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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

Book Review: Fauna by David Benton

Fauna  by David Benton

CreateSpace, 2018

ISBN-13: 978-1983765049

Available: Paperback, Kindle edition

 

“Nature fights back” is a familiar theme. Making it special takes some tinkering and imagination, not to mention strong storytelling. David Benton succeeds on all fronts, keeping the teeth gnashing and adrenaline pumping until the final page. He combines the visceral brutality of Edward Lee or Richard Laymon with the globe-trotting skills of James Rollins, resulting in an exciting romp that evokes James Patterson’s The Zoo, albeit with a message.

In the Amazon, a shaman warns photojournalist Michael Keller that a big change is coming in nature. What Michael doesn’t know is that it will be a concerted, global effect, an attack on mankind everywhere. Dr. Andrea “Andy” Keller working in a lab back in Milwaukee, is struggling to find an answer for the sudden aggression in both wild and domestic animals. Officer Devon Coleman just wants to keep his family safe in the city, a tough task as the family dog fights off the change.

Benton strings together scenes that display both the savagery and grace of the animal kingdom, suggesting that maybe the world would be a better place without people. As the story unfolds and blood splatters, he brings the stories’ threads together at a rapid fire pace. The story doesn’t slow down to explain the catastrophe occurring across the globe– but it doesn’t need to. This rollercoaster of a novel hits its message home with a powerful punch.

Recommended for fans of old-fashioned fast-paced horror, especially killer animal books.

 

Reviewed by Dave Simms

 

Posted on September 4, 2018 by , Reply

Book Review: Black Feathers: Dark Avian Tales: An Anthology edited by Ellen Datlow

Black Feathers: Dark Avian Tales: An Anthology edited by Ellen Datlow

Pegasus Books, 2017

ISBN: 9781861773216

Available: Hardcover, Kindle edition

This anthology of avian-themed fiction, edited by Ellen Datlow, presents a fantastic collection of short stories by some of the best authors in the horror genre. Each story features, as the anthology title indicates, birds that act as agents of death, sentinels, communicators, and more. The authors present the darkness the bird realm can represent, and present unique philosophical questions and uncomfortable answers in this collection.

Datlow has collected some of the best writers for this anthology. Authors include Sandra Kasturi, Nicholas Royle, Seanan McGuire, Paul Tremblay, Joyce Carol Oates, Richard Bowes, Alison Littlewood, Jeffrey Ford, Mike O’Driscoll, Usman T. Malik, Stephen Graham Jones, A.C. Wise, M. John Harrison, Pat Cadigan, Livia Llewellyn, and Priya Sharma.

There is not a single story in this anthology that does not linger with the reader. A struggling academic studying owls gets too close to his research subjects, much to his wife’s concern, and ending in a deadly discovery. What happens to him will change his family forever. A young girl obsessively counts the types of birds she sees throughout the day, and interprets the numbers to mean certain things will happen. She’s never wrong. A grieving widow begins to relate to the herons on her property, who help her deal with the death of her husband. The birds seemingly take care of her problems and provide her with a new sense of freedom. Rogue birds are being investigated by an occult group for helping humans cheat death. A twin returns home after her father’s death, reconnects with her sister, and finds out the terrible truth about herself after the funeral. These tales are only a fraction of what this collection offers to the reader.

While there is very little in the way of gore, there are definitely psychological horrors that the reader will encounter. Sometimes these can be more terrifying than any amount of blood and guts.

Datlow has won multiple Hugo, Locus, and Shirley Jackson awards and has received several lifetime achievement awards, including the Bram Stoker Award. She is adept at anthology selection, and I promise you won’t be disappointed with this collection. Highly recommended

Contains: brief sex, abuse, psychological terror

Reviewed by Lizzy Walker


Posted on April 14, 2017 by , Reply
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