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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

Book Review: The Luminous Dead by Caitlin Starling

The Luminous Dead by Caitlin Starling

Harper Voyager. 2019

ISBN-13: 978-0062846907

Available: Paperback, Kindle, audiobook, audio CD

 

Claustrophobic horror has always been a thrilling subgenre, and while this offering leans much more towards science fiction than pure frights, it’s a strong candidate for the Bram Stoker award for first novel.

It has been compared to several titles by the publisher, including Andy Weir’s The Martian and Jeff Vandermeer’s Annihilation, although this reviewer would call it an underwater Gravity. Most of the interaction in the story occurs between the two main characters, with a strong dose of inner monologues that suggests this would also be a great option for a Hugo Award. The sheer atmosphere of the novel is what turns what could be a literary musing on character motivation into a powerful tale that is a worthy addition into the scifi-horror library.

Gyre Price is a caver, miner and excavation worker who takes on the job of a lifetime. It’s a great paycheck, and could change her life- if she survives it. A few tangles in her story warp her reality. She shouldn’t even be down there in the bowels of a strange, dangerous planet. In addition, as in other novels of its kind, Gyre has quite a few skeletons in her closet. She lied to get the job, and hoped it would be a cake assignment. Well, cake besides the preparation that forced her to undergo some physical alterations to adapt to the alien environment.

Why does everyone else die who takes the job?

She finds herself deep (pun intended) in the mire of the water, caverns, and mystery, before she realizes her biggest threat might be the one person who can also keep her alive. Em controls much of Gyre’s fate, even her body; she feeds her, sometimes with drugs, and other times with misinformation. It becomes a strange symbiotic relationship that is reminiscent of the astronauts’ relationship with HAL in 2001, except for Em being human. The manipulation turns dark, with Em sometimes a distant voice from another realm, whose motives and goals are opaque to Gyre.

As she sinks deeper, Gyre finds she might not be alone. Think back to some of the underwater/alien planet films of the 80s and 90s. such as Leviathan and Planet Mars. What Gyre may be facing could be all of that- or none of it. Is her terror merely  a psychological manifestation brought on by the foreign depths and Em’s ploys? Or is it something Gyre’s brain simply cannot handle?

The point of view and mood created by Starling elevates this book into an interesting read, pushing it sideways into the dark tendrils of the horror realm. Recommended.

 

Reviewed by David Simms

Editor’s note: The Luminous Dead was nominated to the final ballot of the 2019 Bram Stoker Award in the category of Superior Achievement in a Novel.

Posted on April 14, 2020 by , Reply
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