Revenant (Rock Bottom), by Allan Leverone

An artifact, closely guarded by the Navajo mystics for ages is stolen by an unscrupulous psychopath, Max, who is prepared to use it to create a zombie, Earl Manning, to do his bidding, and as long as Max has the stone, and Earl’s heart right next to it, he will control the Earl.  But due to some messy unforeseen circumstances, the box with heart and stone winds up in Earl’s hands.  He is suddenly the master of his undead destiny, and havoc ensues.

This second book in his series of Paskagankee novels, Allan Leverone’s  Revenant, is a page turner, and could almost be considered an homage to Stephen King, so closely does Leverone’s writing style mimic the master’s.  The book even takes place in Maine—not Derry, though; but in a town called Paskagankee.

My favorite character was actually Earl Manning, the revenant.  I found it fascinating that he was pretty much a brain-dead zombie to begin with, what with an alcohol-pickled brain at the age of 29.  Becoming a zombie wasn’t much of a transition for him—this was probably why he handled it so well.  You’ll want to read this book just for this character alone—he was the best developed and the most interesting.  Instead of the zombies running wild and the focus narrowly placed on the humans who are either chasing them or running away from them; it evolves into the Earl’s, story.  A nice switch.

Leverone handles suspense well, and though initially I was disappointed about the overused cliché of yet another zombie novel, I was pleasantly surprised about the original and deft way the concept was handled.

Though I enjoyed the book from start to finish and was sorry when it ended, there were a few weaknesses that I must mention.  I felt that the protagonists, Chief Mike McMahon and Constable Sharon Dupont suffered from lack of character development, and consequently came off as a bit two-dimensional. I didn’t care as much about them as I should have, and this caused the ending to fall a tad flat for me.

I also could have done without the frequent callbacks to the first volume of this series, Paskagankee.  They were slightly jarring and completely unnecessary.  This book was more than able to stand alone and should have been allowed to.

That being said, you’ll want to buy this—it’s a fun ride.

buy it here.

 reviewed by Carson Buckingham

Carson Buckingham is a writer living in the great American Southwest and she reviews horror/paranormal suspense novels. Stop by to view her scriblins.

Bloodstar: Star Corpsman, book 1 (Harper Voyager), by Ian Douglas

Before we get this under way, it is definitely worth warning you that I am not in any way a fan of either Hard or Military Sci-Fi. As far as I am concerned, they both tend to be overloaded with information that gets in the way of the story, instead of aiding it. I know that there are people out there who are highly interested in the intricacies of propulsion units and methodology as well as tactical data, but I am not one of those. I want the story itself and any information pertinent to that story or an understanding of its characters and the world they live in but anything more bores me. Please keep that in mind as it is something that highly flavors this review.

Way off in the far-flung future, people have begun colonizing the stars. One of those colonies, Bloodworld, was founded by a group whose desire to suffer for the sins of humanity found an ideal home on its brutal terrain. They’ve lived there for decades, alone and isolated and content with both. However, a war-bound race of aliens, the Qesh, have found them. Not only is their own safety at stake, but the security of Earth and any other human colonies. Enter space marines and combat galore.

Let’s start off with the good things here: I very much enjoyed seeing war from the point of view of a Corpsman (the closest layman's term would be a field medic, but it would not be entirely accurate), someone whose primary concern is healing over harming. This alone tossed much of the over the top, “we kick ass” attitude out the window. And, Ian presents us with a much more likely view of humanity’s early forays into space: tentative and frightful. This is a future where humanity knows that they are outnumbered and outgunned by older, larger and more strategically powerful races in space and are doing everything they can to stay below the radar. The main character is well developed and there isn’t the usual good versus evil delineation so much as a concern for the people he is with.

All of these things are great. I loved the story itself. When I  got to read it.

Unfortunately, most of the time was spent buried under paragraphs and piles of text dedicated to the history of Corpsmen. The changes in medical engineering. Every detail of how each specific bit of nano-technology worked. The operating principles of the weapons systems. Military tactics out the wasoo. Over 150 pages had passed before Bloodworld was reached it still took a bit of discussion of nano-flage and nano-grown encampments before much else occurred.

I can’t stress enough how much I enjoyed the story at the heart of this novel, but I could not find it in myself to enjoy the novel as a whole.


Buy it here

Reviewed by Anton Cancre

Anton Cancre is one of those rotting, pus-filled thingies on the underside of humanity that your mother always warned you about. He has oozed symbolic word-farms onto the pages of Shroud, Sex and Murder and Necrotic Tissue magazines as well as THE GHOST IS THE MACHINE, a steampunk ghost anthology by Permuted Press, and continues to vomit his oh-so-astute literary opinions, random thoughts and nonsense at antoncancre.blogspot.com. No, he won't babysit your pet shoggoth this weekend. Stop asking.

The Legend of the Pumpkin Thief (Noble Publishing), by Charles Day

“One missing pumpkin certainly did not qualify as a visit from the Pumpkin Thief. But it was kind of cool, getting all worked up the night before the holiday, a special holiday devoted to celebrating evil and dead things.”

Nick seems like a pretty typical seventeen-year-old. He has a lot of trouble with the girls at school, just as much trouble with the bullies, and an annoying younger sister. He also has a fascination with mystery stories and hopes to some day become a detective. It’s his detective-like curiosity that leads Nick to do a little investigation of a local legend called the Pumpkin Thief. It all starts when the jack-o-lantern that Nick’s family had sitting on the porch steps disappears. Nick finds a paper written by a former student at his school and reads about a supposed creature that steals pumpkins throughout an entire neighborhood in order to really mess around with things and invite evil into the town. According to the legend, nobody knows where the Pumpkin Thief will strike, though the time is always around Halloween...

Nick doesn’t quite believe everything he reads at first. He has enough to worry about between all of the issues at school and outside of school. Lou, Nick’s archenemy, never seems to want to leave the kid alone, and he is completely outmatched in a fight. But when the Pumpkin Thief actually appears in the town these kids live in, there’s no better equalizer than fear.

The Legend of the Pumpkin Thief is a horror book that is written very well for its intended audience in the Young Adult crowd. One of its biggest strengths is surely the verisimilitude of high school life. It’s great that the book actually doesn’t get too bogged down in the buildup to the spooky climactic scenes; everything about Nick’s life has a chance to be fleshed out. Charles Day’s tale is just as much about being a seventeen-year-old kid with dreams as it is about horrifying creatures intent on the destruction of mankind, and that is what really makes the book in the end. The Pumpkin Thief himself is at first a complete mystery, but when he reveals himself his impact is felt in many ways. He really is a threat to the kids and everyone else in Nick’s town and they have to work together to get rid of the evil spirit.

This is a book that is a quick and enjoyable read for adults but might be just a little more entertaining for an audience that skews on the young side. Get it as a gift for the teenager who likes mysteries or a little Halloween spook.

visit the author's blog or buy the book here.

Review by Christopher Larochelle

Christopher Larochelle is buried under a huge pile of comics. At least that's his excuse for not updating his blog (where he used to write about them from time to time): www.clarocomics.blogspot.com. Visit it and encourage him to get back to updating.

Hunter's Moon (Omnium Gatherum) by R Scott McCoy

As a species, we are born hunters. No matter how removed from our distant past we may get, buying slabs of neatly packaged and processed meat from brightly lit coolers at the local grocery store, the genetic memory is still buried somewhere deep in our subconscious. That need to pounce and destroy. To feel the sweet, tangy taste of blood dripping down out throat. At the very least, to avoid being eaten ourselves. The stories in Hunter’s Moon deal with that relationship of predator and prey, approaching it in ways that are sometimes surprising and often quite entertaining.

The best stories in this collection showcase R Scott McCoy’s more playful side. “Jihad” is a great example of this, placing the reader in the head of a man obsessed with destroying the rodents that have overrun his house. Certainly, the analytic in me loves that I was never sure what was real and what was purely a figment of the protagonist’s growing psychosis but then he hit me with this: “I’m not leaving my post, Steve. If I do, this position will be overrun. If you want to help, bring me more peanut butter for the traps.” If you didn’t fall in love with that line, I’m not talking to you any more.

I could go on, with stories like “Bitch Queen” (kegel enhanced coochie and all), “Garbage Man” (always use a full sized portrait) and “The Find” (bigfoot-‘nuff said) but you get the point: McCoy knows how to tell a tale that is just downright fun. At the same time, his knack for building honest and true feeling characters gives the more serious tales like the heartfelt “The Last Line” and damn angry “Best Served Cold” the punch they need to truly hit home.

Unfortunately, there are times that McCoy’s old school, Serling-esque aesthetic gets a tad too repetitive and predictable. Most of the time, the personality and characters save those but there are times, specifically in the cases of “Stream Scream” and “Regular Customer”, where the story’s lack of a sense of cohesion or direction kills the experience.

McCoy isn’t out to change the world or shock us with his new and outrageous approach to story telling. His work makes it clear that he is out to do one thing and one thing only: spin a good yarn. Overall, despite a few minor missteps, he certainly succeeds with this collection.

Stop by the author's blog and buy the book here or through amazon, as always.

Reviewed by Anton Cancre

Anton Cancre is one of those rotting, pus-filled thingies on the underside of humanity that your mother always warned you about. He has oozed symbolic word-farms onto the pages of Shroud, Sex and Murder and Horrorbound magazines as well as The Terror at Miskatonic Falls, an upcoming poetry anthology by Shroud Publishing and continues to vomit his oh-so-astute literary opinions, random thoughts and nonsense at antoncancre.blogspot.com. No, he won't babysit you pet shoggoth this weekend. Stop asking.