Home » Posts tagged "horror books" (Page 40)

Book Review: Live Wire by Kyle Toucher

Cover art for Live Wire by Kyle Toucher

 

Live Wire by Kyle Toucher

Crystal Lake Publishing, 2023

ISBN-13: 9781957133324

Available: Paperback, ebook

Buy:  Bookshop.org | Amazon.com 

 

While Live Wire is the book title, it’s also an apt description of the writing: it crackles and snaps with electricity.  For a horror/thriller, this is a good one to start the summer with.  It’s also one of the nuttier ideas to come down the pike.  Transmission line towers that uproot themselves from the desert and start stomping around, wreaking havoc?  That’s one plot that certainly hasn’t been done before!

 

The book runs two threads concurrently.  In the first, former wannabe rock star Pale Brody, his young son, and a long-distance trucker named Ken Lightfeather are hunkered down at a ‘”last chance” desert gas station, riding out the worst electrical storm ever seen.  Also with them is the aging station owner, Otis Thompson.  The towers pull loose at the height of the storm, and the four of them are faced with a situation that is certainly not covered in the US Army’s Field Survival Manual.

 

The other thread covers the shadowy science and engineering firm whose experiments enabled the electrical pylons to go walkabout.  Nikki and Randy are two scientists who leave the firm in the middle of an experiment gone wrong, when it unleashes bloody carnage on the whole group.  The scientists eventually cross paths with the store group, and they band together to survive the towers from hell.  And hell (or something like it) just may be where the towers get their powers from, for they have abilities beyond just walking around and destroying things.  

 

Live Wire is an extremely engrossing book that will have readers zipping through pages, mainly due to the author’s excellent writing and sense of pace.  It’s that classic “tight but loose” style of writing: it drives the narrative and gets the story across, but doesn’t take itself too seriously.  There are a lot of hilarious asides and analogies, both from the characters and the narrator, giving the story an easy, flowing feeling that makes the pages move quickly.  The humor really shows up in the interrogation transcripts that are spaced throughout the book, as Nikki proves hilarious with her sarcastic way of belittling the investigators questioning her.  This book, at heart, is unquestionably a thrill ride, but the humor and wit of the characters help give the story a big boost.   Some readers might be a little bothered by the lack of fully detailed explanation for why things happen, but there’s enough there to keep most readers happy.  Some is left to the imagination, and the story is better off for it.

 

Bottom line: for a thriller with a bit of a horror bent to it, this one covers all the bases.  Recommended.

 

Reviewed by Murray Samuelson

 

Posted on May 22, 2023 by , Reply

Book Review: The Pineys, Vol. 9: The Witch Hunter Piney by Tony DiGerolamo

The Pineys, Book 9: The Witch Hunter Piney

The Pineys: Book 9: The Witch Hunter Piney by Tony DiGerolamo

South Jersey Rebellion Productions, 2022

ISBN-13: 9798833186749

Available: Kindle, paperback

Buy:  Amazon.com 

 

The Pineys is a series, and I have to admit, I have not read the previous 8 volumes, so I am coming at this as a brand new reader. Frankly, starting where I did makes me want to go back and read the previous volumes, as well as keep up with the series in the future.

 

This story opens in 1730 New Jersey, with an amusing account of Benjamin Franklin witnessing a failed witch trial, where the women are set free, and a near-fight ensues between them and a mysterious woman hunting them. The tale then switches to present day in Abe’s Hat, NJ. Shy Lewis Galloway, a witch boy, is getting ready for a date, and the rest of the Galloway family plan to have a Trivia Night. Lewis is trying his best to avoid the family finding out about his evening plans, but ultimately fails when he gets some hollered advice from a few of his relatives.

 

The Galloways are not an ordinary family, with an ordinary hunting lodge. They hunt hellspawn, and manage well. Lewis meets his date, Nikki, who herself has a unique family, and they have a great evening. Lewis is in love and wants everything to be normal. Unfortunately, during a family get-together, loudmouth Hemingway lets some information out about valuable, old, and very rare books they have in the lodge. That piques Nikki’s interest. When she spots a first edition Malleus Malleficarum, she is sure she has found the solution to a big problem of hers. After all, she hails from a long line of witch hunters, and that book holds the key to a dangerous weapon. The local museum houses the weapon, but the place is surrounded by numerous covens. What is a witch hunter to do?

 

I found the pacing to be quick, and the action was well done. There is a scene of particular interest because of a fight scene in a tearoom. I thought the many covens would be hard to track because there are so many that DiGerolamo included, but thankfully I was wrong in that. He made them unique enough that it was easy to follow. Keep an eye out for the Coven of the Basic. They’re tricky.

 

Recommended, but don’t do what I did: read the previous volumes first.

 

Reviewed by Lizzy Walker

Posted on May 16, 2023 by , Reply

Book Review: D.O.A. III: An Extreme Horror Anthology edited by S.C. Mendes

 

DOA Vol. 3

D.O.A. III: An Extreme Horror Anthology edited by S.C. Mendes

Blood Bound Books, 2017

ISBN: 9781940250267

Available: Paperback, Kindle edition

Buy from:   Amazon.com

 

The tagline on the back cover of the book reads: “You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll vomit.”  And, they aren’t kidding.  This is one of the most extreme collections ever published: 30 stories of raunchy, sex-driven, blood-drenched mayhem.  The stories are good, just prepare for revulsion.  This is for true hardcore lovers only– keep the kids away from this one.

 

The book’s pedigree is impressive, as Edward Lee, Jack Ketchum, Wrath James White, Bentley Little, and Richard Matheson are among the authors represented.  The stories are generally entertaining and well-written.  If there’s a theme, most of the stories involve horrible people doing horrible things to each other.  No joke: there are some VERY ugly torture sequences in this book that make Eli Roth films seem like Disney movies.   There are some stories with a paranormal bent, which helps keep the book from getting too one-dimensional.  The originality is decent, although not to the level of the Welcome to the Splat Club series.  As we’ve come to expect from Blood Bound Books, there is an undercurrent of dark humor threaded through many of the stories, which helps balance out the overall story mood. Notable stories worth mentioning include:

 

“Hostile” is only four pages, but it is comedic genius.  Jeff Strand’s hilarious twist on the Hostel movie series proves that the worst situations can be amusing, when written correctly.

 

In “Taking Root”, a virulent strain of plant spores has contaminated Earth, turning people into… plants, of a sort.  Two survivors find that, unfortunately, an apocalypse still doesn’t change peoples’ predatory instincts, or their bad nature.  Despite sounding grim, it’s a light-hearted take on doomsday writing.  Plants growing out of a person’s rear can be funny!

 

In “Ritchie”, Jackson killed Ritchie the bully when he was a kid, but Ritchie has a bad habit of coming back from the dead once a year.  So, Jackson has to kill him, again.  And again, and again.  The fun part is, Ritchie’s injuries from each death carry over year to year, and he becomes less intimidating to the point of hilarity… but Ritchie may still have a trick or two up his sleeve…

 

 It’s worth mentioning that this isn’t ‘peek under the bed and close the curtains out of fear’ horror writing.  These aren’t scary, and aren’t meant to be.  This is straight-up extreme splat writing to the max.  

 

Bottom line: if the members of Cannibal Corpse and GWAR decided to write short stories instead of lyrics, then DOA III is probably what you would get.  Recommended for hardcore fans only.

 

Reviewed by Murray Samuelson

Posted on May 15, 2023 by , Reply
First « 3839404142 » Last