic at best.

That’s another issue with this book – characterization. It’s inconsistent.  Characters do and say things that sometimes wildly clash with how they behaved before and what they were said to believe in. Some plot points and arcs don’t do anything to advance the plot and are there only either for shock value or to add some zombie gore. Like that whole adventure to rescue Jenni’s stepson, what was that about exactly? He fades into the background almost as soon as they reach the refugee camp and has no further role to play in the story. Heck, the dog has more page time than the kid, and more personality.

And it feels like the characters worry more about who will sleep with whom than the more pressing matters, like how to secure food and other supplies. What will happen when electricity goes down and running water dries out. They should be planning raids on nearby stores and pharmacies, and securing a source of running water. They should be thinking about hygiene and how to prevent the spread of diseases that will inevitably follow. Even the common flu can kill. Not to mention dysentery, which they are all likely to get if they don’t figure out a safe way to preserve food and boil the water they drink. I know, I know, I’m asking too much, but I was looking forward to a good zombie survival book, and instead I got this…

At least I crossed another book off my TBR list, I guess. And this one has been sitting on it since 2018.

books, Horror, Post-Apocalyptic, Reviews, Zombies

Z2134 by Sean Platt and David Wright

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Stars: 1 out of 5

This is the second book I try by these authors, and I am less then impressed once again. Though to tell the truth, this seems to be a reprint of a much earlier work, which is probably why it is so bad. I mean, I gave Pattern Black 2 stars where this one barely scrapped a single one.

This book is tries very hard to be a cross between 1984, The Hunger Games, and the Walking Dead. Unfortunately, it does this very poorly, so neither of those three components really work. On a personal note, I was there for the zombies. Unfortunately, there are too little zombies in this book. They barely serve as a plot device. So that added to my disappointment with the book. If you come to it with a different lens, you might enjoy the battle of the “little man” against the tyrannical regime. I didn’t.

Probably because those parts of the story are also rather poorly realized. Subtle this book is not.  The author has to telegraph every action, every plot point, and every plot twist in the book. It’s like he doesn’t trust the reader to get it, unless he is hammered on the head with it. This gets annoying really fast. I can get a hint. I don’t need everything spelled out for me. 

It also devalues the events in the book, because that plot twist about City 7? That could have had such a big impact if it wasn’t telegraphed from a high mountain several chapters ago.

I also couldn’t care less about the characters, so nothing that happened to them was particularly shocking to me. I know I was supposed to root for Jonah in the Darwin Games, but I didn’t know him from Adam at that time, so I didn’t really care if he won or if Bear killed him. Honestly, the little we had of Bear’s backstory made him a lot more compelling as a character. And the least said about Ana, the better, because she is a typical YA dystopia heroine, and I stopped reading YA years ago precisely because I couldn’t stand that stereotype. 

I would also like to point out that this book is not a complete story. It ends in a cliffhanger. Nothing is resolved, nobody is saved or even achieved their goals. There is no resolution or even payout for investing hours of your time into this story. If you want to know what happens to the characters, you will have to pick up the next book, I guess. Unfortunately, I don’t care enough to do so.

PS: I received a free copy of this book via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

books, Horror, Reviews

The Lesser Dead by Christopher Buehlman

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Stars: 4.5 out of 5

This is how vampires should be written about! If you like your Twilight type of glamourous vampires who glitter in sunlight, this book is definitely not for you. The vampires Joey describes here are monsters. They are cruel, they are hideous (unless they put the glamor on), and they have very questionable morals. They are also “alive” and interesting.

The author also accomplished a seemingly impossible feat – he showed us all the horrors that these vampires inflict upon unsuspecting humans… then made me care about the monsters. Because we get to know them. We get to know their stories and their interactions. Because they don’t usually “peel” the people they prey upon. Granted, it’s not because of some high moral imperative not to kill, but purely because of sense of self-preservation. Kill enough people, the authorities will notice and come investigate. They your underground home is crawling with cops and there is an angry mob topside ready to kill you with pitchforks and burn you. Not to mention that sunshine is deadly to these vampires.

Plus, the children are truly horrifying. I mean even in the beginning, when we don’t know anything about them, there is something profoundly unsettling about these little vampires. Something that makes your skin crawl. Kudos to the author for instilling this subtitle feeling of wrongness and slowly cranking up the intensity. I was truly horrified by the end of this book, especially considering the ending.

Also, this book is dark and unapologetic. Nothing is sugarcoated here. So if you are squeamish, you might want to skip some of the descriptions. When I said that these vampires were monsters, I wasn’t exaggerating. Theirs is a cruel world where the strong survive because they are willing to be ruthless and eliminate the competition, but also where a monster can find a broken family they can count on. That’s why the final betrayal in this book hurts so much, because Margaret’s group were family, as dysfunctional as that family was, and seeing their fate was heartbreaking. 

I am not usually into vampires, but I loved this book. I think I might checkout other book by this author, because I liked his “voice” and his style.

books, Horror, Reviews

Lockdown (Escape from Furnace 1) by Alexander Gordon Smith

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Stars: 5 out of 5

This was terrifying y’all! 

My problem with a lot of horror books is that the characters in them are either not fully realized or so unpleasant that sometimes you wish the monsters got them, so it’s hard to root for them. Not so in this book. The author has a knack for writing reliable characters that feel real. Are they good people? Not by a long stretch, but neither are they bad people. They are kids. They are teenage boys trapped in a nightmare and left to fend for themselves. Of course there will be acts of extreme cruelty involved.

The premise itself is terrifying in its inhumanity. Imagine locking away children, since some of them are barely 10 years old. For Life. With no possibility of appeal and parole. In an underground prison. And they are never allowed visitors. As far as humanity is concerned, the prisoners cease to be human and become property as soon as they cross the gates into Furnace. What should have happened to society for the public to think that a prison like that was normal or even welcome? What happened that parents would agree to something like that? That human right activists aren’t up in arms and railing against this?

So the children stuck in Furnace have no hope, and no future. That in itself would be terrifying. No wonder they form gangs and lash out against each other – they are all desperate and, frankly, they don’t have anything to loose anymore. Now add to that the cruelty of the guards and their indifference to the violence happening between inmates. Oh, and things worst then guards prowl the halls at night, and sometimes they take prisoners. Those taken never come back, or if they do, they are changed. 

Like I said, just the premise would have made for a terrifying book, but what distinguishes it from other horror stories and YA books is that the author has a knack for writing relatable characters. I got to know and care for Alex, Donovan, Zee, and a few others. I grew to like them. So the sheer terror of their everyday existence in Furnace hit closer to home. They weren’t just two-dimensional characters destined to die in horrible ways just to add to the horror factor. Those were kids I cared about. I mean even Morty being taken was hard. The loss of another character closer to the end of the book was a real gut punch. 

The action is also pretty tight in this book. There are no slumps, and the sense of dread grows the closer you get to the ending. And while the ending provides some kind of resolution to the immediate issue of the book, it leaves a lot of questions unanswered. The most important of them being – where they actually able to escape and what will they do now that they did?

I am definitely invested in the characters and the world this author has created, so I will be picking up the next book in the series. In fact, I put the whole series on my TBR list.

books, Fantasy, Horror, Reviews, Urban fantasy

The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman

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Stars: 5 out of 5

I am continuing my dive into my TBR list. This book was languishing on my list since 2014, and I’m really not sure why I didn’t read it sooner. I even had the ebook on my Kindle and all that… Anyway, I finally got to it and I’m happy that I did.

Neil Gaiman is an absolute master at writing books about children that are interesting for both children and adults. I loved his Coraline and the Graveyard book. They were engrossing and at times horrifying, but also very genuine. Same happened with this book. 

The author has a rare gift of capturing the magic of childhood without turning it into something extraordinary. In fact, the very ordinary way he describes some rather extraordinary (and often terrifying) things that happen to his characters is what makes his books so impactful. This books brings me back to my childhood, when the world was new and I didn’t know the rules, so even most ordinary places could be magical doorways to other world. A tree in the backyard could be a castle and the pond at the end of the lane could be an ocean.

Children see a lot more then adults do, because they haven’t accepted the norms society and adulthood imposes on them yet, and adults readers should be reminded that there still wonders in this world that science and technology cannot explain. And that those wonders aren’t good or evil, they just are. They behave in accordance to their nature, and they don’t particularly care about human norms and rules, so interacting with them is always a gamble.

I loved that our protagonist is just a little boy who loves to read and is more comfortable in his own imaginary world with his books than with other children. He isn’t a genius. He isn’t the chosen one. He is just a kid who stumbles into something extraordinary and tries to cope with it the best he can. He isn’t particularly brave or strong, but he has enough courage to stand up for himself and say it when the situation doesn’t feel right. And standing up to an adult, especially if that adult is your parent, is the most terrifying thing in the world when you are a child. Most of us forget that when we grow up. 

That’s why the most terrifying experience in this whole story wasn’t even Ursula or the hunger birds. It was the fact that his father tried to drown him in the bathtub. Whether he was enthralled by Ursula or she’d just played on his baser instincts doesn’t matter. When the person who is supposed to protect and support you tries to kill you, it shatters something inside of you. I’m glad the Hempstock snipped that night out of his memories.

All in all, this is a wonderful story about the fact that the extraordinary lives next door to us, you just have to look carefully for it. Question is, do you really want to venture down that lane?

books, Horror, Reviews

The Passage (The Passage 1) by Justin Cronin

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Stars: 2 out of 5

I am a sucker for an end of the world as we know it book. That’s probably why I regularly dip into zombie books, even though finding good ones becomes a challenge. So the Passage was right up my alley. Unfortunately, this turned out to be a slog of a book.

The main issue is that this book is way too long – at almost 900 pages, it’s a doorstopper if I ever saw one. Which means nothing happens in a hurry. In fact, I would say that the events progress at a glacial pace.  And while that works well in the first part of the book, where the author sets up the story and introduces the characters, it absolutely kills the narrative later on. In fact, I spent 3/4 of this book skimming over endless descriptions and inept dialogue to get to the few exciting parts.

As I said, the first part of this book is the strongest, with the most developed characters and a sense of urgency. Unfortunately, it’s also the shortest. Just as we get to the end of the world, the book jumps 100 years ahead and introduces a whole new set of characters and goes into painstaking details to describe the Colony and everything that happens there (spoiler alert – it’s not much). So we get about 300 pages where absolutely nothing really happens. It wouldn’t be that bad if the characters were interesting, but they are not. They feel flat and one-dimensional. I didn’t care for any of them even by the end of the story. Even some of them dying just elicited a shrug as a continued to skim ahead. 

It doesn’t help that Amy, who is supposedly the center of this story and this chosen child, is a non-entity. She is more a plot point or a magical McGuffin then a person. We don’t know what she thinks. We don’t know what she wants or likes. And we don’t know why she is so exceptional in the first place. What differentiates her from the other Twelve? Why did she keep her humanity when they transformed into something else? Never explained. We never get to be privy to her thoughts and motivations. We only see her through the eyes of other characters, and half the time what she does and says doesn’t make sense. And no matter how much other people tell you that she is exceptional and important, I don’t see it. 

There are also so many threads introduced in this book and never fully explored or even used. Like the vials with the modified virus. Why introduce that as a possible weapon against the Twelve only for Amy to destroy them 50 pages later? And everyone acting like she did them this huge favor by doing so. In fact, everything this child does is treated lie gospel by the other characters, like she is some sort of messiah that can’t do no wrong, when nothing in her behavior supports that. That’s what happens when the author tries very hard to persuade the reader of something but does a bad job showing it.

My final gripe with this book comes from the heavy handed attempt at spiritualism. It’s implied that Amy was special even before the virus (the episode with the animals at the zoo). It’s implied that it was God’s will to destroy the world.  And for Amy to save it later. When? No clue, she sure didn’t do it by the end of this book, even after 900 pages. So we have some characters who do completely irrational things because they “hear God’s will” or “feel that it’s the right thing to do”… and other characters just follow along. If it was me and I was asked to follow somebody across vampire-infected country from California to Colorado, I would at least ask why. And the explanation that there is a 100 year old signal that is talking about a “her” that might be the kid that just brought death and destruction to my home wouldn’t be enough to persuade me. 

This book had so much potential, but I feel like it was squandered. 

books, Horror, Reviews

The Hollows by Daniel Church

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DNF at 50 %.

This had so much promise! A small town cut off from the rest of the world by a snow storm. Mysterious creatures attacking its inhabitants. A lone policewoman trying to keep order and make sure as many people survive this as possible… Yup, the description was right up my alley, so I went into this book with a certain amount of excitement.

And the beginning was good. Ellie discovers a body and realizes it’s one of the residents. Apparently he froze to death and there are strange markings next to his body. That’s creepy. The introduction to the monsters was also creepy and frankly terrifying. Those are the stuff of nightmares, alright. I wouldn’t want to see one of them outside my window at night.

But that’s about where the positives end for me. The book is way too long for its own good. It drags. The story meanders at a leisury pace when it should be rushing along revving up the suspense. I mean I quit reading right after our first real glimpse of the Tatterskins, and that was at 50% if the book. And I would have tried to stay with the story if the constant distractions were useful to deepen the character relationships or tell us more about the town. But it really doesn’t. 

My second problem, and the one that ultimately made me call it quits, is the fact that all characters are caricatures of themselves. The bad people are so villainous, they don’t even feel like real people, like that one inbred family at the farm. The good ones are good, but one-dimensional. I couldn’t tell you what Ellie looks like or what her story is. Yes, there is mentions of her loosing her son, but never in much detail. Other villagers just blend into one indistinctive mass of people.

But what made me throw the towel was how the wife of the second cop was portrayed. I understand that we aren’t supposed to empathize with her. I understand that the protagonist doesn’t like her. But why did she have to be portrayed as an arrogant screeching harrigan who cares more about her car being totaled and tearing Ellie a new one than the fact that her husband is missing and presumed dead? Unless she is so heartless that she was planning her husband’s murder and the monsters just happened to hasten things, this is an extremely unnatural reaction. That was so jarring to me that I closed the book and never looked back.

There is a good story somewhere in there, it’s just buried under excessive wordcount and poor characterization.

PS: I received a copy of this book via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

books, Horror, Reviews, science fiction

The Scourge Between Stars by Ness Brown

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 Stars: 5 out of 5

This was a surprise winner for me. I picked it up on whim and because the cover was so cool. I didn’t expect much of the story apart from space horror. I got that alright, but I also got surprisingly a lot of heart.

Imagine for a moment that you are on board of a generation ship that is running out of resources and no matter how many times you do the math, it all points to the same thing: we won’t reach Earth before our air and food runs out. Add to that that the ship is traveling through a literal minefield deployed by two unknown alien species at war with each other. The humans are just collateral damage in this battle, but it hurts the ship and their chances of survival all the same, because we don’t have the technology to detect and avoid the mines. Then add to that the fact that they unknowingly picked up a hitchhiker or two when they left the colony. And those hitchhikers are fond of human flesh. Yes, the sum total is one terrifying ride.

What I didn’t expect, is that this short novel, more a novella, would be populated by fleshed out characters I would sympathize and root for.  Jacklyn “Jack” Albright is an amazing character. She feels real. She has her flaws and insecurities and moments of pettiness or self-doubt, but she is also courageous and willing to do the right thing even if doing so means facing off with a terrifying monster that tears people apart like they were paper cutouts. She is trying her best to keep her crew together and prevent her ship from falling apart after each space mine, or “engagement” they encounter. She is overwhelmed and terrified, but she still tries everything she can to face the new treat when it arises. That’s what a true captain is, unlike her father who chose to abandon them in this trying time. 

As I had mentioned, the book is very short, and I devoured it in a lazy afternoon reading session. And I ended up loving the story and all the characters and wanting to know more. Like why had the colonists decided to attempt a doomed voyage back to Earth? What had gone wrong in the new colony? Especially since the existence of the native species was just speculation, from what I could understand. Who are those spacefaring aliens waging war across the stars? They seem to have technology eons above what humanity can master.  I really hope that the author will revisit this universe in her future books. 

PS: I received an advanced copy of this book via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

books, Horror, Reviews

The Nightmare Man by JH Markert

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Stars: 2.5 out of 5

This is a hard one to review. On one hand, I liked it because it gave me a lot of the older Stephen King vibes. I love older Stephen King. On the other hand, this book has a lot of issues that just piled up the longer I read it which ultimately took away a lot of the pleasure from reading and let the frustration set in.

From what I see, this is the author’s first book and, unfortunately, it shows. There is a solid story somewhere in there. In fact, there are several solid stories that could have been several solid books. Unfortunately, the execution is a bit lacking.

As I mentioned, there is just too much stuff happening in this book. There are several serial killers and psychopaths running loose in this small town. There are nightmares galore. There is an old detective with his own secrets. There is a writer with his dark past and strange family history. There is a psychiatric asylum… It’s like the author tried to throw everything on the wall and try to make it all stick. 

Well, it makes for a very dense story where not a single thread is given enough attention to matter. And because so much information is stuffed into the book, things happen very slowly, and we also don’t have enough time to go deeper into each incident. As a result, I didn’t particularly care for any of the mares running around the little town and killing off people, or about the writer’s story, or really about the detective’s either. There is just too much happening to concentrate on.

My other issue is that there is not action in this book. Which, I realize, contradicts my previous statement that there is too much happening. Yes, things are happening, people are being murdered in horrible ways… but it’s all done “offscreen” so to say. Our protagonists either arrive at the crime scene after the fact or discuss it after the fact, or have flashbacks to some other plot point after the fact, etc. Do you see the trend there? Everything is given us through dialogues and flashbacks. In fact, I think the only time the characters are actually in the thick of the action is at the very end of the book when the mares come home. But even then, a lot of the action is told by the protagonists who arrive after the fact to discover the bloody aftermath and cooling bodies. 

Well, this might work for a little bit, but when the whole book is written in this manner, it just gets boring. There is not tension, no suspense, and there is no feeling that the characters are in clear and present danger… which is the whole point of a horror book, no? This story would have been a lot more impactful, if the author had cut out at least half of the flashbacks and put us into the action instead of having the characters retell that action to each other over a glass of bourbon afterwards. 

And finally, I’m not sure what the police procedures are in small towns, but I am positive that revealing the name of a suspect in a conversation with another suspect is illegal. Especially if that suspect is married to a reporter. Same with discussing the details of an ongoing investigation with a civilian which might or might not be tied to the killings. Yet the detectives in this story do it several times. And not only the detectives. In fact, it seems like doctor patient confidentiality, or the confidentiality of a confession are non-existent in this book as soon as it’s convenient to the plot to break them.

And honestly, the least said about that ending, the better. It feels like the author tried to tie all the loose ends from all the different stories they started in this book, and didn’t quite manage that. It was dense, jumbled, and quite unsatisfactory.

I would however say that the author has potential. I finished this book in three days, despite all my misgivings, after all. If they continue writing and honing their craft, I’m sure future books will be much better.

PS: I received an advanced copy of this book via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. 

books, Post-Apocalyptic, Reviews, Zombies

Rising Tide (Ben Gold 2) by Rajan Khanna

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Stars: 3.5 out of 5

This was better than the first book. Mainly because I thought I saw some character growth in Ben. After all, he sacrificed the Cherub to save a town instead of running away, like he would have done previously. That was the first selfless action I’d seen him do. And he does a lot more selfless things in this book, which is a big plus in my book. 

I was fully onboard for that change, because honestly, I didn’t like Ben in the first book. He is selfish to the extreme. All he cares about is himself and his ship. To see him outgrow that and start acting against his own selfishness to help others was fulfilling. He was protecting the island. He helped rescue the scientists. It looked like he genuinely cared for Miranda’s research in finding the cure for the virus…

Unfortunately, as I came to find out by the end of this book, this was less a fundamental change of Ben’s character than his need to act like the person he cares about (Miranda) wants him to act. He loves her, so he craves her her approval. So her goals become his goals. As soon as he realizes that Miranda is gone, he reverts to his old selfish ways. I mean, seriously, he just drops everything and runs. He abandons the people he’d been fighting back to back with, who he even started considering friends, and just takes off. This, right there, killed the book for me, because it showed that the supposed character growth was just a gimmick. Talk about killing my interest in a character.

My other problem is that this book doesn’t contribute anything worthwhile to the worldbuilding. Yes, we learn about some other factions and power players, but we still don’t know the motivations of the main factions we went against in the first book. What does Valhalla want? But more importantly, what do the scientists want? Their motivations are waved off by “evil scientists do evil stuff because they are evil” gimmick. I’m sorry, but that doesn’t work in a post-app world like this one. Why did they make this new virus? Do they want to completely depopulate the planet? Well, newsflash – the ferals are doing a pretty good job without anyone’s else help. Besides, if they eliminate what’s little left of the human race, then what? I doubt they will be content with farming their own food, cleaning their dwellings and doing other menials tasks of keeping themselves alive in a world without convenient minions to do their bidding. So yeah, their motivations are never explained. 

There are also several threads introduced in this book that are completely dropped and never mentioned again. For example, that strange feral outside the police warehouse in Ben’s recollections. Why attract the reader’s attention to that? It’s never mentioned again. What was the point? I understand that we see this story through Ben’s eyes, and he can’t think past his own self-interest, but it just feels so… disjointed. And while there was a driving force behind this story – Miranda’s search for a cure, I’m afraid that this is truly destroyed now. 

Which brings me to this: while I enjoyed the fast-paced action of the first 2 books, I don’t feel the need to follow Ben’s character any further. He proved that he doesn’t change. It also doesn’t seem that we would learn more about the virus or find a cure for it in the next book, so I think I will say goodbye to this series right here and now.