Kill for Satan!“They always say that you shouldn't judge a book by its cover, this is what we are always told and most of the time its true; but with Bryan Smiths Kill For Satan! it probably best you do just that.
The cover to Kill For Satan! is a nice piece of artwork, it's mostly functional with a good "finish" and doesn't approach the subject in too abstract a fashion. Basically what you see is what you get, and sometimes this is the best approach to something. You can sometimes be too "clever" and produce artwork that misses your key audience and the cover to Kill For Satan! manages to walk the line between these two states of being, its just abstract enough to be interesting but straight forward enough for you to know what you get.
See where I'm going with this?
Kill For Satan! is not approached as if its rocket science, there's a setup in the first couple of chapters and then we're into it; and by "into it" I mean carnage, a death a chapter - sometimes more - with a side helping of depravity.
If you're looking for great depth of character then this may not be the book for you but if you are more interested in a bloodfest with an 80's movie aesthetic, complete with language, sex and violence that would earn disapproving looks from your mother, then this is almost certainly a book you should try out, especially if you prefer your books in an audio format.
Sean Dereggers performance of Kill For Satan! is typical of his work. Always on-point and as no nonsense as the book he's presenting, which is the way it should be done. This approach has the benefit of keeping the running time short giving Kill For Satan! the feel of a movie, the kind you have seen many times so merely hearing the soundtrack is enough for you to get all you needed to follow the plot.
With this book that's an easy one, because - not to put too fine a point on it - there's almost no plot to speak of. Kill For Satan! can be summed up in three words... The title itself. A more complex synopsis could read: Satanists invade a small town and... Kill For Satan! In the good old style of a traditional VHS cover tag-line.
This one is a good buy for a winters night, but a particularly good buy for an October night, its something you can get through in a few hours and have time over for a short story or two and what more could you want for on Halloween night?”
The Devil’s Gospel“I received a free copy of this book for an honest review.
I had difficulty from the start with A. S Coomer's The Devil's Gospel, even Sean Duregger's assured performance couldn't breathe life the book for me. The opening chapter jumps between several concurrent - and to me all too similar - scenes, and none of them captured my imagination.
The story did settle, thankfully, and the various scenes of the first chapter begun to tie together as we are introduced (we've already met him, but the choppiness of the first chapter makes it an unfulfilling "introduction") to Kevin, our lead character, a biologist who quickly reveals himself to be a singularly unpleasant person.
Still, thanks to Sean Duregger - a narrator I particularly enjoy - I persevered with it.
Unfortunately Kevin has few redeeming qualities and I thought things might pick up a little when we met Kate, his girlfriend, but if anything I begun to dislike both characters even more. There is an amazing scene where they spend some time making fun of Christians where their lack of self awareness is rather stunning. Kevin and Kate show such phenomenal levels of unpleasantness I wanted to go to my nearest church and offer up penance for them; and I'm a life long agnostic!
In the rare moments where Kevin and Kate are not (wilfully?) misrepresenting Christian theology to make fun of them the story comes together and A. S. Coomer writes quite nicely, and I think if the story wasn't being derailed constantly by it I would have enjoyed the book a great deal more but it seemed that the story came second place to this main aim.
Later Kevin, a university lecturer and botanist, shows an alarming lack of interest in the local tales regarding the use of plants. He seems unable to engage in perfectly normal human conversation with someone who has views that do not match his own. At this point I realise how much I hate these characters and by the books end I'd found I had completely lost interest, besides this the open hatred of religion I saw in the book made the ending fairly obvious to predict.
If you don't mind the impressive levels of Christian mockery then you might really enjoy this story, the characters are well drawn and the plot is complex enough to hold interest easily (even if you guess who the villain the first time you meet him). There's also some very good atmosphere that draws really well on the location and people, but for me the truly unpleasant lead really spoilt what could have been a really good book.
A more even handed approach that was more sympathetic with its criticism of religion would've server the story much better, nothing makes a character more sympathetic than when they show sympathy to others, so this would've made Kevin someone I would have cared for and it would not have telegraphed the ending quite so completely.
Hopefully if you give this one a go you'll enjoy it far more than I did, I do seem to be a minority in my view on The Devil's Gospel so you're far more likely to like it than not!”
Cleansed“Cleansed, which is either the first book in a series or the second - depending on where you look - follows the exploits of Dirge, an Orphan who has been indoctrinated into a league of assassins at a young age. The world around Dirge is defined by the conflict between a variety of fundamentalist faith systems and when one of these, The Lord of Chaos, orders the murder of all first born as a sacrifice to it Dirge finds himself on a brutal course to defend the innocent.
However, all is not quite as it seems and Dirge's journey is not a simple one.
To begin with I was not all that impressed with G. S. Scott's Cleansed, probably due mainly to Scott's choice to begin his tale very early in Dirge's life and leaving me with three or four chapters in which very little seemed to happen. I didn't take much from these chapters and it seemed to me that starting later and essentially jumping into the action sooner would have been a better option, perhaps telling the earlier episodes in flashback, but this was not to be.
I persevered and was glad that I did. Once the story begin to come together it comes together rather well, with interesting characters and an increasingly shifting story where no one is clearly heroes or villains.
The narration was done by the usually very reliable Sean Duregger and for the first time I was in two minds about his performance with Cleansed. Usually I like his narrations a great deal but in this case I found it a little grating in parts. This was mainly due to the accents he used for many of the characters. I have to say here that I am English and in my job I routinely have meetings with people from all over the UK, so I am used to a variety of British accents (in addition to having my own of course) and none of Sean's accents seemed quite right to my ear and it was only when I consistently reminded myself that this was set in an alternative fantasy land, with inhabitants who just happened to have British sounding accents, that I managed to get past it.
I imagine the vast majority of listeners will not be bothered by this in the slightest, and many will be impressed with it as Sean does quite an impressive range of accents for this tale, as well as many different characters. So I think it likely that most will disagree with my thoughts concerning his use of accents, and they may be right to; as on a second listen I may even disagree with myself!
Overall Cleansed was a good experience, far better than I imagined it being and well worth your time if you enjoy dark fantasy stories. I liked it enough that I would listen to further stories in the series, and it has even made me consider seeking out something similar to read in the future in a genre I usually do not read; which to me sounds like an endorsement!”
Bones & Drones“I requested a free copy of this book from the website Audiobooks Unleashed in exchange for a unbiased review and though this book is a little out of my comfort range, I was quite glad I did.
Bones & Drones is the first in a continuing series of books detailing the adventures of Paislee Grimes around the town of Pine Grove, Connecticut. Paislee is the towns Nancy Drew, though she has a lot more in common with forensic anthropologist Dr. Temperance "Bones" Brennan from another series of books.
Paislee, or Temperance Jr. as I came to think of her, is the daughter of a mortician and a medical examiner and lives in the grounds of the local cemetery so she is, as you'd expect, literally surrounded by death. Her best friends include Raimy, the local wannabe-journalist, Elgort, track star and wannabe-boyfriend, and Sarah, a two-hundred year dead girl who is her main confidant.
Paislee wants to catalogue the unknown graves of the old cemetery, giving names to those who have been forgotten and weaving them in with the history of the town. She wants to bring life back to the dead and in this way she want to honour them; but there are more pressing concerns when a local boy turns up dead and everyone in the small town seems implicated.
What unfolds in Bones & Drones is a cosy mystery not unlike the Nancy Drew or Hardy Boys books many of us read in our youths. However the stories main concern isn't a weaving narrative of intrigue but rather Paislee's life and how the tragedy affects it. There's more than a little soap-opera in Bones & Drones and normally this would have rapidly made me loose interest in the book; but with this one it didn't.
Bones & Drones true strength isn't in the mystery of its story-line, its in the unfolding mystery of youth growing into adulthood that many of the characters are experiencing. The reader is discovering things about Paislee, Raimy, Elgort and, yes, even Sarah that feel real and has gravitas. Despite the book being labelled as a Young Adult book there's none of the juvenile outbursts we often see in such work, rather we see characters trying to understand their abilities and limits while these vie against their dreams and needs.
K. A. Goodsell has managed to create a collection of extremely likeable characters that manage to transcend the story itself, the murder plot often falling into the background as Paislee's life overtook it in importance to the reader. What became important wasn't necessarily if and when the perpetrator was brought to justice, but how this would affect those around Paislee when it happened.
If you are looking for a hard hitting thriller then Bones & Drones is about as far away from that as you can get, but if you like tales that are character-driven where you'll want to read to the end not to get to a conclusion but rather just for the act of knowing more, then this book might just be for you.
Personally I have decided to continue with Paislee's journey with the second book.
I have to congratulate K. A. Goodsell on a great book, as well as thank Audiobooks Unleashed for introducing me to her.
To conclude I have to point out the one negative concerning the book. Unfortunately there are at least three narration errors that managed to bypass the editor, one of them pretty big, spoiling a great narration from Carrie Coello. This isn't a deal-breaker but it did irritate me quite a lot when I heard them as they were all pretty close together and I didn't feel right posting this without commenting on them.”
Isabellla“First things first; I received a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
Anyone who spends any time in the horror genre would be hard pressed not to scroll past a list of zombie novels these days. There are whole series based on the Romero-rendition of the classic creature, and though many of them are enjoyable and exiting reads very few bring anything new to the table. The zombies in nearly all these books are classic Romero and owe a huge debt to what the great man brought to the screen in Night of the Living Dead.
Most are essentially fan-fiction, some are well written fan-fiction but nearly all fit securely in this category; though occasionally an author attempts something a little different.
Gail Smith is one such author and the novelette - at a mere fifty-six pages I can't even bring myself to call it a novella - in question is Isabellla; and no, that isn't a typo.
Now I would not go as far as to say that Gail Smith does anything new in Insabellla, anyone who has spent any time around the sub-genre will have seen all the elements before, but what she does do is present us with a story that takes a different route; like someone improvising using familiar moves and steps but following no recognisable pattern. She introduces elements of introspection and romance while shying away from the more common action set-pieces that usually dominate such stories.
There is action, and there is blood and gore and all the other things you'd expect; but the focus is not on any of these and they are treated more to a means to an end rather than the bread-and-butter of the piece.
This is a welcome change but not an altogether successful one, but I suppose this is to be expected when there is a melding of two genres that are usually considered opposites; horror and romance. This isn't to say it can't work or doesn't work, there have been some good cinematic examples (Return of the Living Dead III and Dellamorte Dellamore come to mind) but it is an uncommon pairing so the attempt, if nothing else, should be applauded.
For me Isabellla is a novelette straining against its restraints, a bare-bones walk-though of a larger tale where we learn more about our living hero and undead heroine as they strive to remain, or regain, their humanity amid the crumbling moral fabric of post-zombie-apocalypse society. When the last words of the story rolled by I felt a little disappointed that the story would not evolve more as there were many places it could have gone; and I suppose if anything this should be considered a compliment, though perhaps a slightly back-handed one.”
Gods Of The Dark Web“At 136 minutes Gods of the Dark Web presents more as a novella than a full length novel and at first I thought this would present a story that skimped on detail or presented as a simplified story to fill such a meagre amount of time but as I clicked play and the story began to unfold neither assumption turned out to be true.
Instead – after a brief, brutal teaser – we are introduced to that character of Niles Highsmith, true crime writer with his own tragic past, and his search for his younger brother who we met in the opening teaser.
Niles journey takes us through his brothers shadowy world, meeting characters of dubious virtue along the way as Niles grows closer to the mystery of the dark web which swallowed his brother into its writhing depths.
One of the strongest aspects of the book was Mangum's ability to quickly produce well rounded characters that seemed to have life outside of the story, something many authors neglect, and the brave stance he takes with these characters. There are no heroes in Gods of the Dark Web, and Niles flaws make it – at times – very difficult to sympathise with him in his journey. A debilitating darkness has infested Niles, perhaps this is due to recent tragic events in his life, or perhaps this darkness is an inherent part of his personality; the latter seems more likely as his brother Leon also travels very dark roads in life.
Gods of the Dark Web is a dark book, one of those books that fits in the genre often referred to as “extreme horror”, a genre which – though I am a fan of horror – I rarely like. Too often stories I have read in this sub-genre degrade to freak-show mechanics where each scene seeks to top the last in its portrayal of perversion.
A reader does have to have a strong stomach with God's of the Dark Web, I would be lying if I told you that you wouldn't, but the violence portrayed did not seem gratuitous to me but rather a necessary evil essential to dragging the reader into the correct – self-recriminating – state of mind for the end message to work.
Over all I enjoyed Gods of the Dark Web far more than other books in the sub-genre, well, as much as someone CAN enjoy such a story of course, but this isn't to say I don't have criticisms; though they are small ones.
Personally I think I would have benefited with a little more scene-setting, perhaps a little more time engaging with the world around the characters, making the worlds beats and flavours more immediate. It would have helped me ground the internal worlds of the characters more into our common world, making the story more immediately affecting for me as a reader.
I also found the narrator an inconsistent one, at times wonderful, with a broad grasp of the characters and a deft “hand” at the dialogue but lacking with scenes that tended to be a little more exposition heavy. In fairness I imagine such a scene would test any narrator, but they are still necessary scenes and still a valid part of any story.
If you do intend to give Gods of the Dark Web 136 minutes of your time (or 109 pages) you should be warned that this is a violent tale that will unsettle you in some scenes and a reader with a more delicate stomach may be remembering those scenes long after they close the book.
Of course much like the characters in Gods of the Dark Web; that last sentence will be a warning to some and an invitation to others, just be sure you know which you are before you answer the call.”
Hellraiser: The Toll“First things first: I received this free for an honest review.
Mark Alan Miller's Hellraiser: The Toll is a strange mixed bag.
I'm really tempted to leave the review at that single line, as I genuinely think it sums up this book/audiobook as much as any review needs to; but I guess I'll go on.
Hellraiser: The Toll isn't a book that bridges The Hellbound Heart and The Scarlet Gospels, regardless of what you might have heard. Its a strange melding of a sequel to both the novella itself and the movie that came from it and it is best read in such a light.
Taken on its own merits, ignoring its strange lineage, it is still somewhat mixed up. It spends far too much time retelling the events in Hellaiser (the 1987 movie) apparently unaware that anyone reading a book called Hellraiser: The Toll would probably be very aware of what led us to this point. In itself this retelling isn't a chore to sit through, and it does at least clarify which version of Pinhead we will eventually meet, but it literally takes up half the books length and reduces this new story to little more than a longish short story.
When we do get to the story we find that we are in pure Hellbound: Hellraiser II (the 1988 sequel) territory in that a doctor enlists our hero, Kirsty's, help to contact the Cenobite leader; this time in an attempt to defeat him. It all ends up being a little something-of-nothing storyline wise, and after finishing it I had a profound sense of missed opportunity. There are some good ideas lurking within this tale. Hints at earthly covens doing the Cenobites wishes and places of evil and depravity forming crossroads into their hellish world, but the story is too short and, once the recap is over with, seems to much in a rush to get to the end, leaving us with something that feels more like an outline to a longer work; or perhaps the synopsis to a movie script. So it wasn't a surprise to me when I realised who the author was and his connection to Clive Barker, his films, and the recent comic book based on the Hellraiser franchise.
Ultimately Hellraiser: The Toll reads like a rejected story arc from the Hellraiser comics, which in themselves feel like fan-fiction rather than anything truly connected to Barker's universe; but after all this is said it doesn't necessarily mean that Hellraiser: The Toll is actually "bad".
I know, sounds like I'm contradicting myself doesn't it!
I think a readers enjoyment of Hellraiser: The Toll greatly depends on what they are reading it for and what they might be expecting from the story. If you're familiar with the movies more-so than the novella, or if you're looking for a dip into Barkerville that's not going to leave you breathless and looking over your shoulder than Hellraiser: The Toll will do the job just fine. However if you are a seasoned fan of Barker's early works then your opinion might be a whole lot harsher, and you might spend the remaining day spitting and cursing under your breath.
Personally I'm glad I took the time out for this story but I'll almost certainly never revisit it. There were some nice ideas, unfortunately unexplored, and it was kind of nice to catch up with Kirsty after all these years; but I have to admit that it left behind more sadness than fear, sadness that the Hellraiser franchise was finally over.”
