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Book Review: Berserk by Tim Lebbon

Berserk by Tim Lebbon

Leisure Books, 2006

ISBN: 0843954302

Available: New and Used

Tom’s son Steven was killed in a military accident, or so he was told. While at a bar, Tom overhears two military men talking about monsters at the base where Tom’s son died. One of the men tells Tom that Steven’s body wasn’t in the casket that he received, but rather was buried at the old base. Tom goes on a quest to find his son’s body and the truth about how he died. In searching for his son’s body at the base, he uncovers the corpse of a young girl, Natasha, who telepathically tells Tom that his son isn’t dead, and that if he helps her she will bring him to his son. The girl is a  berserker, a monster that was part of a military experiment. This leaves Tom and Natasha seeking other berserkers who escaped from the military base, and Tom’s son, while they are being hunted by Cole, a former military man who was part of the berserker project. This book goes fast. Once the action starts, it continues to flow, and Berserk ‘s plot keeps you turning the pages.

Contains: violence.

 

Reviewed by Dylan Kowalewski

 

 

Posted on September 6, 2018 by , Reply

A Brief Note on Migrating Reviews

Monster Librarian has been active since 2006. Until April 0f 2014, when our founder, Dylan, suddenly died, reviews for the site were posted and indexed on our static site. After that, we started posting reviews here on the blog. There are therefore eight years’ worth of reviews on the static site. I can’t take it down but when people search for Monster Librarian, that’s where it takes them– to a webpage designed fourteen years ago that was last updated 4 1/2 years ago. Why not just migrate the content, you ask? Well, Dylan wrote the code in FrontPage, an editor that no longer exists and is not supported by, well, anyone.  It therefore has to be manually cut and pasted from the static site to this blog. What this means is you are likely to see reviews here of many older books over the next several months (at least) in addition to more current titles. I’m not going to re-edit them, so they may make some dated references. Once this is all completed, though, everything will be searchable from one place, which is great for people interested in backlist titles as well as what’s up this year. Yay!

 

Reading Bites editor Michele Lee has been migrating YA content in the same way for quite some time, in addition to her more current content. Just because they’re older, doesn’t mean they’re not worthwhile. I encourage you to visit and see what she has up right now.

Posted on September 6, 2018 by , Reply

Book Review: Predators: The Hunt Begins by Michaelbrent Collings

Predators: The Hunt Begins by Michaelbrent Collings

Amazon Digital Services

ASIN: B07GZZZ9MT

Available: Kindle edition

 

Predators: The Hunt Begins by Michaelbrent Collings is a horrific novel.  Horrific in a good sense.   It is scary, gory and suspenseful, and will keep you reading late into the night.  Reviews of his previous novels include comparison to Stephen King’s novels because of similar qualities.  While reading Predators I thought of the Swedish filmmaker, Ingmar Bergman’s, classic 1957 movie, The Seventh Seal.  In that film a disillusioned knight and his squire return from the Crusades to Denmark that has been decimated by the Black Death.  The knight confronts the personification of Death, who collects the souls of characters that the knight meets on his journey home.  Some are innocents, and some have a sordid past.  One by one they perish.

Collings describes a group of American tourists on a wildlife safari, stranded in the wild in a part of Africa ravaged by drought.  The group is a conglomeration of despicable, pitiful, admirable and innocent characters.  In the story, there are predators and there are prey.  The apex predators are the hyenas, and the tourists are their prey.  However, as the story unfolds, it becomes clear that some of the humans have been predators or prey in the past.

The tourists and their guides are tracked, and some of them killed, by a hungry pack of hyenas led by a vicious, cunning queen.  The queen must lead the pack to food and dominate her rivals, or be killed herself.  The pack doesn’t care who is good or bad.  But does the author take into account the victims’ character and past in deciding who dies and how they die?

Collings writing is direct, powerful and vivid.  How does it feel to be disemboweled by the queen and have your intestine, liver and heart eaten while you are still alive?  Stephen King fans will enjoy this novel. Highly recommended

Contains: Mild profanity, sexual situations, gore.

Reviewed by Robert D. Yee

Posted on September 5, 2018 by , 1 comment
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