Home » Posts tagged "Kevin J. Kennedy"

Book Review: The Horror Collection, Black Edition by Kevin Kennedy


The Horror Collection: Black Edition edited by Becky Narron and Kevin J. Kennedy

KJK Publishing, 2019

ISBN-13: 978-1798000991

Available: Paperback, Kindle edition

 

The Horror Collection: Black Edition is an anthology of horror short stories.

“The Lake is Life”, by Richard Chizmar describes a troubled, teenage girl whose parents are facing divorce. She seeks emotional refuge visiting her grandmother at a tranquil lake.  There is a bloody massacre, and the keys to who and why are in the girl’s past. Unfortunately, the author never clearly explains her past.

“Pie Bingo: Last Man Standing”, by Veronica Smith describes a dystopian future with overcrowded jails.  The authorities need to winnow the jail population. Prisoners can opt to play bingo for pies, conjugal visits and freedom. However, if they don’t win, they won’t like the consolation prizes. The story is memorable because of the gruesome, sadistic details of the contest.

“Goblin Financial”, by Lee McGeorge is a lesson about the consequences of bad debts. A woman reneges on a loan she should have used for her education, causing her creditors emotional pain. She runs, but they have a hideous debt collector, and a horrific way of making themselves whole.

Readers familiar with the concept of informed consent in human experiments will cringe at “The Switch”, by Mark Lukens.  A financially desperate man agrees to be locked alone in a room for pay and told he must not flip a switch on the wall. The purpose, benefits, alternative choices and risks are not explained to him. Readers can guess what happens; it’s not really an experiment, because the researchers know the outcome.

“Those Who Watch from on High”, by Eric Guignard is an interesting account of emotional and psychological stresses on a drone pilot. Bored, isolated and suffering from disrupted sleep/wake cycles, an Air Force lieutenant in the Nevada desert struggles with reality. Is he looking down at a terrorist’s young son in the Afghan desert with a drone, or is he watching the terrorist’s hut from the desert floor? When he gets the order to fire on the hut, will he obey? If he does, what will he do the next day?

“The Ghost of Agnes Gallow”, by James Byers is an impressive poem about a witch whose curse stalks a family over generations on Halloween Eve.  Reciting his poem of ten stanzas of rhyming couplets out loud adds to the enjoyment.

Kevin Kennedy warns that  “A Tarantino Oz”contains strong doses of sex, violence and profanity. Readers who dislike Quentin Tarantino’s movies and misogyny should skip this story. Kennedy says all fairy tales were originally horror stories. In this tale, characters of L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz meet for an orgy and murderous rampage.

In “Smolder”, Michael Arnzen uses the well-known difficulty of stopping smoking and the Surgeon General’s health warning to draw readers into his story. Who knew that there is something magical about each word of  “SURGEON GENERAL’S WARNING: Smoklng Causes Lung Cancer, Heart Disease, Emphysema, And May Complicate Pregnancy”?  A concerned husband tries to help his pregnant wife kick the habit. He finds a hidden pack of cigarettes, but has no idea that calamity strikes smokers when words of the warning are destroyed.

 

Contains: Gore, graphic sex and profanity

 

Reviewed by Robert D. Yee

Posted on May 16, 2019 by , Reply

Book Review: Screechers by Kevin J. Kennedy and Christina Bergling

Screechers by Kevin J. Kennedy and Christina Bergling

Publisher: Independently published

ISBN-13: 978-1798052655

Available: Paperback, Kindle edition

 

Screechers by Kevin Kennedy and Christina Bergling is a novella about a devastated, post-apocalyptic earth that is populated by a few bands of humans and monstrous hybrids. The time, the location, and the cause of the earthshattering catastrophe are unstated. Several mysteries egg the reader on.  What do the screechers look like? The authors only gradually describe them as giant-sized humanoids with translucent skin, rippling muscles, scaled backs, talons and fanged mouths.

Whatever caused the apocalypse accelerated mutations and produced hybrids. Screechers might have arisen from humans and another species, perhaps avian. They hatch from eggs, and females don’t leave the nest to hunt. Other monsters in this post-apocalyptic scenrio include pack-hunting apo-wolves with an elephant-sized alpha female, and crabs with scorpion tails, spewing venom. Each monster is vying to be the top apex predator. Way down on the list are the human survivors, who hunt small prey in ruins of a city.

A lightning storm destroys the screechers’ nest, forcing a lone surviving adult male and an infant to seek food far afield. The adult becomes addicted to a strange plant– another mystery. Then the humans’ community is burned out, and the three survivors flee the city. The humans and monsters meet in an epic free-for-all battle. Each species relies on its particular deadly gifts. Will a possible kindred between screechers and humans come into play?

The point of view of each chapter alternates between screechers, humans and apo-wolves. Adults and teenagers will enjoy this fast-paced novella: I only wished that it were longer, and answered more of the mysteries. Recommended.

Contains: graphic violence, mild profanity

 

Reviewed by Robert D. Yee

Posted on March 24, 2019 by , Reply

Book Review: You Only Get One Shot by Kevin J. Kennedy and J.C. Michael

You Only Get One Shot by Kevin J. Kennedy and J. C. Michael

Kevin J. Kennedy, 2017

ISBN-13: 978-1548671518

Available: Paperback, Kindle edition

 

One story to save your life: that’s what the email said.  One chance to save your life.  If the author of the email doesn’t like it, you’re dead.  One chance at redemption: one of four will live.  The players are four writers the email’s author blames for causing the suicide of an aspiring writer by being crass, rude.  deprecating, and insensitive.  This is serious, and not a scam: a fifth one has already gone to meet their maker.  The four contestants in this twisted game are Fiona, Diane, Drexl and, Simon, each of them as different as they can be.  None of them remember an aspiring writer they had snubbed so badly as to cause them to commit suicide.  They each send in a story: a story that may save their life.

 

You Only Get One Shot has an excellent premise that grabbed me from the start.  This was a twisted novella that flowed so well that I read it in nearly one sitting.  The suspense and action worked that well for me.  The opening chapter was brilliant.  It set the tone in a manner that pulled me straight in.  The characters each get their own chapter, which includes their submission: they are distinctive with their own individual tones, and it was easy to keep the various players separate.  The descriptions were well done, not going overboard.  I have not read anything like this before.  The main criticism I have is with the editing.  Mostly in the last quarter of the story, there were several instances of spelling errors and missing or duplicated words, and the occasional sentence that didn’t work.  I also did  not like the ending.  It was a twist that just didn’t work for me.  The epilogue was excellent though.  I have not read either of these authors’ work before, but would like to.  This was a fun story and well worth reading. Recommended for adult readers.

 

Contains:  Violence, Swearing, References to Suicide, Sexual references/situations/slavery, Abduction.

 

Reviewed By: Aaron Fletcher

 

 

 

Posted on May 4, 2018 by , Reply