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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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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And the Night Did Claim Them (2022) by Duncan P. Bradshaw - Horror Novella Review

Horror author Duncan P. Bradshaw is most known for his comedy horror novels, such as Don't Smell The Flowers! They Want To Steal Your Bones! and Mr. Sucky, but he has occasionally branched out into more serious horror. I had read his serious short story Q&A in the Trapped Within horror anthology but I have to admit that didn't really stick around in the mind. And the Night Did Claim Them is a ninety nine page horror novella that was apparently inspired by an image the author had brought, originally intending to use the image as the cover for a book about zombies and voodoo. I started reading the novella during the height of my second Covid infection and didn't get too far into it due to feeling rotten. I subsequently then read the book within two lunch breaks at my day job, and have to say I loved it.

The novella is written from a first person perspective of a barman as he works a shift in a local bar on a seemingly normal night. Hoping for an early finish, he instead learns that his boss has ok'd a lock-in, much to the barman's annoyance. At some point the relative tranquillity of another dull monotonous night at work is broken when he discovers that all doesn't appear right outside the pub. Inexplicably, the pub appears to exist within a black void, with there not being an 'outside' so to speak. The barman discovers that anyone who leaves the pub is swiftly and violently killed by an unknown force, something which bizarrely doesn't faze the regular bar flies. The only person who appears to have some clue as to what is happening is a mysterious stranger called Simon, who tells the barman that everyone there is fated to die, but that for some reason it is the barman with the power to decide in which order their lives are to end.

I really liked the idea for the story, I was expecting something grim, but I can't say I had expected a story that would captivate me so much. The mystery of what is happening is what kept me glued. There is of course a huge reveal as to the horror, but this actually came around two thirds into the story rather than as a final twist and revelation. It is an idea that has been done in horror plenty of times before, weirdly, it is the video game The Dark Pictures Presents: Switchback VR that most sprung to mind. There is a grotesque feeling at times due to all the characters with the exception of the barman being completely unfazed by the growing body count, the highlight of this being one character who is propelled violently back into the pub once he leaves, with his broken body jumbled up with the innards of a now broken jukebox, but despite being very visible, everyone carries on as normal.
Over the course of the novella we most come to know the barman, with him thinking back on past memories of what he deemed a wasted existence. The small number of bar patrons personalities are mainly shown from his perspective, but later developments reveal hidden depths to these characters. There was some neat development that nullifies the initial stereotypes you are presented with. While this is a serious novella, Bradshaw's humour shines through in dialogue characters have with each other. You could argue it is a slight cop-out having a character who exists mainly to be able to explain what is going on to the reader, but I liked the character of Simon, and in this context some sort of explanation was more satisfying than if it had all been left to the reader to piece together.

The horror stays once it first appears, and the shorter length meant that this horror could be sustained. A novella was the perfect length, I think with a short story I would have wanted more, while I'm not convinced this would have worked as a full length novel. It was all written in an engaging way, with characters dialogue feeling believable, even with the unfolding insanity.

And the Night Did Claim Them was a novella that I enjoyed far more than I expected to, I'm not sure why my expectations was muted, perhaps due to only really knowing that the author excels with his comedy horror books. I should not of feared though, as this was a neat well written horror that had 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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Beginning of the End (2021) by G.J Stevens - Zombie Horror Novella Review

It was July of this year when author G.J Stevens contacted me to let me know that if I joined his mailing list I would be entitled to receive a few examples of his work for free. I did so of course, yet it took me until now to get around to reading one of his books. That book was the novella Beginning of the End which takes place in his 'In the End' universe. After an unsure start I began to really get into this, loving how this story so perfectly fitted a shorter format.

The protagonist of this is sixteen year old Jordan, who one day gets unexpectedly caught up in an unfolding nightmare in his sleepy Cornish village. After his elder brother gets caught up in a violent altercation outside his house events escalate to the point where his mother screams at Jordan to run away just before she gets attacked also. Before long the boy figures out that there is something wrong with the majority of the villagers, and so with the arrival of the army he thinks salvation has arrived. It quickly becomes clear that the army have no intention of helping out any survivors, instead they are hell bent on killing everyone they see, whilst also installing a large concrete wall around the village to stop anyone escaping. Teaming up with a young boy, Jordan, ill prepared for such a task, sets out to find a way to escape.

So Beginning of the End is a zombie story, but one in which the infected take a back seat to the horrors of the callous army. Over the seventy five page novella the infected rarely feature at all, so little do they appear that Jordan's actions initially felt a little bit over the top. He goes into full on survival mode without much really occurring to warrant this, the arrival of the armed forces really improved the tale though. The army here reminded me more than anything else of the soldiers from George Romero's classic film The Crazies. These faceless characters shoot first and ask questions later, leading up to some great parts where Jordan is stealthing around his village, the only advantage he has is knowing the layout of the place, as wearing just pyjamas and slippers and without any kind of weapon he is powerless against the soldiers.

Having a teenager as the protagonist is nothing new of course, but adding in an even younger person for him to look after was a great idea. The story was satisfying, I had an idea where it would be headed but it remained tightly paced with a clear goal in mind for the protagonist. There is a good sense of place going on, the descriptions of the soldiers house clearing in the background was well written, it added to the tension. It all leads up to an exciting finale and an ending that is both open ended and also wraps up this particular story. An an introduction to Stevens' In the End series it has made me want to read more, just with my terribly slow reading habits I can't say when I will get around to that. If you want to check this out for yourself then join Stevens' mailing list here to find out more details.

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We Are The Missing (2019) by Andrew J.D Robinson - Horror Novella eBook Review

I know Andrew J.D Robinson for his thoughtful short horror films, such as the fantastic The Becky Carmichael Fan Club, and so when I received word that he had a self published novella coming out - We Are The Missing, I knew I had to check it out. I often skim read any requests I receive due to wanting to go into things with no expectations, so initially I was a little bit concerned this wasn't actually horror based at all. What starts off as a disappearance of a girl subtly transforms over 50ish pages into a kind of localised paranormal apocalypse.

The novella transpires as a series of accounts pieced together from notes and recordings found at the house of reporter Dylan Carter. Due to this format We Are The Missing is the second ever novel I would describe as falling into the 'found footage' genre of  written stories (the other being Michael Wehunt's chilling short story October Film Haunt: Under the House). So, as said rather than be told in a traditional story format this instead is mostly made up of interviews from the reporter and the various people he talks to, as well as his thoughts coming from his journal.

It all starts when school girl Riley Madison goes missing one day in the town of D'Arcadia. Despite a large search, no sign of her is ever seen. Carter interviews her parents Angie and John, as well as her best friend Mackenzie. Events gradually spiral with a spate of missing persons in the town, as well as a series of strange unexplainable traumas the townspeople suffer, from a huge increase in suicides, to an outbreak of mass hallucinations in which the sufferers claim to feel like they are being watched. With each new revelation of the horror unfolding the situation gets more and more out of control until the point that every single person in D'Arcadia is affected one way or another.

For a small novella like this I found the amount of ideas stuffed into this to be endlessly interesting. I most liked how elements from real life are used to help tell the story. There is everything from looking at the mass hysteria of the dancing plagues in the 1500's, to talking about the cordyceps 'zombie' fungus that infects ants, all the way to explain rational causes for why people might claim to have seen ghosts. All this added detail to the story, and grounded it due to the ties to real life that gave this a little bit more of a realistic feel to it, at least in the first half of the novella. By the last part of the book the story has gotten really out of control, yet the path to get here was so natural, a gradual progression rather than a series of stilted jumps.

This was all well written, though without having read anything of Robinson's before I assumed it would be. There are many horror elements here, some which work well, and others not so much. The most creepy parts were around the middle, when ghostly figures are seen more and more, there are plenty of different moments that felt a little unsettling. The more fantastical this gets the more the horror aspect subsides, but it still remained engaging. At times humour is put into some situations, and it didn't always work, but it was in limited enough supply that I didn't really mind. There was one section of the book that uses the analogy of the dead being compared to immigrants, while this is current with what is going on in the world it did feel a little bit heavy handed in the comparisons, and stood out from the rest of the style of the story a bit.

We Are The Missing was a well written, and interesting novella that impressed with just how much content was fitted into the story being told. I found the format of a series of interviews to be engaging, with conversations opening up more hooks to keep the reader wanting to know more. This manages to mix up moments of creepy ghost horror, with relatable real life horror, with even some cosmic horror ideas fitted in, all written in a way that made it so easily to visualise in my mind.

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