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Book Review: The Worst Is Yet To Come by S.P. Miskowski

The Worst Is Yet To Come by S.P. Miskowski.

Journalstone/Trepidatio Publishing, 2019

ISBN-13: 978-1947654464

Available: Paperback, Kindle edition

Small town horror. A coming of age novel. The good girl/bad girl conflict. Readers have read it all before, right? Not so. S.P. Miskowski turns the tropes on their heads in this wrenching novel.

The little town of Skillute, Washington, might remind horror fans of other odd little towns, ones drawn by Shirley Jackson and Charles Grant, although King’s Derry might come to mind a bit as well. In The Worst Is Yet To Come Miskowski returns to the setting of her Skillute Cycle (comprised of Knock, Knock; Delphine Dodd; Astoria; and In the Light).The Davis family has moved there to get away from the big city. It’s definitely not Seattle, and one might think it has left reality. The focus is thrust squarely on middle school daughter Tasha, who must find a way to fit in, and let’s face it, there aren’t much bigger circles of hell than middle school social lives. The friend she discovers is the badass Briar Kenny, who lives on the “wrong side” of town, in a trailer park with her mom and sleazebag boyfriend. Through a series of brutal events, the two girls find themsevles bound together, much more tightly than either would have expected. To say more about the plot would ruin much of the suspense, but the twists and turns emerging between the pages are well worth the journey.

There is a dark force in Skillute that begs to be heard and felt, that is far more original than in most horror novels. Miskowski brings it to life in a manner that echoes the past work of Jackson and Grant, but carves out  her own style here that, while quiet, cuts like razor wire, wounding deep, before the readers, or characters, know they’ve been affected.

What makes this novel burn is the construction of the characters. Each of them relates to some piece of the reader: some of it in light, but much of it in shadow. Miskowski knows how to touch upon the darkest parts of humanity. Bullying and abuse are handled skillfully here, affecting more than the typical horror elements.

The surprises here are Tasha’s mother, Kim, and Briar’s relationship with Tasha’s family. Kim’s demons are real, unfolding and dug out with ragged nails until a scar is born (pun intended). Many of the characters have unlikable traits that conflict with their core beings, eliciting a beautiful dissonance that drives the impact of The Worst Is Yet To Come much deeper than most recent novels. Highly recommended.

 

Reviewed by David Simms

Posted on June 26, 2019 by , Reply

Book Review: Brainchew by Wol-vriey

Brainchew by Wol-vriey

Burning Bulb Publishing, 2017

ISBN: 978-0-9977-7304-0

Available: Paperback, Kindle edition

With Brainchew, Nigerian horror author Wol-vriey has really hit his stride.  He’s toned down the sometimes excessive levels of blood and pain that could be found in his other horror fiction, created a new monster that fans will enjoy, and kept his dark sense of humor intact.  With Brainchew, he’s created his most memorable creature to date : this is an excellent read, and one that should be on the shelves of any horror fan who delights in campiness and carnage.

The plot: four small-time crooks who specialize in safecracking descend upon eastern Massachusetts with a deal for the “big score.” Their assignment: break into a mansion, crack the safe, steal two specific diamonds, then meet their employer at the Sunflower Motel in Raynham, Massachusetts, for the drop. One of the robbers gets killed during the heist, so his partners dump the body in a Raynham cemetery and then go to the hotel to wait to for the drop.  Unfortunately for them, the hotel owners are sleazebags who have figured out what is going on, and have their own designs on the loot.

Up to that point, the story is pretty standard.  But then it takes a very different turn, and the fun really begins.  Brainchew is a monster that somewhat resembles the creatures from the Alien series, minus the stinging tail.   Awakened from slumber in the cemetery by blood leaking into the ground from the dumped body, Brainchew is hungry for…brains, of course!  Naturally, Brainchew proceeds to the Sunflower Motel to wreak havoc in the goriest method possible, throwing the plans of both the motel owners and the robbers into disarray.

The story moves quickly, without wasting time on lengthy expositions or deep conversations.  There is just enough backstory given on the protagonists to make them seem like more than cardboard cutouts. You might find yourself disliking many of them, as they have few redeeming qualities.  That’s what makes this such fun: you might find yourself rooting for Brainchew as he chews human genital regions, gulps urine, crushes skulls, and flings cranial carnage everywhere.   All of this is done with Wol-vriey’s usual messy intensity, although it is toned down a bit from his previous books.  There’s enough bloodshed to keep gorehound readers happy, but not enough to enter the realm of excess that so many hardcore horror authors today seem to delight in.  The real delight in the book is when Raynham’s residents see Brainchew.  They know who he is already: he is a secret that the town tried to bury years ago.  Their reactions are priceless: it’s not “oh my god, what is THAT?”  but “oh no, that damn thing is awake and at it again!”  It’s nice to have a book where the characters don’t react in the same fashion as usual when a monster is encountered.

Brainchew is a fast, messy, wild ride, with an entertaining and original monster.  The only thing that may put some readers off is the graphic sex does seem excessive at times, and pulls away from the overall story thread.  If you can overlook that, this is a story that most gorehound horror fans will enjoy.  Recommended.

Contains: graphic violence, graphic sex

 

Reviewed by Murray Samuelson

 

Posted on February 25, 2019 by , Reply

Book Review: Bloody Kids by Andrew Holmes

Bloody Kids by Andrew Holmes

Sasquatch Books, 2017

ASIN: B078437KK2

Available: Kindle edition

 

Bloody Kids by Andrew Holmes is a gory thriller about a rural English town that is rotten to its core.  A rich farmer controls the town and most of its inhabitants, including the police, much as lords of the manor did in medieval England.  He entertains and controls many of the village men with annual hunting bacchanals and a clandestine brothel at the Lizard Farm.  A sadistic widow runs the Farm and is the madam for comely ‘cleaning women’.  She physically and psychologically abuses her orphaned or abandoned ‘foster children’, who work the Farm.

 

Things begin to go awry when the widow becomes demented, and loses control over the once-cowed children.  As they take control of the Farm, their base instincts come to the fore.  Think of William Golding’s Lord of the Flies.  The children begin to abuse and torture the prostitutes.

 

The rich farmer’s son-in-law takes his young son on a winter picnic in a field near the Farm, and the boy disappears.  An intensive search leads nowhere, and a local veteran Detective Inspector is ordered to investigate.

 

It’s a tangled web.  The DI has had a midlife crisis and an affair with a hostess-prostitute at the bacchanals, who is also the nanny/cleaning woman for the children.  Although she ends the affair, she still communicates with the DI by cell phone, until the boy disappears.

 

A boy’s body is found in a gravel pit.  It seems that no one is innocent.  Mutilations (yes, even with a chainsaw), torture, and murder, crescendo to a gory, blazing denouement on a bone-chilling, snowy night.  As in a morality play, most of the malefactors get their just deserts.

 

The story is fast-paced, and keeps the reader engaged.  Setting his story in England, Holmes treats the reader to many English colloquialisms, such as “twee” (quaint), “gutted” (upset) and “gob” (spit, mouth).  Holmes has written many other action/adventure/fantasy/horror novels under the pseudonyms Oliver Bowden and A. E. Moorat.

 

Recommended for teens and adults

 

Contains: violence, gore and sex

Reviewed by Robert D. Yee

 

 

 

 

 

 

Posted on November 29, 2017 by , Reply
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