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Book Review: Big Lizard by Joe R. Lansdale and Keith Lansdale

A note from the editor:

We are midway through November and Monster Librarian still needs to raise the funds to pay for our hosting fees and postage in 2021. If you like what we’re doing, please take a moment to click on that red “Contribute” button in the sidebar to the right, to help us keep going!  Even five dollars will get us closer to the $45 we need to keep going at the most basic level. We have never accepted paid advertising so you can be guaranteed that our reviews are objective. We’ve been reviewing and supporting the horror community for 15 years now, help us make it another year! Thank you! And now our review of Big Lizard by Joe R. Lansdale and Keith Lansdale, illustrated by Jok.

 

cover art for Big Lizard by Joe R. Lansdale and Keith Lansdale

Big Lizard by Joe R. Lansdale and Keith Lansdale, illustrations by Jok (Short, Scary Tales Publications)

Short, Scary Tales Publications, 2020

ISBN-13: 9781788580274

Available:  Signed & numbered limited hardcover

 

Thanks to his Aunt June, Buster Nix lands a new job as a security guard at the headquarters of a chain of fast food restaurants called Pick-A-Chicken. It’s not the best job in the world, but it’s something. The company’s owner, Elroy Cuzzins, gives Buster a tour of the facilities, making sure to tell him that he can never, never, ever enter the red storage building out back. Ever. His tour also includes the slaughter area. Customers can pick a live chicken for slaughter, and, for an extra fee, they can kill it themselves with a hatchet supplied by the company. Some of the Pick-A-Chicken customers dole out the extra money to gleefully slaughter their chosen fowl, but Buster is repulsed by the process. The restaurant is thriving, raking in the dough. Buster can’t figure out why or how this is possible. One night when he is making his rounds, he wanders too close to the forbidden building and hears mysterious chanting behind the closed doors. Upon entering, he discovers an unholy ritual taking place with Cuzzins as the leader who is sacrificing chickens over a large pentagram. Now Buster knows how Pick-A-Chicken has been so successful over the decades. As all of those present continue their chanting to something called the Lizard God, Buster accidently runs into a lit brazier containing actual hellfire and disrupts the ceremony, engulfing everything and everyone, including Buster, Cuzzins, and Socks the chicken, who Buster made friends with during his time as security guard.

 

 

The next thing Buster knows he is waking up in the hospital burn unit, covered head to toe in bandages. He discovers that, because of his disruption of the ritual, he can transform into a giant lizard with enhanced physical abilities. The only downsides are that he doesn’t know how to control it, and his clothes are torn to shreds when he transforms. Buster teams up with Socks, the now eyepatch wearing talking chicken who survived the conflagration, and teenage tech wizard Isaac to face off with the nefarious Elroy. He’s hard to miss since he was transformed into a giant chicken driving a flashy red sports car and commits murder, gathering body parts to complete the ceremony. Can Big Lizard and his friends stop…Big Chicken before he can complete the ritual?

 

I loved this book from start to finish. I couldn’t put it down. Both Lansdales are great storytellers. The characters, especially Socks and Buster, are unique. Socks, short for Socrates, wanders around wearing an eyepatch. When electric shocks are administered to his tiny chicken body, he releases his bowels, and can see the future. He’s also a little smart ass. Buster means well, and he is one to help anyone in need, even if he can’t seem to get his own life in order. When he gains his lizard abilities, he uses them for noble pursuits. He just has a good heart.

 

I would recommend this for anyone who enjoys Joe R. Lansdale’s work. The fact that his son has also taken to writing and collaborates with his father on this one just adds to the reasons to pick up Big Lizard. Unfortunately, the ARC didn’t include Jok’s illustrations, but if they are anything like the cover, the interior art will be fantastic

Highly recommended

Reviewed by Lizzy Walker

Posted on November 18, 2020 by , Reply

Book Review: The Perfectly Fine House by Stephen Kozeniewski and Wile E. Young

cover image for The Perfectly Fine House by Stephen Kozeniewski and Wile E. Young

The Perfectly Fine House by Stephen Kozeniewski and Wile E. Young (  Bookshop.org |  Amazon.com )

Grindhouse Press, 2020

ISBN: 13:978-1-9419-18-63-0

Available: Kindle, paperback

 

The “breathers” depicted in The Perfectly Fine House do the usual: work, shop, have kids. The ghosts are busy, too. Sometimes, they help out with the great-grandkids, travel to exotic locations or hang out with their friends. They go to their local bar, smoke sage to get high, and maybe meet up with a young Unenlightened person who likes to date dead people.

But being dead isn’t all fun and games. There are those who disrespectfully walk straight through you, and you risk being arrested for any “unsanctioned possessions.” It’s also really disturbing to find a friend or relative “relapsing” because you can actually see the wounds that killed him. For the ghosts in this book, things get even worse than that when they realize their community is disappearing from Earth.

Stephen Koseniewski and Wile E. Young have written a clever and frequently amusing tale that blends ghostly and human lifestyles with appealing characters. Donna, a “surrogate” who makes love matches between the dead and the living, and her brother Kyle, killed in a motorcycle accident, struggle to find out what is causing the holes all over the world into which ghosts are vanishing. Characters include an exorcist love interest for Donna, a friend of Kyle’s who died “trying to flash fry a turkey in gasoline,” and a poet who comes up with a way to execute ghosts. Will Bonnie, the first to witness a disappearance, be able to apply her scientific savvy in time to stop the destruction? Will Donna lose her brother forever? At a time when having no “ghostsense” is a disability, you need to be careful to avoid provoking the dead “to go all poltergeist on you.” Good luck with that. Recommended.

Contains: adult situations and language

 

Reviewed by Nova Hadley

Posted on November 9, 2020 by , Reply

Book Review: Owl Manor: Abigail (Book Two of the Owl Manor Trilogy) by Zita Harrison

A note from the editor:

We are now in the month of November and Monster Librarian still needs to raise the funds to pay for our hosting fees and postage in 2021. If you like what we’re doing, please take a moment to click on that red “Contribute” button in the sidebar to the right, to help us keep going!  Even five dollars will get us closer to the $195 we need to keep going at the most basic level. We have never accepted paid advertising so you can be guaranteed that our reviews are objective. We’ve been reviewing and supporting the horror community for 15 years now, help us make it another year! Thank you! And now our review of .Owl Manor: Abigail (Book Two of the Owl Manor Trilogy).

 

cover art for Owl Manor: Abigail by Zita Harrison

Owl Manor: Abigail (Book Two of the Owl Manor Trilogy), by Zita Harrison

Zealous Art Publishing, 2020

ISBN: 979-8675396467

Available: Kindle, Paperback

 

“And I knew this thing was built of all my fears, was empowered by them, and that it would devour me if it could,” says Abigail, the central character in the second book of Zita Harrison’s Owl Manor Trilogy. Inspired by Gothic suspense classics, this fast-paced psychological thriller about a jilted young woman alone in the world after her mother’s murder, is chock full of malevolent supernatural forces. An eerily evocative Colorado mountain setting, an estate-turned-inn where hovering owls have been known to attack, and a series of unexplained murders, are only the beginning. Readers can find out about Abigail’s childhood in the first book of the trilogy, Owl Manor: The Dawning, which takes place during the Gold Rush, but this second volume deftly takes us into Abigail’s present without disruptive recaps.

Unfortunately for Abigail, her mother Eva’s murderer/dead lover, the insane Rafe Bradstone, has possessed his relative Victor and hopes to be reunited with Eva’s spirit through her daughter. Abigail has already been traumatized by knowing that her mother did not want her, by being at the manor when her mother and Rafe died, and by being left by her fiancé on the day of her wedding. Although the staff at Owl Manor care about her, they are finding it difficult to deal with the ghosts and strange houseguests, and are left to handle the violence without the help of the authorities. Abigail had hoped to prove to herself that she could survive on her own, but the past, for which she was not responsible, comes back to haunt her anyway.

An interesting element woven loosely through the two books Harrison has written so far (the third will be Owl Manor: Nightfall) is the attention to the role of women as wives and mothers, attitudes toward unmarried women (including prostitutes), and the life choices women had in the United States during the 1800’s. Eva is portrayed as a sort of feminist who is determined to leave her restrictive family life and make her own money. Eva pays dearly for her choices, and her daughter is her innocent victim. Abigail wonders, “Is the world, in the end, just a reflection of one’s state of mind?” She does get an answer in this creepy, entertaining book. Recommended.

 

Reviewed by Nova Hadley

Posted on November 8, 2020 by , Reply
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