Vindicated (2011) by Scott Harper - Horror Novel Review

Having read author Scott Harper's Shadow Castes: Book 1 - Aspects book earlier this year, I noticed that I also had a copy of the third book in his Wendy Markland trilogy. It all started with 2008's     Predators or Prey?; a vampire story that I was initially luke-warm on. Last year, I realised there was a sequel - the excellent Necromancer, which had zombies as the main enemy. Capping off the trilogy is Vindicated, returning to vampires, and a perfect finish to the trilogy.

I think this takes place roughly six months after the events of Necromancer. Monster hunter, Wendy Markland has headed to Florida, though has noticed a car has been following her the entire way. Confronting the driver at a gas station, he introduces himself as Colm Pryce - a fellow monster hunter who brings with him terrible news. He tells Wendy that she is being hunted by a very powerful group of vampires who call themselves 'The Kindred of Malignity'. Their leader is Adolph Larson; a vampire so strong that he has powers rarely seen (such as being able to be outside during the daytime). Colm also tells Wendy that what makes this group more dangerous is that each time a member is slain, the remaining members inherit that dead vampires strength.

Vindicated was a great end to the trilogy. Where Necromancer was an almost stand-alone story, this one has ties back to both novels. Never the most capable or enthusiastic of monster hunters, Wendy is really shown to be on the back-foot here. There never seemed a single point in the novel where she is doing anything but reacting to the actions of her attackers. As antagonists go, The Kindred of Malignity were pretty cool. I loved that each member was given at least a little bit of backstory to their characters. This gave an almost Kill Bill feel of the unique gang members all out to get Wendy. While in peril and out of her depth, she is helped by the group never seeming to ever take her seriously as a threat. The vampires are either really inept, or the apparently super vampires are not that much more dangerous than the normal type, with them spending the entire book constantly underestimating Wendy.

The horror comes in three key ignition points throughout the story. Each time the group get in a battle with Wendy and Colm you could be sure of a thrilling read. Lots of gory decapitations of victims, and lots of extreme violence given to the paper tiger vampires. I zoomed through the 281 page novel, barely able to put it down. By this point in the series I was really hooked, liking protagonist Wendy despite her continuing off-putting narcissistic qualities of constantly admiring her own body. Being a Harper book, of course this heroine is a flawless beauty, something she is well aware of. There is some growth to be found in her character, with her leaving the book a very different person at book's end than she was at the start. This was a transition I hadn't expected.

Vindicated was a great finish to the story of Wendy Markland. I really liked how flawed and ultimately human she was. She gets emotional, she makes terrible mistakes both in her actions and her priorities, but she really grew as a character over the course of her three books.

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Shadow Castes: Book 1 - Aspects (2011) by Scott Harper - Horror Novel Book Review

I received the eBook version of author Scott Harper's Shadow Castes: Book 1 - Aspects way back in 2012. Once again, to my shame I have only just this moment (at time of writing) finished reading it. As can be gathered from the novel's title, this is the first book in a series (and from what I could find on the net, a sequel has yet to be released). Unlike other books of Harpers I have read, such as Predators or Prey? and Necromancer, this is purely the start of an ongoing story, rather than present a self contained story, it very much sets up future events with no real resolution to anything.

Felix is a tormented man. He is forced to live away from society in a remote woodland home due to being a werewolf. His daily struggle to control his wolf side is interrupted by the arrival of a beautiful woman; Nephele. She tells Felix that she travels the world seeking to help werewolves deal with their condition - being a werewolf herself who has discovered a way to co-exist with the beast within.
Elsewhere, psychic vampire Eugene lives in his Gothic mansion with his spirit guide; Charlotte. They want nothing more than to find a way to make Charlotte's form solid, as the pair are in love and want to be able to be together. A less noble psychic vampire named Drake is on the loose nearby, getting joy out of tormenting his victims.
Finally, there is the hunter; a tormented man living on the edge, determined to hunt and kill werewolves, due to his wife and unborn child being killed by one in the past. He teams up with a determined young woman after evidence of a werewolf pack hunting in the city is discovered.

Shadow Castes is a mixture of romance and horror. With the exception of the dastardly Drake, each of the subplots going on is made up of a male and female character either in love, or falling in love. Having read previous books of the author, I have come to expect his reluctance to make his female characters anything but flawlessly beautiful. Nephele is the chief of these characters, spending the majority of the novel naked, with a few sex scenes peppered in. I often state werewolves are my least favourite monster, but here at least things felt a little different. Werewolves here aren't people who literally transform into wolves, but the spirit of the wolf contained within them is able to manifest in a solid 'shell' that encapsulates the host.
The werewolf part was the main story in the novel, second in line was the hunter's story. I liked that this character initially appears as an antagonist figure, before vanishing for much of the middle of the novel. The next time he reappears there is more context provided that suggests he has good reason to do what he does. Then there is the Ying and Yang of Drake and Eugene. The former is notably cruel and horrid. Eugene on the other hand seemed completely wasted here. He spends the entire novel in his mansion not really doing anything of note at all.
Being the first book in a planned series, you could forgive the lack of much forward momentum in the story, but it would have been nice for all the various characters to at least be aware of each other by stories end.

Action is kept to a minimum here. There are moments of high action, but mostly each of the subplots have lots of romance and talking, but not much threat. This was well written and felt brisk with its 239 pages.
The preference for attractive flawless women works better with a novel that I feel is likely intended to include romance and horror both, and there is an adequate blend of the two genres here.

Never judge a book by its cover. With Shadow Castes: Book 1 - Aspects, I expected this to be romantic drivel, based on cover alone. To be fair, I enjoyed reading this, and I was surprised that the werewolves here were not irritating to me. Ending on a decent cliff-hanger (that may never be resolved), this was a decent start to a series, even if I did wish it contained a full story, alongside the beginnings of one.

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Yes, I am a Vampire (2024) - by Stephen Kozeniewski - Horror Short Story Collection

In anticipation of getting a lot of reading done on a (so far) relaxing holiday to visit family in Australia I was sorting out my back log of shame. I have some books dating back to around 2014, including one from Stephen Kozeniewski (The Thing Under Your Bed) which to my embarrassment I noticed wasn't in a format that I'm able to use on my Kindle. It's a shame, as my favourite story in this short story collection (previously I would have called this an anthology but the author spells out the difference of that and collections here) is based in that book's world (that book being Braineater Jones) and it sounds like a grand world indeed. Anyway, Yes, I am a Vampire isn't quite as old as that book, receiving the eBook at the end of 2024. I guess that makes this quite a speedy turnaround!

Yes, I am a Vampire is a horror collection with a difference. From the title alone I imagined this to be an anthology collection of short vampire stories (doing my usual thing of barely skimming the synopsis of anything I am sent so as not to be spoiled on the contents). Not only is it the collected short works of Kozeniewski from 2013-2016, it is also half an autobiography. Each of the 12 short stories is followed by a lengthy afterword which not only talks about the inspiration for the story, but also goes into details of what was going on in the author's life at the time some of these were quite frank. For this review, I will follow a similar format, giving some unwanted and self indulgent background on where I was and what I was doing as I read these stories.

It all begins with microfiction piece 'Clockwork Offal', a one page story that at first went over my head, but each subsequent read it dawned on me more and more the horror being suggested. The afterword is where it became apparant that Kozeniewski really was dedicating half of this book on writing about his own trials and tribulations with getting his work published. He mentioned Braineater Jones here, and that sparked a memory that I thought I had a copy of this sitting in an email somewhere waiting to be read (as stated, I kind of did, but I hadn't bothered to check if it worked at the time). 

'The Thing Under The Bed' is next. I had previously reviewed the novella The Thing Under Your Bed, and almost skipped this one thinking it was just a repeat. Glad I did read this as it was a completely different and much shorter version of that neat story. Some of the awkwardly placed England references (this being set in London) are explained in the afterword, and it was there where Brian Keene's The Rising and City of the Dead is mentioned. I have fond memories of those two books, being some of the first zombie novels I ever read (the talking zombie lion at the zoo is forever burned into the undead appreciation part of my brain).

As may be apparent from this blog's name, zombies are by far my most favourite type of horror monster, so it was pleasing to see so many of the short stories here to feature the undead. The first of these was the crassly titled 'Exploding Sh*t Zombies' that as its title suggests, is one of the more grim zombie apocalypses. Many of the short stories in this collection are taken from the author's novels, this being one of those. I thought this story had a fun bait and switch at the start and was quite humourous. I was (very) indirectly mentioned in the notes for this one when Kozeniewski mentions sending his novel Braineater Jones off to a horde of various bloggers and reviewers back when it was first written.
This was the start of a bunch of undead tales, 'The New Dark Ages' was a bleak and grim one, starting off as a fantasy, before being revealed to actually be a Dungeons & Dragons game that a group of friends hiding out from an undead uprising were playing, before the rug pull of something far more twisted. The author in the notes mentions the cover for the anthology this one was originally published in was quite ugly. Having Googled the cover image; yup, it sure was a hideous cover!
'The Man With Four Scars' was a great story, a zombie story but one that takes place during caveman times. I have never read anything similar before, and having the story told from the perspective of a prehistoric human with his own way of talking and describing things was fascinating. I read this one in two parts, having crashed after drinking two strong cups of coffee in a row. The most exciting part of this somewhat haunting story picked up immediately from where I had paused reading, so I demolished this story upon getting back to it.

That brings me up to almost present day (at time of typing). The rest of the collection I read in the span of a day while out on holiday in Australia (where I will be until the end of March). I tried to read 'The Key to the Stars' back in the U.K while my best friend was staying at my house. I couldn't recall a word when I returned to it, so began again. I thought this was a charming story, and one of the most light hearted ones. A sci-fi story about a girl who encounters a holographic projection of an alien in the 1950's. It mixes this story with a real account of an alien encounter to wonderful effect. For me 'The Old Man and the Seesaw' was the highlight of this short story collection. Set in the Braineater Jones world, it is another that shows imagination, the titular 'old man' referring to a zombie fetus whose fortunate early immersion in an alcoholic based preserving formula led to it being one of the oldest surviving zombies in that alternate world where sentient undead have emerged who require alcohol to keep their faculties. The notes for this one particularly resonated to me, the authors hopes to one day be able to write full time and not need to have a bill paying day job echoing my desire to one day somehow be able to do the same, but with my blog.
The last zombie story follows with 'Cadaver Bite', showing an unusual form of execution used during a zombie outbreak. I was sat nearby a radio and got engrossed enough in this one that the words being spoken on the radio faded away to nothing for me.
This review is perhaps getting a bit self indulgent and lengthy so will zoom through the last four stories. 'The Quiet Life' is very similar to A Quiet Place, but as the notes afterwards say, this was actually written a few years before that film came out. The final three stories are all single page microfiction stories set around Christmas; 'Traditions', 'A Visit From...' and 'Brightly Shining' were all excellent and twisted in their own ways, a lovely finish to this collection.

I have always had a love of anthologies (well, in this case, collections), so with Yes, I am a Vampire I found yet another one that I enjoyed. Truthfully, there wasn't a short story I didn't like, but there were some that were in my mind much better written than others. I was of course also pleased that so many of these featured zombies, that is never going to be anything other than a positive thing in my mind. The autobiographical part was also very interesting. It challenged my baseless assumptions that all published authors are effortlessly able to get their stories out. 

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Black Chaos (2014) by various - Zombie Horror Anthology Book Review

Since the dawn of this blog, books have been a real problem for me, I get through them so slowly that I get a huge backlog that has been going on over a decade. Black Chaos was a zombie anthology that I received all the way back in 2014. I have only just gotten around to reading it last year. I love zombies and I love anthologies, so I figured there couldn't be much in this 25 story anthology that I wouldn't enjoy.

Black Chaos' short stories are each by a different author and are really quite varied. You have historical stories, comedic ones, dystopian and magical. Some have happy endings, some have bad endings, and some have neutral endings where not much has really changed for the central character. It all begins with Lee Clark Zumpe's 'Wild With Hunger', interesting as it takes place back during the industrial revolution. It also takes place from two different perspectives; men who have gone to investigate a den of child zombies at a workhouse, and two non-infected children watching the whole thing. I saw this story as a good indication of the variety that might be found. Second story was also one set in the past, though I didn't enjoy it as much due to its abrupt unsatisfying ending. 'The Southern Wind' by J.Adrian Cook takes place in an alternate history where the South won the civil war in America due to having an army of zombies. 
The more fantastical of the stories here never really resonated with me, often having fairy-tale type vibes to them. I didn't dislike some of these, but they were not my favourite ones of the anthology. These included K.J Newman's 'As You Were', about a painter who can change reality with her paintings. 'Like the Jellyfish' by Katherine Sanger has a similar concept, though in this one it is a small child who has the ability to bring the dead back to life, ending deliciously dark, similar with playground based 'The Staggering Boy' by Douglas Ford; another one featuring a child as the protagonist, with a bleak end.

A bunch of stories featured zombies who were still self aware, best of these was the nightmare dystopian tale 'The Risen', in which Steven Axelrod envisions a future where a zombie apocalypse happened where the undead kept their intelligence and took over the world. It features a very Donald Trump-like character as the president of the zombies, a shame that last part has come real. Peter Andrew's 'Zombie Chic' is also about a world of intelligent zombies, but this one is more condensed, a comedic story of zombies getting body modifications in the name of fashion.
A large chunk of the stories take place in worlds where a worldwide zombie outbreak has occurred, but people are finding a way to deal with it and carry on as relatively normal. 'Ferals Like You' by Cheryl Elaine Williams details a family trip to a superstore that goes very badly, George Cotronis' 'Last Rites' has sentient zombies being given a last car trip before they are put down, Gerri Leen's 'Run for the Roses' is a very odd one about zombie horse racing, while Conor Powers-Smith's 'Only the Lonely', suggests a world where only lonely people become living ghouls.

Some of the stories here were excellent, best of these was the fantastic and super creepy 'Graveyard Slot' by Christopher Keelty. In this one, a cursed video tape leads to viewers getting trapped within the all too real looking footage of a bloody zombie outbreak. J. Rohr's 'Nothing Else Matters' was huge in scope, and replaces undead humans with a giant bug apocalypse - excellent stuff. 'Preservation' by Rebecca Boyle was the goriest story here, about a zombified woman who convinces a robot maker to make her an artificial body once hers starts rotting. 'Carrion Luggage' by Shane Simmons takes an alternate look at voodoo magic, and I really enjoyed the humorous bureaucratic nightmare of 'Expediency', with Paul Lorello providing a tale about a scientist trying to get his patent registered before he turns. One of the more interesting was penultimate story 'The Chosen', taking place aboard a pleasure boat where a group of women all named Jane make Big Brother style video diaries about their time spent out at sea, unable to return to land due to the undead ruling the world.

25 stories is a lot, but many of these were quite short, meaning they were super easy to get through. There were only a couple that were large enough to require chapters, and one that I believe was less than a page in length. Most of the stories were well written, happily there were only two out the lot that I personally didn't enjoy. Black Chaos is a solid zombie anthology, one that often takes a different spin on the undead beasts, rather than your typical outbreak yarn. Black Chaos comes from Big Pulp Publications.

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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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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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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 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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Charlie: A YA Zombie Horror Story [Zombie Slayer Book 1] (2019) - by Gayle Katz - Zombie Horror Book Review

Charlie: A YA Zombie Horror Story (Zombie Slayer Book 1) by Gayle Katz is a teenage horror novel that shares more than a few similarities with Buffy the Vampire Slayer. In fact, swap out the vampires for zombies and this is pretty much exactly that. It appears there are currently at least seven novels in the series now, this first one had a free eBook download, I guess to draw readers into the series.

High school student Charlie has moved across America from Texas to Portland to start a new life in a new town with her gran. This is due in part to her wanting to get away from her former life as a zlayer (a person given special abilities designed to help protect the world against the threat of zombie outbreaks). She hopes with the former zleader dead (undead can only thrive if the original one to turn them is still unalive) that there is no longer any danger to America. It isn't long until she discovers that is not the case, her former mentor, Mr. George, has travelled to Portland too, and he tells the girl of a new zleader turning up in the city. Teaming up with classmates Zan, another zlayer, and Owen, a truthspeaker, they begin their investigation into who the latest zleader is, so that they can put a stop to their chaos.

It soon become apparent this was geared towards teens rather than adult horror readers, and that is perfectly fine with me. Being in my forties, I had to often try and put myself more in the mindset of my younger self. If not for having been watching Buffy around that time in my life, I think I would have enjoyed this. There are lots of zombie outbreaks and attacks, with a decent bodycount, but it isn't a book designed to be scary. The biggest stumbling block was the simplicity of the story, with key plot points dealt with in an abrupt and sometimes underwhelming way. Take the eventual reveal of the main antagonist, within a chapter of this figure being identified, they had been dealt with and everything wrapped up in a nice bow. This is a world where characters are pretty black and white, if someone appears to be suspicious they are likely to be hiding secrets, if someone appears decent, then it isn't very likely they will turn out to have any skeletons in their closet. This did lead to me on occasion thinking more deeply into the story than was actually needed.

There was a bit of a dystopian feel to the world of the book, mainly with how people react to the amount of people getting killed. There are several sequences set during school field trips in which a fair number of students are killed, seemingly with no consequences for anyone involved. It seems the world is used to people randomly being murdered, but is never made entirely clear. At times, Charlie goes out of her way to hide the fact that zombies walk among us, at other times, it seems everyone is already aware of this. At one point when Charlie returns to the city after having been away, she is stopped at the city entrance and warned of a zombie outbreak happening by a soldier stationed there, at other times she is hiding corpses and making up fanciful stories to mask what is really happening. 
There is lots of zombie killing here, with several large scale events that Charlie, Zan, and Owen deal with very easily, in a typically unconcerned manner, it became hard to really feel any sense of danger with the breezy way these little situations are always dealt with. I did like the frustration that is present with Charlie unable to locate the real zleader, several half decent bait and switches for who is really in control.

Charlie: A YA Zombie Horror Story (Zombie Slayer Book 1) was probably something more enjoyable if you are not familiar with Buffy. The many comparisons in my mind made elements of this feel a little derivative, but the clear and simple chapters made this a breeze to get through.

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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. 

Life After: The Cemetery Plot (2014) by Bryan Way - Short Zombie Horror eBook Review

Life After: The Cemetery Plot was the first in an initial trilogy of side stories that took place within Bryan Way's Life After universe in which zombie apocalypse has come to America. I read and enjoyed the first full length novel, Life After: The Arising back in April and so was happy to return to that world. At thirty four pages this is more of a short story than even a novella, unexpected but not entirely unwelcome. Being intended as a supplement to the first novel there will be some spoilers about that book in discussing this one.

Holt Prendergast is a man who seems to be in a constant battle of his own creation. After his brother-in-law dies and leaves nothing for his family, Holt puts himself on a mission to somehow rinse as much money out of him as he can. With most his wealth put into his funeral arrangements, Holt sets out to alter these as much as possible, hoping to reduce the costs. This leads to him heading to the local cemetery one dark fateful night, the night that the dead rise from their graves, with Holt finding himself at centre stage.

If you are planning to read this short story before reading The Arising then you are doing things wrong. While this could be enjoyable on its own it is the links to the wider story that I really enjoyed. When Holt heads to the gravesite the night the battle of the bands is playing at the nearby high school, the knowledge of what is going to happen made it so much more fun. I loved thinking to myself that Jeff Grey and his friends were in the area and that their story was just about to begin. Most the events here act as a prequel to The Arising, heading back further in time than the night of the arising. This also sets up what exactly caused the car accident on route 3 (something I couldn't remember but the synopsis on Amazon mentioned that), as well as the origins of patient zero who Grey and company encounter in the local hospital.

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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The Black Veldt (2020) by Michael Reyes - Horror Novella Review

Getting back into a bad habit of taking forever to read books sent to me for review! To be fair, for whatever reason I was unable to get The Black Veldt by Michael Reyes working on my eBook reader and so had to read the 77 page novella on my computer. I have issues with where the story ended up going, however it was clear from the very start that this was a well written story, done in a sordid and grimy style that I particularly like.

Jose Carvel is a bit of a waste of a human being, an aspiring writer but spends his days in a dead end job, selling drugs to his co-workers. He lives in the slums of New York, but it is a setting that suits him, having come from a much worst place. One day he encounters an enchanting woman named Jakova. This mysterious lady sends Carvel on a downward spiral, while also seeming to have something to do with the nightmares that have plagued him his whole life.

I started making notes about The Black Veldt from around the sixth chapter of the nineteen chapter story. To begin with this had everything I enjoy, it is always entertaining to follow a reprobate protagonist, they make for much more interesting characters than wholesome people do. The first act is where this was at its best, I loved the descriptions of the down and out areas Carvel inhabits, I liked how weathered and used to the violence and criminality of his life he was, and how he was able to stick up for himself. I also enjoyed how his dark past was drip fed to the viewer, revelations occur due to incidents he gets caught up in.

The novella starts with a nightmare sequence and several more pop up during the course of the story, but it is chapter nine when this horror skips over into the real world, this is H.P Lovecraft by way of Charles Bukowski with all the mess that notion brings with it. This horror is what began to unravel the story for me. As Carvel becomes infatuated with Jakova his life descends into ruin, this is shown via the increasingly dream like feel the story takes on. Carvel starts out fully fleshed, but then as he gives in to addiction his character fades away into barely feeling present. The random locations, the random events, and the bizarre story all combine to create almost a feeling of stream of consciousness. I thought it was an interesting way to tell the story, but I also couldn't help but feel it took away from the solid world building that had gone on before. It culminates in a abrupt ending that thinking back on afterwards was kind of a neat idea, I liked what it suggested even if it came off the back of a meandering last third.

Regardless of my thoughts on how this all played out it was well written, you could almost feel the grime and degradation of the world. Reyes is a good writer, and I am actually also currently reading a different novel of his for future review. The Black Veldt does something original in feel, and that can only be a good thing.

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Whoops! I Woke the Dead (2020) by Joseph Rubas - Zombie Comedy Horror Novella Review

Whoops! I Woke the Dead is a 134 page zombie novella whose title indicates this isn't something that takes itself seriously. Written by Joseph Rubas, this is told from the perspective of the novella's main character; 16 year old Alex Warner. It includes various references to other horror media and despite featuring the undead is written in a tame way, which works with the humour displayed.

Alex loves horror and so her favourite holiday is Halloween. After the Halloween party she was meant to be attending with her cousin and their boyfriends gets cancelled she convinces her friends to instead head to a cemetery and read from a spooky old book she found during her volunteer work at a library. This doesn't turn out to be the wisest move as the words she reads from the book has the unintended effect of raising the dead from their graves. Now Alex has to find a way to undo the trouble she's caused or being grounded will be the least of her worries.

I didn't like the protagonist of this story, I found Alex to be far too arrogant and unable to take proper responsibility for her actions. Being told from her perspective, and having a deep love of herself it is understandable why she paints herself as the coolest and best person alive but it doesn't endear her to the reader. Much better was the subplot involving a pizza cook named Langston who gets caught up in the unfolding zombie apocalypse. His whole character was a one trick pony (he has based his life on his idol Bruce Lee) yet his sections of the book were endlessly entertaining. Due to how one dimensional his character was I can fully see why he was a side character, but I came to really enjoy the parts involving him.

The zombies here are made much less threatening in that they not only retain all their memories of when they were alive, but they are fully aware of what they are and what they want. As a collective the undead share a cheeky sense of humour making some of their conversations amusing and giving them some of the more funny moments in the novella. There is plenty of fighting the ghouls but there is a total lack of blood, the undead far more like the dusty old corpses of Michael Jackson's Thriller than gory other equivalents. Also on the horror side of things is the old book that Alex has in her possession, said to be made of human skin, and with a talking face on the cover this was a stand in for the Necronomicon. It was a shame this didn't really become a character proper until the books third act.

Whoops! I Woke the Dead was a fun enough little story even if I didn't really think much of the characters here. The horror aspect took a while to make an appearance but despite this the zombie uprising part never felt rushed. The lack of any real peril fed into the friendly humour, and it was all well written with nice little easter eggs peppered throughout. Whoops! I Woke the Dead is out now.

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Seeds of the Dead (2020) by Andy Kumpon and Gary Malik - Zombie Horror Book Review

Seeds of the Dead is a zombie horror novel with a humorous edge to it. It was written by Andy Kumpon along with Gary Malik and takes a gore soaked look at the issues of GMO foods through the lens of a small town undead outbreak. Despite being on the lighter side of things this still features plenty of death and violence, even if the sometimes comic book like depictions of good and evil mean this can feel a bit light on the horror side.

Peter Malik is a scientist working for the powerful Moonstar Foods Inc. who specialise in GMO foods. Peter decided to leave his small hometown to work for them, genuinely hoping he would be able to help the world. Instead, one day he is horrified when the latest batch of food he had been working on transformed the labrats into flesh hungry monsters. His sociopathic boss siblings, Richard and Sofia are pleased with this outcome and make Peter a generous offer in exchange for his continuing assistance. Given time to contemplate things he is granted some leave, with which he travels back to his hometown to see his parents. Not able to be party to the unethical experiments, he publicly speaks out about Moonstar Foods, which turns out to be a bad move. The powerful company swiftly cause an undead outbreak in his town via contaminated food, doing it both to punish Peter, but to also show potential clients what they are capable of with their biological weapon. Cut off from the outside world, Peter and a handful of other survivors must find a way to both survive the outbreak, but also find a way with which they can escape the doomed town.

There are no real surprises with Seeds of the Dead, it isn't going to stand out as something unique, and the way events play out fit in well with the tropes of the zombie genre. Sometimes that is no bad thing, sure I have read so many books like this, but this is still entertaining, and feature plenty of the walking dead with a few things to set them apart from others. This was written in a simple style, again no bad thing as it means that events can keep going and going without getting too bogged down. From the start of the outbreak to the finish there is no downtime, characters bouncing from one situation to another. Along the way characters make noble sacrifices, while others have more abrasive roles, of course at some point a character is going to be bitten and hide their wound, as is written in stone for this genre. Characters and situations here were pretty black and white, a couple of characters get some decent development, in particular one who I disliked to begin with but who really came into their own. Others are not so well developed, in particular the antagonists. Richard and Sofia are so comically evil that it is hard to really take them seriously as a threat. Anderson is a hired goon who seemed to be the character type of a recurring unstoppable villain, but I never felt he made as much of an impact as he should have done. He pops up every now and again but he really doesn't get enough page time to build him up into as memorable a foe as I would have liked. Continuing with the black and white feel is Moonstar Foods where no attempt is made to give them layers, they are just an evil company. Then at some point the hacking group 'Anonymous' get inserted into the story, made out to be good and just rather than the more neutral reputation the collective have in the real world.

Onto the zombies. These are more disgusting rather than scary, they are often described secreting a slime type substance of pus and other bodily fluids from all their orifices. I don't really like icky stuff but it did lead to one of the more interesting ideas, Everywhere the zombies have travelled gets coated in an almost slug like trail of slime, this impacts the story at several points as both characters and vehicles slide around on this stuff which makes a dangerous situation even more so. Initially it seemed these rotting dead were a scary foe, with their body parts still able to function when severed. Around the halfway mark a weakness is discovered and while this made for some fun moments it did drastically remove the threat level these shamblers conjured.

Seeds of the Dead may not break the mould when it comes to the zombie genre, but it was still an entertaining read, one whose simplicity works in keeping things always entertaining from the beginning to the end. Seeds of the Dead was released on 29th June thanks to Killerbeam Entertainment.

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The Dark Frontier (2020) - Horror Anthology Book Review

Back in August when I reviewed the animal horror anthology Animal Uprising! I was offered the chance to review another anthology, the western themed The Dark Frontier. I used to read so much as a teenager but nowadays barely get through more than four or five books a year. Maybe due to not reading as much as I should, with this anthology I discovered a new genre that I somehow didn't know even existed, which combines the feel of the Wild West with the post apocalypse.

The Dark Frontier is split into two different styles of story, those that literally take place in western times America, and those that certainly do not, but whose vibe makes it feel like they share common traits. What all stories also share in common is a feeling of taking place in a world whose outcome is already set in stone. Many of these worlds are doomed, so much so that the characters who populate the tales are too small cogs to have much effect, this in its own way creates a feeling of vast emptiness, and desperation, echoing the endless plains of the dark frontiers. I must add that after the final story there is an interesting afterword that explains exactly how the order of the stories were put together, it was neat to see the reasoning.

This all kicks off with Cargo Mountain by Charles R. Bernard. This was the story that introduced me to the concept of the future meeting the past as I was quite thrown when the protagonist here is shown to have a motorbike. I'm very on board with the idea thankfully! This one had a dreamy atmosphere which I loved, have to admit I had no idea how it ends, it just seemed to finish abruptly, but that seemed to go well with the feverish feel.
The fifth story, The Harvestmen by Aubrey Campbell returns to the post apocalypse with a story about a woman with a magical gun capable of destroying the gigantic demonic spider like creatures that have overrun the world. Almost a companion to this one is Take the Desert with You by Joanna Parypinski that features a protagonist who wasn't as innocent as at first appears. Both these stories are really quite bleak which is always a good thing.
I wasn't entirely sure about Douglas Smith's Memories of the Dead Man. It had some really neat ideas to it, but the titular 'Dead Man' character cemented in my mind Arnold Schwarzenegger's Terminator and so that was all I could think of when reading this, which was a bit distracting. It's a classic story of revenge and features a psychotic biker gang and plenty of violence so was still a decent read.
At the time I read it The Bride's Road by Hawk and Young was my favourite. This sci-fi yarn felt like A Clockwork Orange mixed with Logan's Run. I enjoyed the idea of a future regressed society shepherded by robotic drones who are seen by the people as religious beings, a lot of cool ideas.
The final story that felt post-apocalyptic was the Mad Max feeling One Way Out by Bryan Dyke, that tells the story of a ranger trying to make his escape from a twisted cult's compound in a dark future world. Like so many of the stories here I would love to read more from this world, it was fascinating, even if slightly cliche at times.

Animal Uprising! (2020) - Horror Anthology Book Review

Any frequent visitor to The Rotting Zombie will know I absolutely love anthologies due to the variation they always bring with them. Any anthology worth its salt will have a theme, and by the title, Animal Uprising! it shouldn't be too much of a surprise to discover the theme here is, of course animals...and insects as it turns out. Included in this anthology are 14 different short stories, each of which written by a different author. Some of the stories included here might not be as good as others, or not particularly to my liking, but all of them are well written with even my least favourites fitted in well.
Rather than go through the stories in order I have instead tried to group them together as best I can into four different categories. These are magical and mythical stories, stories about made-up animals, stories about insects, and stories concerning real life animals. 

Magical and mythical stories make up nearly half of the 14 here and are a varied bunch. Michelle Mellon's The Goat is the books first story. It wasn't bad, but having a goat possibly be a devil in disguise is something I have seen done to death in plenty of other media and so it felt maybe a bit too familiar.
Old Shuck by Patrick Winters is another one that uses a familiar idea, this time in the form of a dog that portends doom. I did like the industrial revolution setting used here though.
How Does Your Garden Grow by M.R Deluca is one of only a couple that injects some humour into things. This one is about a nosy journalist whose curiosity into the secret behind a woman's award winning garden leads to great misfortune for him.
Jacob Floyd's Taxidermy Nightmare does exactly what the title suggests. Like so many stories in Animal Uprising! this is a cautionary tale, made all the better by a hunting enthusiast's twisted taxidermy creations coming to life to get their revenge!

Now everyone dislikes the deceitful and sinister animal that is the fox and Judith Baron's The Fox is a good example for why that is the case. I really loved this one, both with the unique setting; a car in Hong Kong one dark and rainy night, and how it blends myths and legends into real life. Sure it was obvious where this was going but it was a great read.

The final magic based story is the collections one true comedic story, J.T Haven's The Lion, The Witch, and The Walrus. This was sandwiched in between two much darker stories and so it was a breath of much needed fresh air.

The Devil Brigade (2013) by Toni Odell - Horror Book Review

My digital pile of eBooks sent to me for review are an eternal fountain of shame, so it is always nice to finally get around to reading more of them. Toni Odell's The Devil Brigade I recieved way back in 2013, that sweet time of pre-apocalypse. This is a novella, and was the first in a planned series of books I believe. As such it serves as a kind of prologue to a much larger story.

It is the 1890's and Ringmaster Tom journeys around the back towns of America with his travelling freak show. His star attractions include twin little people, a mute wolfman, an obese man, and Ben, who Tom touts as 'Bubonic Boy: Black Death - Alive!' It turns out that Tom, at some point in the past made a Devil of a deal to fund his freak show ambitions, but now, his debtor has returned to ensure Tom keeps up his side of the bargain.

The aim of this novella seemed to be to get various characters to the certain places and roles they needed to be for the next installment of the series, a Phantom Menace if you will. Ben is the protagonist here, and it is a chance encounter with a mysterious young woman that starts off his story proper. The majority of The Devil Brigade takes place at the carnival and campgrounds the show are currently placed at. Tom is soon shown to be a nasty character, ruling his charges by physical and verbal abuse. His actions are eclipsed by a much larger in scope terror. A few scenes are set at the headquarters of this larger adversary, without going into details these parts had the more memorable moments of horror.

The plot initially appeared to be one thing, but then something happens at the start of the third act that really gets the story running. It all ends a bit abruptly with a lot of story threads hanging loose which cements the fact this was designed as a springboard rather than being a totally self contained tale. This can most keenly be witnessed with the character of Michael, he gets several chapters to himself, with what happens in them seemingly unrelated to the main story, at least to begin with, even though there is never any crossover.

The Devil Brigade was an easy book to read, and became quite descriptive when it wanted to be. While the story on its own felt a little incomplete it did set up the hints of a much larger 'good vs evil' story where both sides had grey areas to their ideologies. The Devil Brigade can be found at various sites, including Amazon.

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