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Book Review: Hell’s Gulf by Nick Carlson

 

Hell’s Gulf by Nick Carlson

Temple Dark Publications, 2022

ISBN: 9781739749200

Available: Paperback, Kindle edition

Buy:  Bookshop.org | Amazon.com 

 

If you’re going to vacation on the Florida Coast at a place called Hell’s Gulf, you probably should expect weirdness, and that’s exactly what the reader gets.  Latrine lizards that bite people’s bottoms, deranged murder dolphins, intelligent sand crabs… the gang’s all here.  Throw in a couple demons/gods from Caribbean and Irish folklore, plus a pool that functions as a sort of portal, and you have the ultimate inspirational place for young aspiring writer Rowan Vane.  As he soon finds, inspiration can be deadly.

 

The story hums along as Rowan’s family settles on the Gulf for a week-long vacation, because it is all they can afford.  Naturally, the locals are eclectic, and distrustful of outsiders, hiding the secrets of the town’s sordid past, secrets that continue to plague them in the present day. 

 

This isn’t a new plotline by any stretch, but it still works, as Carlson has written in an entertaining fashion. The combination of strange creatures and  colorful locals is enough of an infusion into a familiar plot to keep the reader’s interest, even if the story can be predictable at times. 

 

The part of the book that really shines the brightest is the supporting cast.  Rowan, as a protagonist,  isn’t particularly inspiring or interesting, but the other characters lend more than enough support to make up for him.  The Clermont family, consisting of an old Caribbean hoodoo woman and her two obnoxious twentysomething sons, are the best part of the book and are the most believable: they truly convey the feeling of a small, backwards, swampy town.  Other locals, such as Large Marge, also lend a hand. This is one of those books where the true stars are the setting and the people that dwell there: the stage itself is the true star of the play.    

 

Bottom line: this is a fun read, nothinlg breathtaking, but still enjoyable.  It will be interesting to see if the author revisits Hell’s Gulf and writes a story focusing strictly on the town and its denizens.  Based on this book, they would have plenty to support a story all of their own.

 

Reviewed by Murray Samuelson.

Posted on August 1, 2023 by , Reply

Book Review: Rabbits in the Garden (Gardening Guidebooks #1) by Jessica McHugh

Rabbits in the Garden (Gardening Guidebooks #1) by Jessica McHugh

Ghoulish Books, 2022

ISBN: 978-1943720736

Available: Paperback

Buy:  Bookshop.org | Amazon.com

 

After reading Jessica McHugh’s Rabbits in the Garden, readers will never look at rabbits or gardening tools in quite the same way again.

 

Avery’s mom has a creepy interest in her garden, as well as in keeping Avery and her sister on the straight and narrow when it comes to boys. She is a big believer in correcting people’s negative proclivities with her own brand of vigilante justice… as in, murdering them.

 

Unfortunately for Avery, her innocent friendship with Paul and her weird mother-assigned responsibility for the behavior of rabbits in the family garden lead her to discover the truth about her mother’s evil ways, and put her in danger of spending the rest of her life in a nightmarish insane asylum. Her fellow residents have some serious problems and believe that Avery is trying to hide hers. The staff employs brutal methods designed to punish rather than heal. 

 

Avery struggles throughout the book, fighting against the lies that have been told about her, defending herself against the horrible crimes she has been accused of by her own mother, and dealing with the survival friendships she makes with the mentally ill where she has been imprisoned. The odds of changing her situation seem impossible, and Avery suffers far more disappointments than successes along the way. 

 

Although the restrained language and minimal horrific and sexual detail might appropriately put this story of young love and family dynamics under the YA umbrella for some, an adult reading of Rabbits in the Garden as a coming-of-age horror novel also propels the book over the YA line to older readers who will appreciate McHugh’s excellent storytelling and dynamic style. Even after the worst acts in the book have already been committed, there are always still more to come. Even after the most intense human responses to betrayal, emotional/physical pain and loss occur, there are inevitably still more of those to come too, but in supernatural form. This leads to a fast and furious build up of tension, anxiety, and crushing fear that grow in the shadow of evil and finally explode in the last chapters. 

 

Is Avery a lesson in female empowerment in the fight against injustice or will she be an example of “like mother, like daughter”? This is the first book of The Gardening Guidebooks Trilogy, so we will find out.

 

Reviewed by Nova Hadley

 

Posted on June 28, 2023 by , Reply

Book Review: Sha’Kert by Ishmael Soledad

Sha’kert: End of Night by Ishmael Soledad

Temple Dark Publications, 2021

ISBN: 9781685132040

Available: Paperback, Kindle edition

 

 

The future.

 

The polar ice caps have melted.

 

Those who survived…(whoops, that was Waterworld.  Let me try again)

 

The future.

 

The Amish have crash-landed on a distant planet.

 

Those who survived…have adapted to a new world.

 

That’s the odd but entertaining genesis of Sha’kert, one of the more unusual sci-fi books of the past few years.  It’s a creative, enjoyable read for fans of human conflict stories, brought down only a bit by a somewhat muddled ending.

 

It’s important to note that this is not a survival story in the same style of masterpieces like Verne’s Mysterious Island and Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe.   There’s little detail concerning how the characters survive on a new world, while starting with minimal supplies.  The story’s focus is the conflict between the Amish and another family that survived the crash, consisting of Greg, his wife Louise, and their daughter Penny.  They aren’t Amish, but are the typical modern, tech-obsessed, cell phone-crazed family.   A doubting Amish youth, Henry, also contributes as a character who is sort of in the middle.  It’s the discord between old and new ways that the author concentrates on and he does a good job of it, presenting both sides without sounding preachy or political.  In the story, all the characters need each other at first to survive, but once they get established and survival is ensured, strife ensues over the possibility of outside contact.  Greg and Henry want to explore the planet in hope of finding others, while most Amish would prefer to have no contact with anything or anyone, preventing their being influenced by outside ideas.  It’s why the left Earth in the first place: dealing with outsiders was becoming unavoidable.  To the author’s credit, all the characters have viewpoints reasonably presented, and the book avoids coming off as biased towards either old or new ways.  It’s an engrossing story of personal convictions, and the problems that stem from the inability to compromise.  

 

It’s only the last quarter of the book that is a bit of a letdown.  The communication between the characters and what they are trying to convey gets somewhat confusing, and the plot wanders away from the original premise with a new religious angle that doesn’t fit with the rest of the book. The story could have been wrapped up in a neater, less metaphysical fashion.

 

Bottom line: this is a good sci-fi tale that does well when it stays on focus, and has more meaning and material worth pondering over then the standard science fiction novel.  Recommended.

 

Reviewed by Murray Samuelson.

Posted on June 22, 2023 by , Reply
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