Outbreak: The Mutation (2020) by Scott Shoyer - Zombie Horror Book Review

                                

After my review of the excellent animal based zombie horror novel Outbreak: The Hunger, I realised with some joy that I actually also had a copy of the sequel waiting to be reviewed. Outbreak: The Mutation is the book version of a blockbuster sequel to an indie darling, everything made bigger and more far reaching in scope. I would have been happy with more of the same, but this drastically changes things up. Obviously, spoilers for book one to follow.

It is two years since an outbreak of rabid undead animals spread across (assumedly) the globe. Initially confined to animals, this strange virus made the leap to humans. The survivors have been doing the best they can, able to best the low intelligence zombies, but recently that has began to change, with the undead seeming to be getting smarter, and seemingly able to communicate with each other over long distances. Walt; the manager of a drug rehabilitation centre, is forced to leave his compound with his group after increasing zombie attacks, deciding to head to a remote spring where there will be a continual source of natural water. Elsewhere, soldiers Wilder and Butsko are leading a mission to get to a secret underground laboratory where it is hoped a weapon with the power to defeat the zombies once and for all can be located. Unknown to the humans, the undead have began to evolve, these new more intelligent and more self-healing yellow eyed creatures find themselves drawn to a particular spot in America, following an urge. Little do these three groups realise that they are all heading to the exact same location...

I was well up for some more undead animal mayhem, so the time skip of two years was a little jarring. Zombie animals are still here, but they have been superseded by the more traditional human walking dead. Racking my brain, I really don't recall there being a reason given for the genesis of the outbreak; what actually caused it, in the first novel. Here, it is almost common knowledge that it was all down to malfunctioning nanobots, not some biological virus. These nanobots are able to heal their carriers, and also account for how they are able to transmit data across the country. Seemingly when one zombie learns something key, this spreads across the network. My fears that the uniqueness of the first novel would be diluted or lost were for nought, this might be a different beast, but it carries the supreme inventiveness of what came before. Nanobot infected humans made for something different, and I was not expecting the late stage audacious reveal of the origins of the nanobots.

The world of Outbreak is one of the lesser zombie apocalypses I would like to experience. It feels almost pointless trying to survive with the undead a constant and very dangerous threat from beginning to end. Everywhere they go, no matter how safe it appears, the survivors are in constant danger. Both groups lose a huge amount of the cast of characters, made all the more horrific by the very quick transition from victim to aggressor. The first novel was almost cruel in its violence, and here things carry on in a similar fashion. While not quite as mean spirited and gruesome, there is still room for moments such as characters stumbling across a neonatal intensive care unit full of zombie babies. A lot of the real body horror comes from the new yellow eyed undead who get joy out of torturing the normal zombies. Of course, this paled in comparison to the animal attacks of the first novel.

It was fun to see some returning characters. Fi, the almost survivor of book one is back as one of the first evolved undead. We get to see this side of the story from her perspective. Wilder and Butsko were side characters last time around, this time they are duel protagonists with Walt and his group. I really enjoyed these characters, very fun to be following legitimate bad-asses around. Walt was fun for a civilian, especially with his memorable nail studded bat which gets put to lots and lots of good use. Both sets of characters get into plenty of desperate last stands.

Outbreak: The Mutation might not have surprised me as much as The Hunger but it was still a damn exciting book. I would give my left leg to be able to craft such a darn entertaining zombie novel. This is full of horror and rotting corpses from start to finish, and I enjoyed how the disparate storylines ended up linking together. Well worth a read, a fine series of novels.

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Millionaires Day (2024) by Kit Power - Thriller Novella Review

My quest to make more of an effort to get through my vast backlog of book requests was helped by the next book I chose; Kit Power's Millionaires Day being a novella. The story here is based in Milton Keynes, UK, a surreal choice for me as that is pretty much the next town (while it has recently been made a city, it will always be a town to me) over from my own!

One day in 2019 (according to the synopsis), everyone in the UK woke up with a million pounds in cash under wherever they happen to have been sleeping. This novella charts the effects this has on the population by following a random selection of people from Milton Keynes. There is a neglected girl (Emma) with an imaginary friend who believes the money was a gift from Santa. A homeless man (Henry) with the desperate hope of re-starting his life somewhere else, a policeman struggling to deal with the unfolding chaos, and Pete; a lowlife criminal whose gang leader - Mental Mickey, enacts a plan to steal as much money as his gang are able to.

I always try and avoid reading the synopsis for anything I am going to read/watch on this blog. For me, I didn't expect things here to go as south quickly as they do. From the novella, it was never obvious that this weird event had occurred countrywide, it didn't even really feel like it had happened to many of the people in MK. With the almost supernaturally thick fog coating the town, this created a feeling of this particular set of characters having inadvertently stumbled into The Twilight Zone. I couldn't shake my thoughts of this, but it added to my enjoyment. The book is split into (if my memory serves me correct) three distinct parts, each part taking place over a different hour. Each part is then split into chapters, with the chapters being titled with the specific timeframe they are happening in. While the many protagonists don't know each other, there are some wonderfully timed moments in the story where by pure chance, the paths of all the protagonists cross. I loved seeing the same event play out from different perspectives, each viewpoint having a narrow reaction, based only on the information the particular character would have had.

I have been to Milton Keynes many many times. Reading this made me realise that I had never really travelled anywhere in that (to my eyes) clean but soulless city, as I was never reminded of my experiences of that place. This version of the city is grimy and crooked, decrepit apartment blocks and dirty back alleys, of characters either corrupted or prey, and there isn't a lot of happy outcomes for many of these characters who appear. Of the three main plots going on, the homeless man story was almost a prologue, serving to introduce the character of a policeman whose journey would have him heading all over the city. The little girl's storyline is probably the most bleak, with her falling prey to a perverted security guard, and the one based around the gang was the most detailed, likely due to featuring the most characters. This gave the book a bit of a crime caper feel, I liked how it is shown to the reader the various subplots going on within the book. There are some very dark moments here, but this is balanced with the light in what became one of my favourite sections of the novella. There are lengthy paragraphs introduced later on that are first person perspectives of the story told from the viewpoint of a dog! Initially really confusing to read, I eventually settled into a decent pattern. These dog viewpoint sections really did create a fun feel for a simple character whose main drive is to be called a 'good dog'!

I loved this novella, especially with the story taking place so close to my doorstep. I enjoyed the more potentially supernatural elements here, and the wide variety of characters and events taking place. The stories occurred in an intelligent way that allowed things to ever move forward without becoming dull, though this isn't a feel good story at its heart, as it delves into the darker side of human greed, and just what lengths some people are prepared to go to, to achieve their desires. Millionaires Day is out now via French Press.

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Halloween Girl - Book Three: Gods & Monsters (2025) - Horror Graphic Novel Review

Richard T. Wilson's Halloween Girl series was a comic that I initially had low expectations for, but was something that quickly grew on me the more I read it. Halloween Girl - Book One: Promises to Keep brought together the first seven issues and was a great introduction. Halloween Girl - Book Two: Dead Reckoning was another great entry, especially when it came to the artwork. Due to the second book serving as a prequel though, Halloween Girl - Book Three: Gods & Monsters is a sequel to the story told in book one, and was another darn good read. Unavoidable spoilers for the other book to follow.

Halloween Girl is a series about a ghost called Charlotte and her supernaturally powerful friend Poe. With The Hollow no longer operating (a demonic group who were able to infiltrate the dreams of their victims), things have settled down a bit. Unknown to the pair though, some of The Hollow have found a new leader, bizarrely in the form of a young child named Kevin. Inhabiting the forms of toy figurines in the boy's playset, these beings not only worship Kevin, but are very prepared to go to lethal lengths to make sure his life is a good one. Realising that the boy is not to blame for this, Charlotte and Poe seek a way to convince him that these creatures are not good people, part of this help being to find a way to stop Kevin's abusive father from hurting him anymore.

Spread over four lengthy chapters, this tells a great story, better than I had expected. Despite being a bit murky on the details of book one, I pieced together what had happened there, something that continues to have an effect on Poe. The highlight of the whole graphic novel was again the art of Shahed R. The black and white illustrations are so wonderfully drawn and full of life, very expressive faces on characters which never look over the top, and some amazing shading going on.

I loved the story, and genuinely found the idea of toy figurines possessed by demons to be fantastic. I loved that these toys worshipped Kevin, and there are some strong moments of horror. This story again has a lot of heart to it, being sentimental without being overly so. It deals with death and grief in a mature way, making sure to always have a balance between the darkness and the light.

A great story coupled with great art and shading left me more than happy at what I had read here. It might not satisfy those wanting something more darker and mean spirited, but I always think there is something really uplifting about the stories told in Halloween Girl. Halloween Girl - Book Three: Gods & Monsters released June 3rd from Mad Shelley Comics.

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Outbreak: The Hunger (2015) by Scott Shoyer - Zombie Horror Novel Review

Scott Shoyer's Outbreak: The Hunger is yet another book I have had for review for a ridiculously long time, having first received a copy back in 2015. At that time, a girlfriend had agreed to help me get through my backlog and read some books on my behalf. She did actually read this novel but soon after we split up, so I never found out her thoughts on it, unrelated I'm sure! Now, I have finally gotten around to reading this, and boy, I wish I had read this one sooner.

John and his young daughter Fi have gone on their monthly visit to the local zoo near where they live in Texas. This trip feels different than usual, with a weird atmosphere at the place. Many of the zoo exhibits appear to be empty, with the animals that are still there behaving very aggressively. John almost decides to cut the trip short when a nervous young man is witnessed being roughly detained by a group of soldiers, but his daughters love for the train that runs around the zoo has John agreeing to ride it with her before they leave. This turns out to be a terrible mistake as staff and passengers alike come under attack from vicious animals. In the unfolding carnage the train derails, John, Fi, and a small group of other families survive, and decide to follow the track back to the zoo. They soon discover that they are being stalked from the shadows by the animals, who are not done with the group yet.
Elsewhere, the survivor of a violent animal attack at an animal rescue shelter is taken to a secure facility by the army, with it revealed that animals had escaped from a government lab, caused a localised outbreak, and that this survivor is patient zero - the first human to be infected by whatever disease or virus has affected the animals so dangerously.

This is a sick book, and for those who aren't on board for a whole lot of animals attacking both adults and children in violent and sickening detail, you might want to get off the train now! There is a cruelness here, with the book often seeming to go into unneeded excessive descriptions of the violence being inflicted. That is not to say I didn't like The Hunger, instead, I thought this was a great novel that really did do something different than the traditional zombie story. Firstly, I thought it was a neat idea to have the whole novel just tell the story of the initial outbreak, before the infection had even spread to humans. There are a few human-like infected here, but mainly just in the more traditional patient zero based subplot rolling on in the background. The zombie animals act very different, even to other zombie animals that have appeared in other books. These ones are as a unit extremely deadly and also extremely fast. The initial attacks are so swift that characters aren't even sure of what is happening, and the animals have some odd behaviour, such as occasionally being found all passed out rather than moving around. These animals also exhibit an intelligence that is frightening to see. Far from acting like dumb creatures, these infected appear to be able to work together and make plans, such as automatically going after any human who appears to be trying to use their phone to contact the outside world.

The infected animals are the ghastly stars of the show, and being set in and around a zoo there are excuses for why there are a large assortment of these creatures. Everything from tigers, lions, and bears to goats, meercats and wolves. They attack in explicit detail with victim's body parts being ripped off and chewed up, again, especially distressing when it is happening to young children!
John, generic name aside, made for an engaging protagonist. The backstory of him surviving a dog attack as a child explains why he is able to lead the group, while his worsening vision, due to forgetting the eye drops needed after a recent operation on his eye, gives a sense of bigger danger. His determination to protect his daughter is well realised, and really there wasn't much bad about this part of the novel. The subplot was less interesting only due to secret army bases and experiments on infected being so part and parcel of the zombie genre. Occasionally the novel gets a bit carried away, with a few chapters, especially near the end, which seemed to just be there to pad out the length of the book rather than add anything new. Some of these mini-stories of characters meeting their end were worth reading. I loved the really cruel chapter that saw a man trying to find his children, unaware that not only were they already dead, but that unknown to him he had sustained a fatal wound himself. This just exemplified the jet black humour that would sometimes pop up.

I loved Outbreak: The Hunger, it genuinely hooked me, but at the same time, I sometimes had to take breaks due to the misery and horror of the story. This sets itself apart from other zombie novels by taking a wild deviation to the tried and tested expectations, but towards the end especially it had some twists that I would hardly say I didn't see coming from a mile away. This was the first in a planned trilogy, with a quick Google search revealing the other books in the series are now written and out, I may have to check those out on day (turns out I also have the second book awaiting review on my heap of shame).

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Razortooth (2024) by Stephen Kozeniewski and Steve Kopas - Post Apocalyptic Book Review

My slow march through my daunting backlog of books to read for review continues with the review of the Stephen Kozeniewski (The Thing Under Your Bed) and Steve Kopas co-written post-apocalyptic novel Razortooth. This is actually a prequel to Slashvivor, I have that on my reading pile, but figured I would read the prequel first. I am assuming that Slashvivor is similar to Sean E. Britten's Kill Switch series, seeming to sound like a futuristic game show where contestants are forced to battle deranged killers. 

The story follows the trails and tribulations of a girl nicknamed 'Razortooth', who at a young age experiences and survives a nuclear war between Russia and the USA only to subsequently be captured by a post-apocalyptic warlord named Marisol and made into a sex slave. With skill at murdering her clients, it is decided to instead change her role to that of a hitwoman for the powerful warlord.

I really liked the set-up for this world, with it explained that purely by complete chance during the nuclear exchange with Russia all the American nukes missed their targets, while all the Russian nukes hit theirs. This has resulted in an irradiated America that saw the collapse of government. The tale bounces around in time and at a hundred and sixty seven pages wasn't much larger than a novella. It was a cool idea also to have the whole story being a fabricated one, an embellished version of a true (within the book's universe) story of how one of the Slashvivor killer's came to be there. This set up was added to with little throwaway chapters that act like 'commercial breaks' from the core story being told. From Razortooth's innocent beginning pre-nukes, to the early stages of the new country order, and the events that led to her being made into a slave. It moves along at a rapid pace and does a good job of fleshing out the world.

The world here is a dark one, and there are some disturbing topics alluded to, and some graphic scenes, at least a couple featuring severed testicles! The story never really stays in one place for too long, with a bunch of characters introduced along the way. My favourite aspect of the world were the 'Georges', with only one 'George' being around at any one time, their punitive punishments for perceived failure resulting in their replacement taking them out.
Having not read Slashvivor yet, I can't really comment on how successful as a prequel this is. I'm guessing Razortooth is an integral character of that novel, with this being an origin story relating to both her sad past, and how she came to have body modifications to fit the name she has. 

A short well written novel that was as easy to get through as a hot knife through butter. The world of Razortooth might be depressing and bleak, but it is brought to wild life with a selection of madcap larger than life characters who create a Tank Girl type vibe, especially with the likeable titular lead.

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Necromancer (2009) by Scott Harper

The shame, the absolute shame. Back in the beginning years of my blog I was all too eager to accept book after book for review despite having a terrible track record for the length of time it takes me to read such things. Back in 2012, author Scott Harper sent me some of his novels for review. It took me until 2019 to read Predators or Prey? Now, some six years later I have gotten around to reading the sequel to that book; Necromancer. 

Two years ago, former con-artist Wendy Markland discovered to her horror that vampires were actually real. That knowledge dramatically changed her, and now she scours the web looking for similar reports, having decided to dedicate her life to hunting the undead. Having recently found strange reports of the dead coming back to life in the small remote town of Pinewick, New Jersey, Wendy heads there, expecting to possibly once again encounter vampires. She is shocked to discover that this time around it is zombies causing chaos, another mythical monster she had not believed to be real. Despite not being what she expected, she is determined to find the source of the outbreak and stop it, but that source turns out to be something even more horrific than the walking dead.

I gave Predators or Prey? a respectable seven rotted zombie heads out of ten back when I reviewed it. This was despite my misgivings with aspects of the story. I had no idea that Necromancer would instead deal with zombies rather than vampires, I think if I had realised that I may have gotten to this one sooner. I disliked the protagonists of that prior book, but it was at least good to see Wendy wasn't quite so insufferable this time around, and I also appreciated that her former partner and love interest Jacob was out the picture. The book did a good job of bringing readers up to speed on what had previously happened, while it would be useful to have read that first novel, I don't think it is essential reading. Her determination and desire that no one else should suffer like she did made her more likeable and less selfish feeling, though she wasn't without her issues. I don't know if she is intended to be a narcissist, or if it is the author's desire to make her seem like the most beautiful woman who ever lived, but she is back once again shamelessly admiring her naked body in mirrors whenever she gets a chance, an off putting aspect of her character. This comes to a head with a few awkward sex scenes that went into a little too much detail for my liking, I even skimmed past the second one as it was not what I wanted from a horror novel.

Thankfully, the horror part of the book was solid. Having expected a book about vampires, I unintentionally ended up reading two books at the same time that were about the walking dead, but they were so different in tone that this didn't cause me any confusion. The undead were wonderfully described here, and the zombie virus even spread to animals, giving some exciting moments. My very favourite part of the novel had Wendy and a few others battling a zombie bear out in the pouring rain. Was such a thrilling chapter! There is a definite antagonist creature for this novel, and he was written to appear fearful. My two complaints with him were firstly that he was supposed to have a mystery helper, but this characters identity was never really made much of a secret, meaning their eventual reveal wasn't shocking or that interesting. Secondly, with the book fast approaching the end and the story unresolved I thought maybe things would end on a cliff-hanger. Instead, the story is neatly tied up, but in a way that felt a little bit rushed with the climatic battle occurring within a brief chapter.

I don't particularly have fond memories of the first novel, so this knocked my socks off a bit with how enjoyable I found Necromancer. Sure, I could do without the sex scenes and Wendy's bizarre obsession with her perfect body, but the horror here was cool, the small town characters that Wendy befriends enjoyable, and the writing did a fantastic job of making the events come to life in my minds eye.

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The Perfectly Fine Neighbourhood (2023) by various - Horror Anthology Book Review

Book reviews are always the most shameful part of my site as I am notoriously slow at getting around to reading them. The Perfectly Fine Neighbourhood is a horror anthology featuring stories written by fifteen different authors. I was sent a copy last December, so it has taken me an entire year to get around to reading it. As I always say, every good anthology needs a good theme, and the theme for this one is more involved than most. The goal with this anthology was to have a collection of horror stories based in a world where ghosts are common place. I admit that I thought this was a bit of a lame idea, but egg on my face as I really enjoyed the stories contained within this, and was impressed how they share common ideas despite being written by a variety of people.

It begins with 'The First Ghost' by Stephen Kozeniewski (The Thing Under Your Bed) which sets out the idea of a ghost filled world. Here, a couple have rented out a remote cottage, with it promising to be entirely ghost free, but it turns out that something maybe even worse than a ghost is residing there. In this ghost filled world death is not seen as much of a burden as it normally is. Most people who die return as ghosts and so couples are no longer separated by death and death looses some of its finality. This leads to situations such as with Jeff Strand's 'A Most Unpleasant Task' and Ryan Breadinc's 'The Perfectly Fine Family', both comedic stories in which the dead are trying to speed up the process of their loved ones lives ending. Then there is the interesting 'Incorporeal Tax' by Annie Knox, about a partner being trapped with his abusive boyfriend even after that boyfriend has passed. On the flip side, there are some stories here played super seriously with Candace Nola's 'Click' being the most morose and straight one, in which her protagonist character attempts to let her newly deceased brother come to terms with his suicide.

There was a good variety of stories from more grounded tales to action pieces that were a thrill to read. My personal favourite was 'Auld Lang Syne' from Wile E. Young that sees the perpetrator of an office massacre returning to the scene of his crime in order to destroy the ghosts of the people he originally murdered. Another similar one handled different was Shane Burnham's 'Addicted to Slaughter' that sees a serial killer forced to live with the ghosts of the people he killed. Killers feature in a bunch of these, I thought 'Playthings' by Lay Hanifen was memorable (a ghost trying to save a woman from a serial killer), while D.C Hill's 'The Perfectly Fine Storm' with echoes of The Purge to it, and 'Fiduciary Duty' by Zachary Rosenberg both had satisfying stories about ghosts getting their deserved revenge on the living.

There was a good feeling of unity with elements appearing in different stories that made them mostly feel like they were taking place in the same world. There are some contrasts, Brian Keene's (The Lost Level) 'Where the Heart Is' sets out the idea that ghosts are doomed to haunt the areas they died, while most other stories allows ghosts seemingly to travel wherever they like such as with Gavin Dillinger's 'Lay, Lie, Lie'. I liked all the ideas presented here though, such as how ghosts are able to be witnesses to their own deaths. The anthology ends with Kayleigh Dobbs (The End) 'The Last Word' that takes the form of a letter a convicted murderer has written about the life-long rivalry with her twin sister which led to her eventual imprisonment.

I was weirdly ambivalent to the concept for this anthology, but the book proved me wrong. There are some stories here that felt a bit similar, or a bit basic in their execution, but the quality was strong throughout. Everything from comedic to tragic and action packed, I liked how the stories mostly felt like they were taking place all within the same world. The Perfectly Fine Neighbourhood was a good one, not a bad story to be found, and all of them were well written.

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The Thing Under Your Bed (2023) by Stephen Kozeniewski - Horror Novella Review

                                 

I have been in a very lazy mood taking the whole day to get one film watched for review. Luckily, I knew I was near the end of Stephen Kozeniewski's horror novella The Thing Under Your Bed, and so was at least able to finish reading that for a review. This one really brought to mind the short film Keith I had watched back in April, but where that one took a gentle comedic route, this one told a similar story, but one with a much darker outcome. The story may feature a child protagonist in a starring role, but this twisted tale doesn't allow this fact to reduce the horror inflicted.

It takes place one night in the bedroom of a little girl who discovers there is an actual monster living under her bed. The monster soon makes its intentions clear; that it wants to eat the girl and her family. She doesn't want to believe this to be true, but after her pet dog Freckle is effortlessly devoured by the creature she realises that if she leaves the apparent safety of her bed she will also be consumed. With just her stuffed rabbit Captain Bundrick for company (which has somehow became sentient), the girl must find a way to either defeat the monster, survive till morning, or escape her bedroom.

I didn't realise this was a novella when I began reading the story, but at around a hundred pages that is what this story was. It was a perfect length really for the story, seeing as the entire thing takes place not only in a small bedroom, but that it takes place entirely from a bed. I assumed the girl would have some type of plot armour that would prevent anything bad happening to her, so I was surprised to find out that she wasn't protected in that way, with her no only witnessing violent horror, but also able to be quite badly injured by the creature living under her bed. A minor early spoiler already mentioned is her dog getting killed. Kozeniewski doesn't shy away from describing in detail what happens to that poor creature, making for something that was nasty to read!

The novella is written in a third person perspective, with the protagonist character remaining unnamed throughout. From the situation described it is clear the girl comes from a troubled home, with an alcoholic mum who drinks herself unconscious every day. There are indications the girl has mental health issues, shown with her recalling how she would sneak out her room and listen to her parents argue about her strange behaviour. This created a fun notion that everything happening to her might not be as clear cut as the novella makes it out to be. Captain Bundrick is one fun example, even the creature under the bed thinks that the girl holding conversations with a stuffed toy seems a bit crazy, unable to hear it itself.
The creature was a great antagonist, one that is given reason why it is unable to leave its hiding spot. The creature is given great description by not being described really at all. At one point it is stated that there is something about it that means even when you are looking straight at it you are not able to see it, your eyes naturally looking around it. The creature was nasty and duplicitous, constantly trying to trick the girl to leave the safety of her bed so that it could grab her with its many tentacles. There was some neat explanation for the creature and its origins which was really interesting. My only real complaint I guess would be the somewhat abrupt ending.

This was straight horror, but there was room for dark humour throughout, mainly with the interactions between the girl and the creature. As well as flashback memories the girl has, she also has a few bizarre dream sequences that the creature is able to infiltrate, featuring a posh British voiced duck called Quackers, I loved those parts.
With it never entirely clear if what was happening was real or part of the girl's madness, I found The Thing Under Your Bed a great read, I loved how deliciously dark this got, while I really rooted for the young protagonist to come out on top. With a clear ramping up of horror from beginning to end, this single location story managed to surprise with the imagination on display.

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The End (2023) by Kayleigh Dobbs - Horror Anthology Book Review

After finishing Brennan LaFaro's horror anthology Illusions of Isolation, I went straight into Kayleigh Dobbs book The End. This turned out to be another horror anthology, something I was happy to discover. This is the thirty fifth book in the Black Shuck Shadows series, which a Google search reveals to be a series of pocket-sized books. At around one hundred and twenty four pages I swiftly read through this in about a week and enjoyed nearly my whole time with it.

A good anthology always needs a good theme, and the theme with this collection (as the title may imply) is the apocalypse. The six stories here are all stand-alone ones, yet there are a few cheeky references throughout to events of earlier stories, while they are all separate tales, they follow a natural path from pre-apocalypse to the end of all things. It begins with 'The Claim They Stake' that has what can only be described as a blistering start, as a man flees from the house of an elderly man for reasons initially unknown. This uses a real world tin-foil hat conspiracy as the basis for the horror, with it kept a bit vague for the most part whether the protagonist is suffering from mental health issues or if he has actually stumbled onto a hidden truth.
'Just Like Baking' wasn't my favourite of the shorts contained here but it was amusing with how it all played out. A group of teenage acting witches (despite them being hundreds of years old) are planning a relatively safe spell, but their plans go wrong due to the arrival of a younger witch whose mother has insisted be included in the group. I thought this had a great ending to it.
Finishing up the first half of The End is 'Catch Fire'. A loving husband and wife go to the home of the wife's awful sister where they stumble into the plans of a twisted cult leader. This was a bit of a cruel one, mainly because I liked the protagonists and so wanted things to work out well, it did have a darkly humorous last line of dialogue.

'Dead' is the most comedic story of the lot, and an idea I hadn't seen (read I guess) before in zombie fiction. It begins with the protagonist being killed by a zombie she accidentally frees from the basement of her new house. Her ghost is then stuck following around her now resurrected undead body as it leaves the house and begins a zombie apocalypse, with the ghost getting increasingly exasperated at the ridiculous unfolding situation as well as the stupidity of all the people the zombie encounters. This could have been a traumatic story written in the right way, but the humour here made that not the case, and was all the better for it.

I thought The End had reached its highpoint with the previous story, but penultimate one 'Omega' was somehow even better. It manages to blend jet black comedy with legitimate horror. In this one, it appears that the end of the world is coming. A dedicated woman and her church group have been promised by their beloved pastor that they will be saved by God and will ascend to Heaven, but things aren't exactly as they seem. I have a real fear of heights, so I think that played a part in why picturing this in my head was almost making me sweat!
'The End' closes out the anthology and acts more like an epilogue to the anthology as a whole rather than a proper story. At just a few pages long this is written from the viewpoint of something not from the world of humans. The way it is written and set-out made this feel almost like a poem.

I thought this was a great little collection of stories, and I really liked the way Dobbs injected these with humour in a way that didn't distract. Some of these were a little predictable with where they headed, but for the most part I loved this, especially 'Dead' and 'Omega' which both delighted and surprised me. It may be short, but The End was also sweet, with a lot of enjoyment coming from reading it.

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Illusions of Isolation (2023) by Brennan LaFaro - Horror Anthology Book Review

I have a long list of horror books waiting to be read, some of which I've had down to read for over a decade. I recently finished reading Brennan LaFaro's horror anthology, Illusions of Isolation and briefly felt proud of myself that I had only received a copy of the book in March, until I realised I've had this since March of last year! Any regular visitor to this site will know that I love anthologies, and this particular one just so happens to be quite excellent.

I admit that when I read the preface by Jonathan Janz that I was more than a little sceptical when he stated there wasn't a single bad story to be found in the anthology. After all, it is very rare for a collection of short stories to not feature at least one dud. I found myself with egg on my face however, as thirteen stories later and there indeed was not a single bad one to be found. There was also a lot of variation with horrors ranging from evil spirits to home invasions, monstrous creatures, sci-fi, and even a fantasy Western. I loved this variation even if not all the stories were perfect. 
Six of the stories feature a child or teenager as the protagonist or co-protagonist, with seven of them also focussing on the family dynamic, and a fair few mainly focus on just the one character for the majority of the story. 

It begins fantastically with 'Dressed For Success', a second person perspective story about a boy's first day at a very strict school, whose pupils have just about reached the end of their respective tethers with their cruel treatment by the sadistic teachers. This feeds into the unsettling 'Piece by Piece' that has a school boy discovering strangely preserved body parts out in his local creek, and deciding to keep hold of them. Having horror from the perspective of a child often works well, children obviously much less designed to be able to deal with the frightening unknown. This can be seen again with the eco-terror 'The Last Little Piece of Civilization' in which an eight year old child discovers her home is slowly being taken over by an ever increasing jungle, something that her emotionally absent parents seem mostly oblivious to. One part of this book that I really adored was that the author provides his inspirations at the end of each story, in this case, the idea he had come up with was 'reverse deforestation', to give an idea of what it must feel like for animals to lose their habitats to human destruction.

Rather than the tone be the same for each of the short stories, there is effort to make them different in styles. 'Snap' is probably the shortest one here, a comedic entry about two evil bosses at a company who are joyfully planning how to kill off their staff members. 'The Irreversible Flow of Time' is a first person present tense tale that plays out like a level in a video game, complete with 'end of level' boss fight. The great 'I Will Meet You There' takes place on a space ship and has an interesting concept of taking place both in the present, as well as in the weeks and days leading up to just the one person being left alive on the ship. I loved how repeating sounds came to feel so chilling, even if I wasn't so keen on the slightly neat explanation towards the end. 'Just a Note' takes the form of a found footage style of notes written between a son and his mother, who are both experiencing supernatural events. A cool idea, though there seemed to be little difference in writing styles between the grown woman and her fourteen year old son, so the letters seemed to be a little to identical to read.
I was a little torn on what was my favourite of the stories, in the end I settled on two of them. 'Then You Smiled for a Second' was a great home invasion story with a delightfully cruel amusing end, the author stated this was inspired by the January 6th United States Capitol Building mob attack. I also loved final story (and the longest), 'Red Sands', a Western that had an isolated community being attacked by winged creatures, with two of the townsfolk deciding to set out across the barren desert and try and locate the creatures' nest. It was interesting to read afterwards that this was a stand alone prequel story to a dark fantasy series the author had written with someone else.

It is rare for there not to be a bad story in a collection like this, but while I had slight issues with how some of the stories resolved, such as the underwhelming finish to 'The Attic', I really enjoyed each of these, covering a variety of subjects, while the author's inspirations for each of these was fascinating to read. Illusions of Isolation was a great anthology that has made me want to check out more of the author's work.

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Undeath Syndrome Surveillance and Diagnostics (2013) by Bryan Way - Zombie Horror Book Review

Undeath Syndrome Surveillance and Diagnostics might have a very dry title, but that is because it is a (fictional) government document that has been written to try and help those in charge deal with the zombie outbreak that has occurred in author Bryan Way's Life After universe. This forty six page document isn't actually available for purchase, but the author created it as a kind of bible for his series, with the rules and observations contained within determining in many ways the extent to which his version of the undead are able to act and operate.
From a geeky perspective this was very exciting to me, as this is the self same document that former national guard soldier, Anderson, is handed in the excellent second Life After novel, Life After: The Void (a mild obscure spoiler from that novel).

Going along with the dry title, much of this document is appropriately dryly written, something essential to give it a believable feel. It establishes that the outbreak did indeed originate in the graveyard near the high school that Grey (the protagonist of the main novels) had been visiting, the outbreak that was described in short story Life After: The Cemetery Plot. It also goes into more detail on how the virus was spread, with many of the buses leaving the high school bringing with it unknowingly infected people who spread it far and wide. The document reveals that the virus has spread worldwide, and was fun to see a little bit about what has happened to the U.K (where I am based).
It is spread between giving details on how the outbreak started, and a more deep look into just how the zombies act. Part of this hints at the setting of short story Life After: The Maze, with the cold emotionless reporting here only hinting at what happened in that location to get the results. It was quite cool that The Maze was written in 2021, though the origins of that story were birthed in this document.

Undeath Syndrome Surveillance and Diagnostics also includes charts, maps, and statistics that all work in making it feel like a real thing. While it may have been needfully dull in places, I found it fascinating the Way had created this as an aid in shaping his world. As a fan of the series, this was cool to read and recognise bits that related to events that had happened in the novels and short stories. If you're a fan of the series and get the opportunity to check this out, then it's well worth a read.

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Horde (2021) by Bryan Cassiday - Zombie Book Review

In February earlier this year I put up a review of Cutthroat Express, the seventh book in author Bryan Cassiday's Zombie Apocalypse: The Chad Halverson Series. Perhaps slightly confusingly, the next title of his I have read for review is actually the novel that came before that one. Horde is that book, and was an award winning one, having picked up the Independent Press Award for Best Horror Novel of 2022. I will try and keep spoilers to a minimum, especially seeing as how I knew how this one was going to end.

Out in the Arizona desert, a bedraggled man is discovered by Porter and his colleague out on a mission from their nearby compound. This person is in a poor condition, and with him suffering amnesia (bad enough that he isn't even aware that zombie apocalypse has been unleashed across the world going on for ten years), Porter gives him the nickname of 'Box'. Wanting to help the man (as well as a woman named Marta who is also discovered), Porter brings him back to the compound, which sits on the edge of the desert near some dense woodland. The leader of the compound, a lady named Hilda, is distrustful of the new arrivals and convinced they might be unaware carriers of the zombie virus, so they get placed into quarantine. Not long later sees the arrival of Zodiac, the leader of a group of thugs who have a grand plan to march to the seat of American government and take it over. First however, the psycho decides to take over the compound, with his harsh rule causing a division within the group, especially with his treatment of Box, Porter, Marta, and a few others that he sees as troublesome to his new rule. The arrival of another outsider brings with him news of a horde of undead massing in the nearby woodland, as well as a clue as to who Box might really be...

I knew what to expect going into Horde, as Cutthroat Express was such a pulpy and action packed zombie story. That took the form of a road trip, with this novel being set almost entirely at the compound of survivors. I had no fear that I would be lost, despite this being the sixth book in a series, it helped that the protagonist has amnesia, so there isn't a large amount of backstory to get clued up on. I guessed his identity quite early on, but I think if I had read earlier books that reveal would have been really obvious anyway. I enjoyed that aspect, having a lead character who is constantly discovering disturbing things about the skills he appears to have, while the amnesia part meant he was as fresh a pair of eyes on this rotting world as me reading it. With Zodiac you have a nasty antagonist, though he felt comfortably crazy, there is lots of random killings by the guy, but all weren't too surprising, and compared to killers in other series, such as Negan in The Walking Dead, he felt a little more calm and collected, even if his ideas were crazy. 

With much of the novel taking place in the relative safety of the compound, this was lighter on zombie action than the follow up, but that isn't to say there aren't thousands of undead here. Many of the action scenes revolve around Box and his acquaintances being sent out beyond the safety of the fences to dispatch zombies in hand to hand combat. One sequence that took place in a sand storm really stood out as something fresh and exciting. A thing I always appreciate when reading a novel is when it gives me a strong visual image of the events playing out, and that is certainly the case here. There were a few chapters set in a different location entirely, and these were the parts were I felt a broader knowledge of the overall story in the series would have benefitted. The main back and forth story is the belief that the undead release spores that can infect people without them even getting bitten. This was a topic returned back to time and time again, and wasn't something I recalled being a factor in Cutthroat Express, but seemed to be an actual way for people to become infected. Knowing where this story would end up, I expected the change of scenery, but that last act of the book was also the shortest, covering lots of ground in a way that felt slightly too swift.

I enjoyed reading Horde just as much as I enjoyed Cutthroat Express. The B-movie action here was never anything less than entertaining to read, and unified the feel of this insane world, while the ever present short and moresome chapters often found me struggling to put this down.

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Life After: The Line of Duty (2021) by Bryan Way - Short Zombie Novella Review

I'm finally here, Life After: The Line of Duty is the final novella in the second trilogy of side stories that take place in and around the mainline Life After novels. Thankfully author Bryan Way had saved the best for last, as this one was not only the best of the six short stories released, but I reckon is the second best story set in the Life After universe as a whole.

This forty seven page story is set during the events of Life After: The Arising and takes place entirely in and around the Broomall Police Station which has found itself on the wrong side of a quarantine zone due to a localised zombie outbreak. It is here that Lt. Arthur Gilchrist does his best to retain control over the local area, despite a large number of his officers either AWOL, MIA, or just plain dead. He is in good hands though, the remaining officers may be worn out and occasionally grumpy, but they are all dedicated to performing their duties, to protect and to serve until the end.

I really enjoyed this novella, the police station has such a sense of reality to it, helped that the story takes place over the one day, picking up in late afternoon time and then heading into the night. It even manages to start in a great fashion, with Gilchrist going over the list of his officers, it being clear that he has lost contact with a large number of the remaining ones. There has been lots of bad press about the police in recent years, both in America (where this is set), and here in my home country of the U.K. Thankfully, these police officers are more noble, with them trying their best to do their jobs. Even knowing that anyone bitten is destined to become a zombie, they don't just kill the infected, instead putting them in jail cells. Also, despite being low on numbers, they don't turn away any survivors looking for a place of refuge, despite not really wanting them there.
One thing I have always enjoyed about the Life After series is the author's attempts to keep this all grounded and realistic in feel. It was interesting to read him stating this story took a long time to come to fruition due to him wanting to get everything right about how the police might act in a situation such as a zombie outbreak.

With all the characters here it was easy to get slightly lost with who was who, even if this was made slightly easier by the majority of the officers having easier to remember nicknames, such as Magic, Reds, and Cutie. There was a tense feeling throughout, with it increasingly clear that the undead aren't the only problem they have to deal with, especially when it seems people with far less noble intentions who see the increasing weakness with the police's dwindling members. Way stated his story became almost like a Western, I can see that, there were also elements of Assault on Precinct 13 to be found here.

With Life After: The Line of Duty both beginning and ending in the middle of a larger plot, this was a really cool slice of life that worked so perfectly as a short story. Adding flavour to the larger Life After world, this also worked really well as a stand alone tale, well worth a read for any fan of zombie fiction.

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Life After: Zugzwang by Bryan Way (2021) - Short Zombie Novella Review

I'm dog sitting at my sisters place in the middle of a trailer park today (at the time of writing), so I don't have my typical two screen set-up, hoping that won't affect much as I am instead using my blogging laptop and my iPhone instead. Life After: Zugzwang is the second in horror author Bryan Way's second trilogy of short stories/novellas set in his Life After world of zombie apocalypse. Where the first entry, Life After: The Maze could easily be taken and enjoyed as a stand alone tale, with this one it really only makes sense if you have read the mainline books, specifically Life After: The Void. Mild spoilers for that book to follow.

The main focus of The Void was zombie film expert Grey and his group of survivors attempt to head across country and meet up with some fellow survivors, in order to bring them back to the safety of their high school base. Zugzwang follows the survivors that Grey would later set out to rescue, giving glimpses into how their situation became untenable, and their ill-fated attempt to rescue Grey's brother from his campus apartment.

The first thing I did when coming to write this review was look up the meaning of the word 'zugzwang', the definition is as follows 'a situation in which the obligation to make a move in one's turn is a serious, often decisive, disadvantage', which seems to be in reference to Chess. That title really sums up the flow of the story that takes place here. With so many characters, and with some time passed since reading The Void it did take me a fair while to really get it straight in my head exactly when this took place, and who these characters were. It begins with Grey having already requested that they make an attempt to locate his brother who lives nearby to them. As a fan of the series it was great getting some outsider perspectives on Grey, with many of the group either not knowing who he is, or thinking he is a bit of a tool. It was also cool realising this took place slightly earlier in the apocalypse, a time when there is still a minimal police presence on the streets and where there seems to be plenty of random survivors going about their business.
The first half shows the already fracturing dynamics of the group, with various groups within the larger group who seem to actively dislike each other. 

The main protagonist seems to be a girl named Dory, who due to having a close friendship with Grey's brother, is determined to seek him out, even if her majority rules decision making group decide against launching a rescue mission. The second half of the sixty page novella is the rescue attempt, where things become more entertaining, and where I finally figured out when this story likely took place.
As a stand alone zombie story I don't think this would be too easy to follow, but that really isn't the intention here. Instead, as a side story giving more details into the plot of The Void, this was pretty cool.

After getting over my initial confusion of just who all these characters were, I soon got into the plot. I still admit that I can't recall which of these characters made it to the events in The Void, but knowing that their mission to get Grey's brother likely wouldn't be successful kept me wanting to find out exactly what would happen. Life After: Zugzwang may not be an essential read if you are heading into it fresh, but if you're a fan of the main series this was a lovely little sidebar giving the world some more flavour.

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Life After: The Maze (2021) by Bryan Way - Short Zombie Novella Review

Life After: The Arising was a zombie novel from 2013 that made the mundane the focal point of the story, and by doing so really seemed to set itself apart. That novel was followed by three novellas taking place in and around the events of that one. In 2016 the full length sequel, Life After: The Void was released, and that too has a trilogy of stand alone novellas to accompany it. The first of these was Life After: The Maze.

A lot of the events of this particular story only start to make sense once the story is over, with the characters seemingly more clued into their current plight than the reader is. Four survivors of the zombie apocalypse have battled their way into a strangely designed building in the middle of a dense forest. It is here they aim to find a way to the nearly inaccessible higher floors where it is hoped the pursuing zombies will be unable to reach them.

Way has stated that this story was inspired by The Twilight Zone, and with the twist ending to this I can see how that was the case. That ending provides better context to the story, and even with a partial re-read I was picking up on a lot of stuff that went over my head the first time around. I'm not going to talk about that, instead I will mention the meat of the twenty four page novella, which has the four survivors in the bizarre building. The four seemed to have a shared history, with them seemingly having been in plenty of similar situations in the past. One of them is a real hindrance to the group, especially Mallory who is fed up with the dead weight's incompetence, I enjoyed this mini-conflict. I could see this story really working well as a short film, it has some interesting scenes, such as the first time I think I've ever thought about zombies and slides in conjunction with each other. I also enjoyed the feeling that characters had knowledge I wasn't aware of, it gave this a feeling of history having taken place before the story even began, like this had been taken from the middle of a much larger story.

Some of the earlier novellas built off of The Arising showed promise, but this was the best one I've read so far. This was the second one that suggested far more important things were occurring in the Life After universe then Grey and his highschool friends (from the core series) were aware of  It may be a relatively simple plot, one focussed on action more than anything else, but Life After: The Maze was thrilling and something a little different to the norm.

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Cutthroat Express (2022) by Bryan Cassiday - Zombie Book Review

Cutthroat Express is the seventh book in Bryan Cassiday's Zombie Apocalypse: The Chad Halverson Series. Due to having never read any of these I was concerned that I may be completely lost with what was happening. With David Moody's Autumn series, and Bryan Way's Life After series you have a somewhat grounded and more realistic approach to a zombie apocalypse, Cassiday's approach is the opposite end of the spectrum, with this being an insane and bloody action rampage from start to finish, one that felt like a low budget zombie horror movie translated to page. Probably spoilers for previous entries in the series to follow.

What remains of the United States government find themselves with quite a serious problem. While they are in the relative safety of their underground bunker, they are unable to leave due to the former President having nuked the surrounding area as part of his elaborate suicide. To make matters worse, the air supply in the bunker is getting dangerously low due to the amount of zombies blocking the ventilation shafts. Salvation appears to arrive in the form of Mike Cassavetes, a man who states he has came from the facility of a brilliant scientist who has discovered a cure for the zombie plague. The new President, Mims, formulates a plan, to get a group of volunteers (who include among them government agent Chad Halverson, military commander Strider, as well as a few convicts promised their freedom should they help the mission succeed) to head out with Cassavetes and make their way to the scientist's base, in order to get the vaccine and bring it back, so that the remaining government will be able to leave their base without fear of getting infected.

Any fears that I would feel like I was playing catch-up all novel were quickly dispelled with the understanding of how insane this world is. The previous book appeared to end with the President of the United States nuking himself, which I took as a statement that I would be in for a thrill ride with Cutthroat Express, and that I was. The notion of a road-trip as the main storyline isn't something I haven't read before in zombie novels, Scott M. Baker's Rotter World and Tim Morgan's The Trip both come to mind, yet there was something about the shared nihilism that all the characters seemed to have which made this feel different. I had no idea which characters had featured before and which were new creations, outside of the convicts at least, due to them each getting their own introductions. This led to a feeling that any one of these characters could die, making the story more exciting straight away. As much as I enjoyed the initial bunker scene, it was when the group leave that things really begin to get exciting.

I'm no stranger to hordes of undead in novels, but it's the way these characters all act around the zombies that I grew to love. Everyone seemed more or less happy to put themselves in extreme danger, with the fear seeming to have long ago passed. This leads to endless scenes of high action fights, I never got bored of how when needed, the characters wade off on foot into the hordes, fighting the whole way through them. There was something off kilter about everything here, a world where everyone is mad to some degree.
The road-trip element makes up most of Cutthroat Express, and with the group being in heavily armoured vehicles you had the feel of a wandering fortress. Completely safe while in the vehicles, the moments where they have to leave was akin to diving into the deep ocean. I would say that this is more a novel about the journey than the destination, as I did think that part was the weakest section of the book. There was also a care-free attitude to characters fates, with plenty of characters built up over the novel only to then die underwhelmingly off-page without any real arc to their paths. These aren't meant to be realistic situations though, when your group includes both a cannibal and a serial killer, as well as an obsessive leader who values the mission more than his own team you should expect some skewed moments.
I will also add, the subplot involving the deteriorating state of the bunker was a great idea, was a nice palette cleanser between all the undead battling. 

From the start of the novel all the way up to the end I was constantly entertained. With over eighty short snappy chapters, endless descriptions of the undead, and a end twist that didn't disappoint, I was loving this book. Not only were the events I was reading easy to picture playing out in my minds eye (always something that makes a good novel), it even inspired a rare zombie nightmare I had. Brain-dead in the very best way, Cutthroat Express was a darn entertaining read.

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Delta (2022) by Tom Starita - Horror Book Review

Delta is the latest novel from author Tom Starita (Growth & Change Are Highly Overrated, Two Ways to Sunday) and covers horror in a more subtle way by having a supernatural aspect be mostly understated, possibly simmering away in the background. The novel is split into four distinct parts, each part having the focus on a different character. This was a nice surprise to find, as my initial thoughts during part one were a yearning for more characters, and that is what was provided.

Jason is a twenty six year old man who hides within the basement of his house a terrible secret. The man has had a hard life, his beloved wife Beth died some years back, and then a few months ago a incident at a river claimed the lives of not only his father, but also of his young daughter, Delta. The thing is, despite allegedly drowning, his daughter now resides locked in the basement, though is somehow changed. For fear of what might happen if her miraculous, unexplainable reappearance was discovered, and for fear of some unseen menace searching for the girl, he keeps her locked up against her protestations. With the disappearance of a girl of a similar description in the local area, and with Jason's mental state not being the sturdiest, are things exactly as they appear for him?

I have to say that despite the good writing it did take me awhile to get into Delta. If the whole novel had been based around Jason then I don't think I would have enjoyed it as much as I did. I still have not read enough horrors to know for sure (for some reason it was only this past decade I really began to read the genre), but it did feel somewhat fresh to have an African American man as the protagonist. My complaints really were with following this man around who to all intents and purposes appears to have kidnapped a child. His mantra of "I'm a good man" whenever he visits Delta did nothing to endear me to him. That made the transition at the beginning of part two into the past all the more welcoming. Looking back, I was surprised to see part one covered the first eighty four pages, it really didn't feel like it was that long, but regardless, I became increasingly hooked from part two. This was a snowballing effect as by the time the end was in sight, Delta was all I could think about, I was desperate to get back to my lunch break each time so that I could continue the story (as always I only tend to read during my day job lunch breaks).

Under Her Skin (2022) - Horror Poetry Book Review

Under Her Skin is an anthology poetry book edited by Lindy Ryan and Toni Miller. As everyone knows a good anthology needs a good theme, and in addition to every one of the roughly eighty seven (!) poems being written by women (cis and trans) and non-binary women, they also share a theme of body horror. I received this for review in October of last year, to be honest I don't know what I was thinking as I really don't get on with poems. They tend to drain me the same way attempting to do a jigsaw puzzle or crossword puzzle does.

The trouble with taking body horror as a theme is that a whole bunch of these felt like very similar variations on a theme. A large swath of these deal with people who are self mutilating themselves for various reasons. These destructive tendencies range from milder self harm like cutting themselves with a razor blade, to completely removing all their limbs and organs. That isn't to say these poems are boring, there are some here that even I appreciated. The best of the mutilation ones for me was Amanda Kirby's Sanctification that was so simple in form yet so effective. Smile by Nico Bell was another good one, a character who takes a drastic response to being told to cheer up. Self mutilation is such a common theme here, body horror often touches on a warped view of the self. From the amount of poems of this type it appears this is one of the key issues faced. Reading or watching films by females I never notice that strong of a difference, here though, poetry feels so much more intimate, the poems all feel like they are from a female perspective.

In anthology books I nearly always talk about each story in turn, of course I'm not going to do that when there are so many poems. I made brief notes on the ones that stood out the most. Outside In by Dalena Storm was one of the only poems which rhymes. It shows how little I read poetry as I thought most poems rhymed, rather than the other way around. I discovered that it is more how lines interact with each other, how well the various sentences interact with each other to give a satisfying cadence and flow.