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Book Review: Eight Cylinders by Jason Parent

cover art for Eight Cylinders by Jason Parent

Eight Cylinders by Jason Parent

Crystal Lake Publishing, 2020

ISBN: 9781646693061

Available: Paperback, Kindle edition ( Bookshop.org  |  Amazon.com )

 

A motor with eight cylinders represents power, a strong machine that can outrun the competition with minimal difficulty.  That being said, Eight Cylinders is closer to a six, maybe seven cylinder story.  It’s a solid piece of machinery that will give readers a smooth ride to the destination, but it could have used a few more ponies under the hood to turn the story into a real road-burner.

 

This is one of those stories with little explanation for what happens: it’s a classic ‘here’s a crazy situation, how do we get out of it?’ story.  Seb McCallister is a lifetime crook who winds up on the wrong end of a shootout in a dope deal gone bad in Las Vegas.  Badly wounded, he powers out of Vegas behind the wheel of his V8 Dodge Charger SRT Hellcat, driving off into the desert.  He passes out from loss of blood, and wakes to find himself in a dilapidated camp in the middle of the desert, surrounded by mountains on all sides.   The camp itself is inhabited by a small group of vagabonds, some of whom have been there a long time.  When he tries to escape, Seb quickly learns that the mountains are riddled with caves occupied by a huge, tentacled monster that somewhat resembles a crazed land squid, and the squid makes mincemeat of anyone who tries to leave.  Within a day, Seb helps to convince the camp residents to make a run for it.  What follows is the inevitable Mad Max-style race across the desert, complete with tricked-out vehicles packing plenty of blasting power, both under the hood and in the form of armaments.  Seb and his new friends must outwit and outfight the monster if they want to escape the desert.

 

Everything in the story is a quick setup for the final chase, and thankfully, it’s worth it.  Jason Parent knows how to write an exciting, end of the book blast.   Complete with awesome vehicles, firepower, nitrous, and some nice creative touches with parachutes, the last forty pages are a full roar towards the finish, with all the excitement anyone could want.  This part of the story isn’t running on eight cylinders, it’s running on twelve.   It’s the part leading up to the end where the story could have used a little chrome and paint, in the form of more detail.  Little explanation is given for the backstories of the other characters, or the camp itself, or even where (or when) the camp and characters exist.  Another twenty pages or so to flesh out the beginning and middle sections of the story could have turned this one into a real monster.  Eight Cylinders is a perfectly good, exciting story, but it almost feels like a test run for what could be a much bigger version in the future.   The parts are all there in terms of character, mystery, and storyline, and the way the story ends, it could easily keep going.  The question is, will it?

 

This is certainly worth the read, and will likely leave readers clamoring for a novel-length sequel (this is only 100 pages)  There are a lot of unanswered questions in the story, and it would be nice to see where it goes next.  Recommended.

 

Contains: violence, mild gore, profanity

 

Reviewed by Murray Samuelson

Posted on March 23, 2021 by , Reply

Book Review: Neptune’s Reckoning by Robert J. Stava

Cover art for Neptune's Reckoning by Robert J. Stava

( Amazon.com )

 

Neptune’s Reckoning: A Montauk Horror Story, by Robert J. Stava

Severed Press, 2020

ISBN: 9781922323644

Available: paperback, Kindle

 

Neptune’s Reckoning is an undersea thriller to be reckoned with.  It’s a sleek, well-designed craft that cuts through the competition, hitting all the right peaks.  File this book in the category of “Books that should have been nominated for a Stoker Award”.  Peter Benchley will always be the master of ocean-themed horror, but author Stava comes pretty close to matching him with this book.

 

Reclusive historian William Vanek spends his days at home on Long Island, researching shipwrecks and naval history of little significance.  An old friend of his from Navy intelligence recruits Vanek, along with extreme photographer Danielle “Dan” Cheung and shipwreck specialist Arnaud Navarre, to look into the recent discovery of a missing World War II destroyer, the USS Exeter.  The story rolls out at a pace as smooth as glass, as the three of them are drawn into a web of mysterious killings at sea and government cover-ups.  The mystery deepens, as it becomes clear the destroyer was involved in some dangerous, high level research before it sank.  It’s up to the three of them to discover the truth about the Exeter, and put a stop to who (or what) is responsible for killing boaters in the Montauk area.

 

Neptune’s Reckoning is as good as it gets for a horror/thriller novel.  The pacing is perfect; it hits the bull’s-eye between breakneck speed and slow burn.  There’s a secondary story thread involving toxic waste dumping near the Exeter that adds another factor to the story, and is just as interesting as the primary story.  All the secondary characters are critical to keeping the story flowing: they are drawn perfectly and enter and exit the narrative at just the right time.  The eco-warriors and small-time criminals make excellent foils to the main story, and are as intriguing as the main characters.  The book also does a nice job splitting the story settings between land and sea.  Each section gets enough time, preventing the book from being one-dimensional.

 

It’s worth noting that if you haven’t seen Stranger Things, doing a bit of spot research on Camp Hero, Montauk, NY, and the conspiracy theories around them helps to lend a greater understanding of the book’s background.  The stories behind Montauk are not critical to following the book, but it does help.  There’s also a nice touch of sci-fi involving the entity inhabiting the waters around Montauk.  It isn’t just a shark or oversized squid tearing its victims to shreds, it is much more mysterious-and deadly.  The reader won’t get a total explanation for everything that happens at the end of the book, and that may be a bit frustrating for readers who prefer every plot thread to be explained in full.   Everyone else will love the smooth sailing that is Neptune’s Reckoning. 

 

This is one you can’t miss, and it should find a wide audience for horror and adventure readers alike.  It’s also tailor-made for the silver screen; let’s see if Hollywood picks it up.  Highly recommended.

 

Contains: violence, limited gore, profanity

 

Reviewed by Murray Samuelson

Posted on February 6, 2021 by , Reply

Women in Horror Month: Book Review: Fractured Tide by Leslie Lutz

cover art for Fractured Tide by Leslie Lutz

( Bookshop.com | Amazon.com )

Fractured Tide by Leslie Lutz

Blink, 2020

ISBN-13 : 978-0310770107

Available: Hardcover, Kindle edition, audiobook

 

Seventeen-year-old Sia is essential in her mother’s business of chartering trips for tourists wanting to scuba dive. A newbie scuba diver she has been assigned to help navigate a shipwreck is lost, and in her search for him, she senses an underwater threat. When she finds and retrieves her charge, it is too late.  Her mother calls another charter boat, full of high school students, to take Sia, her brother Felix, and the other passengers back.  Just as they’re moving to the second boat, the engines of both boats die, and they are cut off from any radio or cell phone contact, unable to contact the Coast Guard, and running out of water in the middle of the ocean. Then the creature Sia sensed in the shipwreck rises and uses its deadly appendages to sweep everyone over the side and destroy the boats. Sia, Felix and two of the students from the second charter, the only survivors, wash up on a desolate island with almost no food or water, trapped there by the giant sea monster blocking their escape. Sia and the other survivors are pretty well-developed, but not especially likable or cooperative given that if they can’t work together they are probably all going to die.

At first this looked like a straightforward killer animal story, but then it morphed into a survival narrative with science-fictional elements as well (it’s been compared to Lost). Yet there were a lot of things that didn’t make sense for any of those kinds of stories. The creature didn’t discriminate in its destruction of the boats, so it’s odd that the few people Sia has some kind of relationship with (her brother, the boy she thinks is cute, and his ex-girlfriend) are the only survivors. Sia is telling the story in a series of diary entries that she starts writing to her father, who is in prison, in a notebook she discovers shortly after washing up on the island (the story occasionally switches from first to second person as she directly addresses him, which can be confusing) and, in addition to being trapped on the island geographically, and by a killer sea monster, the survivors also seem to be trapped in time. Is this all going on in Sia’s head, or some of it, or is it all really happening? It was confusing, and not at all what I expected.

The parts with the sea creature were terrifying, as were the descriptions of running out of water or getting lost in the dark while scuba diving, and the effects of time repeating on all the characters and their actions took the story into the realm of the bizarre and hallucinatory by the end, but the story didn’t flow naturally– it really was a fractured narrative– and that detracted from my ability to really sink into the story. I’m not sure what I really think of how it worked, but I did love the author’s vivid imagination and description of the thrill and exhiliration Sia felt scuba diving, even in the most dangerous places, under the sea, and the author’s examination of what the thoughts might be of a teen in a tricky family situation with an incarcerated parent. Recommended.

 

Reviewed by Kirsten Kowalewski

 

Posted on February 5, 2021 by , Reply
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