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Book Review: Creatures of the Night: Vicious Vampire Tales (Dark Tide, Book 17) by Simon Clark, Kevin J. Kennedy, and Gord Rollo

Creatures of the Night (Dark Tide, vol. 17) by Simon Clark, Kevin J. Kennedy, and Gord Rollo

Crystal Lake Publishing, 2024

ISBN: 9781964398181

Available: Hardcover, paperback, Kindle edition

Buy: Amazon.com 

 

With the Dark Tide horror novella series, Crystal Lake Publishing seems to have found a winning formula.  Each volume has three novellas that center around a particular theme, with one story per author.  In this case, the theme is vampires.  Overall, it’s worth the purchase: you don’t need to be a Nosferatu nut to enjoy the stories.  In order, the three stories are: ok, good, and outstanding. The last one alone (which, thankfully, is the longest) is enough to make the whole book worth it.

 

“Return of the Blood Feeders” by Simon Clark, deals with a strange type of Norse vampire. There’s nothing wrong with the writing or plot, but this one just didn’t click for me.  It might be because the last monster seemed a bit over-the-top, and out of place in the story: it just didn’t fit.  Other readers may feel differently.

 

Kevin J. Kennedy’s “Perspective” is one of those stories that attempts to ‘”humanize” vampires, and it does it well. These aren’t goody two-shoes vampires like the undead in Twilight.  In this story, they may have human emotions like love, sadness, and loss, but they know how to kick serious ass-and serious ass they do kick!  There is a wonderfully messy fight towards the end with vampires, werewolves, and demons ripping off heads and sending body parts raining down everywhere, a great smash of a conclusion to a well written tale.  It’s a good combination of drama, mystery, and messiness, as well as a tale of vampires trying to find a reason to exist.  They do find it, and it’s a good reason to endure immortality.

 

Gord Rollo’s “Beneath Still Waters’” is a true house-shaker, a pure rollercoaster of excitement, from beginning to end.  It has all the elements: a remote Canadian town with a tragic past, Native American folklore, and one very unpleasant underwater monster.  There’s a decent amount of the story that takes place on or under a remote lake, and that’s where the writing really shines.  The author knows his stuff when it comes to putting fear and excitement in underwater sequences.  Diving can be nerve-wracking, with the claustrophobia of cave-diving and limited visibility.  The author clearly knows this, and puts the natural dangers of diving to very good use in the story.  There’s also a good twist to the ending.  Sure, maybe the heroes may be a bit foolish with some of their plans to stop the creature, but who cares?  It’s a thrill ride that keeps you hooked, and that’s all that matters.

 

Bottom line: it’s worth it.  Recommended.

 

Reviewed by Murray Samuelson

 

Posted on November 10, 2024 by , Reply

Book Review: The Guardian’s Gambit (The Felinity Chronicles Book 1) by JR Konkol

cover art for The Guardian's Gambit (The Felinity Chronicles #1) by JR Konkol

The Guardian’s Gambit (The Felinity Chronicles Book 1) by JR Konkol

Black Rose Publishing, 2024

ISBN: 9781685135058

Available: Paperback, Kindle edition

Buy:  Bookshop.org | Amazon.com

 

 

A superbly enthralling fantasy tale of cats, magic, and alternate dimensions, The Guardian’s Gambit is an absolute must-read.  It’s the best animal-centered story I’ve read since Tad Williams’s Tailchaser’s Song came out all those years ago.  Fantasy fans, you do not want to miss this one.

 

The story is told in third person, with the reader getting the thoughts of four cats: Gaius, Ajax, Loki, and Shaman.  It’s clear from the writing the author knows cats very well: he has all their typical mannerisms and actions down perfectly.  Where the story excels is in how he incorporates these into the fantasy elements of the story. For example, we all know cats sleep a great deal.  In the book, when asleep, they enter the Dreaming, an alternate reality loosely based on the mundane world, where most of the story takes place.  It’s a fascinating place of magic and horrible monsters, where the cats fight to the last claw to preserve their own reality.  The enemies in the Dreaming are legion, from amped-up coyotes to giant mutant spiders.  There’s a good deal of world building involved, complete with many cat-centric terms invented for the story.  The author deserves credit for weaving them into the narrative in a way that avoids reader confusion, dropping little reminders when needed.  It’s a sprawling but tightly-written story that’s impossible to avoid getting pulled into.

 

With a great storyline, you need great characters that the readers will be invested in, and Gaius, Ajax, Loki, and Shaman certainly fit the bill.  They have differing personalities, physical abilities and magic powers that complement each other and strengthen the group as a whole.  Gaius is the leader and thinker, Ajax the muscle, and Loki the clever one, while Shaman’s abilities as a magician develop over the course of the tale (tail?), and are one of the central tenets of the story.  There’s also a strong supporting cast of other cats and ghosts, who help, and sometimes hinder, the four companions.  There’s plenty of excitement, but also genuine emotional heft to some scenes.  Loki’s entrapment is enough to cause reader panic, and his pondering on the merits of being a warrior at the expense of a normal life is genuinely touching.  The protagonists pull you in hard, and reader emotions will ride up and down with them as they face myriad dangers.

 

Bottom line: for fantasy readers, this is a “do NOT miss”, and one of the best of 2024.  Highly recommended.

 

Reviewed by Murray Samuelson

Posted on November 5, 2024 by , Reply

Book Review: Welcome to the Splatter Club, Volume 3 by various authors

Welcome to the Splatter Club, Volume 3

Welcome to the Splatter Club, Vol. 3, by various authors

Blood Bound Publishing, 2024

ISBN: 9781940250632

Available: Paperback, Kindle edition

Buy: Amazon.com

 

If you read the other Splatter Club books, you know what to expect: gore, raunchiness, creativity, and warped humor. The third installment continues the tradition.  Overall, it’s very good, although not quite to the level of Volume 2: but that’s a pretty high bar to clear.  It’s certainly good enough to confirm the series as one that should keep running in the future.

 

There are nine short stories of varying length, plus four additional stories of a couple pages each that were winners in last year’s gross-out writing contest at Authorcon II.  The book would have been better off leaving those four out, as they really don’t add anything, and just read like an excuse to be disgusting.  Still, for readers that just want some barf-inducing material, they’re here.

 

The other nine stories are all good ‘uns, with Rachel Nussbaum’s ‘”You’re Mine Now” being the runaway winner for the best.  The hard-luck protagonist gets partly possessed by a somewhat nice demon, who proceeds to help him fix his life, in suitably violent and bone-crunching fashion.  It’s the interplay between the lead character and the demon that makes this roaring good fun: their conversations are priceless.  The whole ‘demon with a bit of heart’ is an angle that doesn’t get used often, it’s an intriguing one.

 

Stephen Kozeniewski’s ‘”Self Reporting” also deserves mention, for its wickedly humorous style, and re-doing of a horror trope.  We all know killing your family is bad, but this turns it into survival of the father, in a hilariously warped way.  This is definitely a new way to use a pandemic for a horror story.

 

Setting aside the four gross-out shorties, the rest are what make the Splatter Club series better than the rest.  There are no bad stories to be found. The quality does vary, but the absolute worst you can say about any of them is “pretty good..” There are no misses to be found.  I’ve reviewed a LOT of short story anthologies over the past few years, and it’s almost impossible to find one without at least a couple duds.  Splatter Club pulls off the trick of consistent quality throughout, and that’s pretty rare.  Not all the stories will blow your socks off, but there are none to skip over.

 

Drumroll please!  The BOTTOM LINE is…if you want creative craziness with plenty of bloody mayhem and twisted humor, you want this book.  Read it, destroy your mind, and carry on, till hopefully Volume 4 arrives.  Recommended.

 

Reviewed by Murray Samuelson

 

 

Posted on October 16, 2024 by , Reply
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