Home » Archive by category "Uncategorized" (Page 11)

Book Review: Across the Dunes: A Folk Horror Fairy Tale Set in the Present Day by Dan Soule

Cover art for Across the Dunes by Dan Soule

Across The Dunes: A Folk Horror Fairy Tale Set in the Present Day by Dan Soule

Silver Thistle Press, 2025

ISBN: ‎ 9781917794008

Available: Paperback, Kindle edition

Buy:  Amazon.com

 

An eclectic mix of fairy/folk tale, horror splat, and modern times, this will certainly appeal to readers who were taken with Stephen King’s Fairy Tale and Joseph Sale’s Carcosa series. Across the Dunes is not set in a separate realm, unlike the above, but it retains many of the same elements. Most importantly, like those books, this tale is one you will want to read right through to the finish.

 

The story takes a measured pace through the first 88 pages, as protagonist Michael Lorimer returns to the English seaside town where he grew up to sell the family beach house nestled by the dunes of the ocean. He has his 16 year old son with him, who he has just learned about. It’s a good use of a lead-in to the main plot, as you learn a bit of the town history and associated legends, and get the idea that there is something forbidding about the sand dunes around the house and town. It’s given in snippets: there’s no predictable, lengthy, exposition. On page 89, the gears of weirdness start really whirling and firing, with a graveyard of dolls and an abandoned bus starting the next phase of the story. From there on, it runs in high gear right to the finish.

 

This book gets high marks especially for its unpredictability and creative settings. Just when you think it will throw you a fastball down the middle, you get a curve instead, and it happens throughout the story. What happens in the sand dunes with the old equipment found there is a good example, but you’ll have to read it, as I don’t want to give too much away. Creative settings, like the doll graveyard (and other oddities found there) keep the story interesting.

 

The author does an excellent job turning the sand dunes into a living, breathing entity that exudes menace; not the easiest job in the world, considering the normal state of sand, but it is great fun here, as the sand slithers and worms its way after the heroes, always finding a way in. This is turning the inanimate into an animated object, without resorting to overblown gimmicks like screaming faces and appendages appearing in the sand. It’s a fresh take on folk horror, brought into the modern day with some pretty messy sections, especially when one of the locals starts going wild with a meat cleaver. This book truly is a blend of a lot of different things, and the parts certainly add up to an entertaining whole.

 

It’s hard to categorize this book overall, and that’s probably a good thing, it doesn’t slip neatly into any category, other than the “you don’t want to miss this” category. It’s certainly worth the read, and recommendation.

 

Reviewed by Murray Samuelson

 

 

Posted on July 9, 2025 by , Reply

Book Review: The Last Breath Before Death by Alan Golbourn

cover art for The Last Breath Before Death by Alan Golbourn

The Last Breath Before Death by Alan Golbourn

Gelbs Publishers Ltd, 2924

ISBN: (Hardback) 978-1-03690245-2, (Paperback) 978-1-9993795-9-9,                  (eBook) 978-1-9993795-8-2

Available: Hardback, Paperback, eBook

Buy:  Bookshop.org | Amazon.com

 

The Last Breath Before Death is the fourth horror novel by Alan Golbourn, who is of British and American descent. The principal character is Jimmy Cochran, a freelance writer and graphic novel illustrator. Jimmy lives in New York City but spent his early life in England. He has personally experienced paranormal phenomena but is skeptical of public claims of hauntings and other paranormal events. He investigates some of these and publishes his findings in newspapers and magazines.

 

His mother, who lives in England, tells him that his estranged half-brother and a friend have gone missing during a camping trip in Germany. Jimmy agrees to travel to England and investigate after a psychic tells him that the pair are in danger. Jimmy learns that they were investigating the provenance of a mysterious relic. Jimmy eventually learns that the relic is integral to the resurrection of a powerful cult of vampires and revenants, called “Nachzehrers”. The cult has ties to the Serbian “Black Hand” terrorists, who assassinated Archduke Ferdinand of Austria and his wife Sophie, the event that kicked off World War I.

 

Jimmy and a few local policemen from a town in northern Germany find a site in the mountains where the cult plans to torture and eat Jimmy’s brother and other captives to gain strength and immortality during the “Blood Moon”. The last few chapters describe the violent and gory battle with the cult in detail.

 

The plot’s first half moves along slowly as it progresses through lengthy and stilted dialogue. Although readers will learn some British slang and idioms, it is difficult to believe that people speak so formally. There are a few gratuitous digressions, such as the urban legend about cat and dog meat in Chinese food and rants about being dumped in dating apps. Once Jimmy arrives in Germany, the plot advances at a nice pace. The dramatic ending is worth waiting for. There is moderately intense, casual sex with a tattoo artist and mild use of profanity.

 

Reviewed by Robert D. Yee

Posted on July 1, 2025 by , Reply

Book Review: The Madness by Dawn Kurtagich

cover art for The Madness by Dawn Kurtagich

The Madness

Dawn Kurtagich

Graydon House, 2024

ASIN: B0CKFHZTLR

Available: Hardcover; paperback; Kindle edition

Buy:  Bookshop.org  | Amazon.com

 

Mina is often called to the psychiatric facility where she cares for women suffering from extreme trauma. She has contempt for how male doctors treat female patients and persistently tries to understand the roots of the problems she confronts in her practice. She is also troubled by something that has happened in her past, something bad enough to cause OCD, a move from Wales to London, a break-up with a man she loves, and estrangement from her best friend and even her mother. But it isn’t until she is faced with the mysterious illness of her childhood friend Lucy that she begins to face her own demons and slowly reveals the horrific event that has shaped her.

 

Unfortunately, from Mina’s perspective, helping Lucy will require going back to her home town and seeing her mother, whose belief in the dark and bloody myths of Wales suddenly begins to seem like useful information instead of annoying old stories. As the search for the cause of Lucy’s quickly worsening symptoms continue, some characters’ names (linking this book to a classic that readers will quickly recognize) shed light on the  direction of the plot, as do other elements such as a creepy black car, a black business card, and an exclusively secret gentlemen’s club. Lucy is not the only one in trouble.

 

The author of The Madness, Dawn Kurtagich, delivers non-stop suspense as the action takes us from a small Welsh town and its most luxurious mansion, out to an ancient castle on the coast where there are evil monsters preying upon women. However, these violent killers soon become the target of the group of women who have figured out how to get rid of all of them.

 

The way this book begins with a very brief, cryptic scene and a nameless character immediately draws the reader into the action, which continues at a quick pace as the author seamlessly shifts between times, places, perspectives, and emotions. There are subtle plot twists sparked by the unexpected decisions some characters make along the way. The Madness stands at the supernatural intersection of horrible crimes known– but left unsolved– and Mina’s revelations about the mythic evil that exists in never taking the past for granted.

 

Reviewed by Nova Hadley

Posted on June 10, 2025 by , Reply
First « 910111213 » Last