{"id":8628,"date":"2021-05-13T14:13:48","date_gmt":"2021-05-13T18:13:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/?p=8628"},"modified":"2021-05-13T16:22:48","modified_gmt":"2021-05-13T20:22:48","slug":"book-review-to-dust-you-shall-return","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/book-review-to-dust-you-shall-return\/","title":{"rendered":"Book Review: To Dust You Shall Return by Fred Venturini"},"content":{"rendered":"

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To Dust You Shall Return <\/em>by Fred Venturini<\/p>\n

Turner Publishing, 2021 (release date June 21)<\/p>\n

ISBN: 9781684426348<\/p>\n

Availability: Paperback, Kindle\u00a0(\u00a0Bookshop.org<\/a> |\u00a0Amazon.com<\/a> )<\/strong><\/p>\n

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If you only have the budget to purchase one book for the entire year, this is the one to buy.\u00a0 To Dust You Shall Return <\/em>is superior to everything else out there, might as well just hand the author the Stoker award for best horror novel of 2021 and skip the drawn-out nomination process.\u00a0 It’s that good: other authors will be hard pressed to equal it.<\/p>\n

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Most of the story is set in Harlow, one of those Children of the Corn-<\/em>type Midwestern towns you could drive through and not know if anyone actually lives there.\u00a0 Curtis Quinn, an aging ex-Mafia hitman with a price on his head, is led there while on the trail of whoever butchered his beloved wife into pieces.\u00a0 He suspects it’s a revenge hit to get to him, but what he finds in Harlow is much more sinister and terrifying than anything the Mafia could have dished out.\u00a0 Harlow residents live in fear of the Mayor, a sadistic madman (or is he?) with inhuman powers.\u00a0 The residents’ only hope is the legend of the Griffin, an outsider who may one day come to deliver the townspeople from the Mayor’s grasp.\u00a0 Could Curtis, a cold-blooded killer, be that man, and is it somehow connected to his wife’s murder?<\/p>\n

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The story scores unbelievably high on every possible level, but the excitement and originality are the two best points.\u00a0 After a brief prologue, the story shifts into high gear right away, and, in 352 pages, doesn’t let up.\u00a0 There’s never a hint of a slowdown: this is the type of book you will keep reading well into the night, until exhaustion sets in.\u00a0 For originality, Harlow itself is one of the most intriguing fictional towns ever invented; it’s an unusual cross between a communist community and Blake Crouch’s Wayward Pines.<\/em>\u00a0 Residents are provided for and given jobs, but the cost is never being able to leave the town, exceept for a forays lasting a brief hour or two.\u00a0 The town is surrounded with razor wire and various traps to keep the people in.\u00a0 If they do escape, rangers track them down and return them to Harlow, where they are ritually slaughtered in front of the townspeople in extremely painful and bloody ways.\u00a0 This causes the book’s gore factor to run high at times, but it is always in service to the story, never gratuitous for the shock factor.\u00a0 That said, some of the killings are as hardcore as anything Jack Ketchum ever wrote and will make readers cower in fear, praying to forget what they just read.<\/p>\n

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The characters and plot also sell themselves by their unpredictability: the story does not go where you would expect.\u00a0 Numerous characters double-cross each other, and the book becomes a guessing game,\u00a0 keeping the story engrossing.\u00a0 The legend of the Griffin also helps drive the story’s unexpected twists and turns, as most stories with a creepy little town rarely use the “savior” angle.\u00a0 It’s just another example of what sets this story apart from all the competition.\u00a0 Bottom line: just buy this one, and prepare to be blown away.\u00a0 You won’t be disappointed.\u00a0 This is beyond<\/em> highly recommended.<\/p>\n

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Contains: blood, gore, profanity, cannibalism, ritualistic torture.<\/p>\n

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Reviewed by Murray Samuelson<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To Dust You Shall Return by Fred Venturini Turner Publishing, 2021 (release date June 21) ISBN: 9781684426348 Availability: Paperback, Kindle\u00a0(\u00a0Bookshop.org |\u00a0Amazon.com )   If you only have the budget to purchase one book for the entire year, this is the one to buy.\u00a0 To Dust You Shall Return is superior to everything else out there,<\/p>\n

Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[3423,2320,2352,83,2912,2747,4891,4889],"class_list":["post-8628","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-cannibalism","tag-extreme-horror","tag-fred-venturini","tag-horror-fiction","tag-occult-horror","tag-small-town-horror","tag-to-dust-you-shall-return","tag-torture"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8628","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8628"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8628\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8633,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8628\/revisions\/8633"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8628"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8628"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8628"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}