Ugly As Sin by James Newman

Ugly As Sin's main flaw is that it's not Animosity. Going in, I was anticipating a visit to the dentist after hours of teeth-grinding tension. However, 'Sin' didn't provide nearly the same levels of suspense as Animosity did. And not only did this book not possess Animosity's greatest asset, it unfortunately also had that book's greatest flaw. I'm talking about the bad guys doing stuff that was stupid or unbelievable, seemingly, only so that the protagonist (or the author) wouldn't have to work so hard in the end.

Now, the book didn't totally lack in suspense. It was suspenseful. Just not as suspenseful as Animosity. It was a quick read, fast-paced, and highly entertaining. The protagonist was a great big jerk, who was also a sympathetic character. (Nice work, Mr. Newman.) I also liked the villain of the piece and his motivation. There were a lot of weird touches in this book, too, peculiar little character ticks and stage business that made this a richer experience than your typical work of noir fiction.

Recommended.


P.S. For those (named Charlene) who might think this review is negative, I'll have you know that I already bought Newman's The Wicked and have it queued up on the old Kindle reading device.

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Bad Apples: Release Dates & Giveaways!

The five freshest voices in horror will make you reconsider leaving the house on October 31st with these all-new Halloween tales:

• A brother and sister creep out of the darkness with bags full of deadly tricks in Gregor Xane’s THE RIGGLE TWINS.

• A deformed boy just wants to be normal in Evans Light’s PUMPKINHEAD TED.

• A group of ghost hunters learn that looking for terror is a whole lot more fun than finding it in Adam Light’s GHOST LIGHT ROAD.

• Two bullies go looking for trouble but instead find a young boy and his imaginary friend in Jason Parent’s EASY PICKINGS.

• When a mysterious, Halloween-themed attraction comes to the town of Bay’s End, everyone is dying to pay a visit in Edward Lorn’s THE SCARE ROWS.

Available in eBook beginning September 7, 2014.

Paperback available September 14, 2014.

Giveaways!

Enter to win the eBook edition on Booklikes

Enter to win the paperback edition on Goodreads

Wolf Hunt by Jeff Strand

Jeff Strand's Wolf Hunt was a fine bit of breezy, gory horror. I like humor mixed with my horror, and Mr. Strand is quickly becoming a go-to guy for me when I'm in the mood for something smart, snappy, and soaked with blood.

For a while now, I've been searching for a good take on the werewolf story, and, while this story doesn't bring much new to the werewolf myth, it served as a pleasant enough distraction. However, I did find the two protagonists virtually interchangeable, and the plot was too simplistic. Don't get me wrong, I think a simple plot is a good idea for a humorous piece like this. Complicated plots can get in the way of the laughs. But, in this case, at the very least, a more sharply delineated three act structure would have helped a great deal. As is, I felt the story grew a bit repetitious and flat, and there never really was a grand twist or awesome reveal that propelled this book out of the merely really darn good territory.

Oh, and the ending seemed rushed.

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Watership Down by Richard Adams

I watched the 1978 cartoon adaptation of Watership Down when I was quite young, under 10 years old. I wasn't told beforehand that the film wasn't going to be your typical cartoon adventure about rabbits, so the mature themes and, particularly, the brutality and bloodshed left an indelible mark on my growing brain. There are frames from this film that I can still see clearly in my mind's eye decades after viewing it.



I've always been curious about the book and, for reasons unknowable to me, I just recently got around to picking it up. Based on my memories of the film version, I was expecting Game of Thrones with rabbits. I was expecting a relentless parade of death and despair. This isn't what I got. Yes, this is a mature book, and it is realistic and honest about the rabbit's place in the world, and it certainly doesn't shy away from the realities of their place in the food chain. But I was expecting crushing tragedy after crushing tragedy, and what I got was a much more balanced depiction of the rabbit's life.



I wasn't disappointed that my expectations didn't match this book's contents.



This was a slower read for me. But this, I have to admit can be, at least in part, attributed to the circumstances surrounding my reading of the book. I was extremely busy while reading this, and the only time I had to read was just before bed. The book didn't keep me up. I was out in under fifteen minutes almost every night (after the old Kindle slapped me in the face multiple times as I nodded off). But, structurally, it didn't feel like a novel. It felt like a collection of interconnected stories (or a fix-up) until about the halfway mark, when we're, at long last, introduced to the book's central conflict. Another aspect of the book that slowed it down for me was the stories within the story about rabbit folklore. These stories, in themselves, I found entertaining, but they did kill the momentum for me every time.



Overall, I enjoyed this book a great deal, and I think it will be one that will stick in my memory for years to come. It's a rich book with a layered narrative. There are beautiful passages sprinkled throughout. An obvious respect for nature and a passion for nature's beauty serves as a nice contrast to the harrowing events of the story. The narrative is at first biblical in tone, then dystopian. It veers suddenly into a heist story, returns again to dystopian mode, and finally settles into a tale of all-out resource war. Sprinkled between all of these shifts in narrative structure, there are stories within the main story, stories told between rabbits: their creation myths, tall tales of their legendary heroes, stories of what lies beyond death and the Black Rabbit who is waiting there to greet all rabbits when they stop running.



I'd certainly recommend this book. However, know that this is one to be sipped, not gulped.

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This Book Is Full of Spiders by David Wong

Compared to John Does at the End, the structural problems here are minor. This actually reads like a novel rather than the world's worst 'fix-up.' But, sadly, this wasn't as zany as the first and it didn't have nearly the number of crazy gags, mysterious world building elements, and good humor per page as the first book in this series. It had a promising start but resigned itself to be one extended zombie joke for much of its page count. Thankfully, the last 25% was a return to form and was satisfying enough for me to consider picking up the next in the series at some point after its release--but not on day one.

If you've read the first book and haven't picked this one up yet, think of this one as Dave and John getting dumped in the Resident Evil film universe. If that sounds great, pick it up. Or, if you like zombies and dick jokes, give it a go. You won't be disappointed.

Full Disclosure: I'm not big on zombies.

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a picture of razor blades stuck in an apple

Dead Sea by Tim Curran

If you love monsters, don't even bother reading the rest of this review, just pick up this book. If you love survival at sea stories, don't read further, just pick up this book.

Yes, I, too, like monsters and stories of survival at sea, but I don't like these tropes quite enough to overlook some of this book's shortcomings. I felt this had some pacing problems; the middle was particularly saggy, and the ending felt quite rushed. Key plot elements weren't introduced early enough not seem tacked on at the last minute. The overall effect was like watching one of Zack Snyder's trademark action sequences in the movie 300 when we see the Spartan soldier leap in glorious slow motion toward the enemy and then suddenly snap back into real time to deliver the fatal blow. Except here we'd be watching the Spartan hovering in the air over his enemy for a few minutes of screen time rather than a few drawn out seconds.

Don't get me wrong. I didn't dislike this book. There was a lot I really liked about it. It had a lot of great monsters, harrowing scenes, cool set pieces, and solid characters. (Saks was my favorite.) I just felt it was a bit bogged down with repetitious descriptions of fog and mist. I think some scenes and some characters could have been cut to give the work more focus.

If this book were 70 pages shorter, I'd say that instead of liking it quite a bit, I'd be loving it quite a lot.

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Kumquat by Jeff Strand

I don't know that I've ever read a romantic comedy before.

Yet, that's what this is.

If someone had told me that I might one day like such a thing, I'd have said that it was possible but doubtful. I don't read romance. I don't much care for romcoms on film. I'm pretty picky about comedies, especially on the printed page.

So, why did I read this?

Because I saw that Jeff Strand was giving away ARCs on his website for a forthcoming book, and I've liked what I've read by him so far.

When I found out it wasn't horror, that it was a quirky road trip story, I still decided to give it a go because Strand had proven to me that we had compatible comic sensibilities in Dweller.

Was the romance in the book handled well? Was it successful in that way? I mean the guy writes horror for heaven's sake???

I guess so.

I don't know.

Sure.

Sort of.

It didn't feel like a mushy love story. To me, that makes it good. But don't ask me. I don't really know anything about it.

Was it funny?

Yes. I thought it was funny.

You might not.

Funny is so subjective, especially on the page. And funny is so much harder to do in any medium. It really takes an innate talent, along with skill, to pull it off. And even then, you're only going to be successful with those humans with a compatible sense of humor. I think a comic writer or actor can be trained to pull off a successful drama. But I really don't believe it's possible the other way around. You can't teach the kind of broken required for someone to be funny. And, in my mind, Jeff Strand is broken in just such a way that he's able to produce books that I find funny.

The humor in Kumquat more often than not rises naturally from the situation. The characters aren't comedians in disguise throwing off one-liners at every turn. He doesn't use pop-culture references as a cheap humor substitute. Best of all, his writing doesn't come off as 'jokey.'

I hate 'jokey.'

There is an undercurrent of darkness, too, that I like. The horror of sudden, unexpected oblivion underscores the humor in this book and keeps it from seeming frivolous.

Is this a romantic comedy or is it a satire of the romantic tales of doomed lovers that have made Jonathan Sparks a wealthy man? I don't know. Maybe it's both.

What I do know is that I found the novel funny.

Oh, and it remains funny throughout, whereas many comedic tales tend to lose the funny when the plot kicks in.

Recommended to people who find the things I find funny funny.

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It Came From Hell and Smashed the Angels is FREE to Download EVERYWHERE

My short horror story "It Came From Hell and Smashed the Angels" is now available just about everywhere as a free eBook download.

If you've not already grabbed a copy, please feel free to do so.

Amazon (US) | Amazon (Canada) | Amazon (UK)
Barnes & Noble | Kobo | Apple iBook  | PayHip (Mobi & ePub)

Full Moon Over Cedar Hill by Edward Lorn (FREE DOWNLOAD)

Full disclosure: I served as a beta reader on this one, so my opinion could be seen as biased.

This little piece of horror handles some tough, real life subject matter that we'll all likely have to deal with at some time in our lives. To Lorn's credit, he doesn't exploit this element of real life horror in this tale. Instead, he treats all involved with the utmost respect. which, in turn, makes the events that unfold all the more horrific.

It's my understanding that this short story is available for free for a limited time (for the next five days, I think). Rumor also has it that this piece will be yanked from Amazon once the free giveaway ends.

I'd recommend that you side-load this bad boy or suck it down via Whispernet while supplies last.

Amazon (US) | Amazon (Canada) 

Amazon (UK) | Amazon (Australia)

We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson

Note to readers: Don't read the Introduction by Jonathan Lethem until after you've finished the novel. Like many introductions, it completely spoils the novel.

I felt this book had too much falling action. That's it. Nothing else negative to say about this one. Every other aspect of this book I found to be absolutely delightful. This will easily find itself at the top of my 'Best of 2014' list and in my list of all-time favorite novels (if I had one written out somewhere).

This--not The Haunting of Hill House--is Jackson's masterpiece.

Read this book!