Ancient Paperback Review: Spawn of Hell by William Schoell.

Spawn of Hell is the debut novel of William Schoell, an author who wrote a handful of horror novels in the 80s and early 90s, before jumping ship to a more lucrative career in writing non-fiction. In other words, he's one of a billion authors who came and went during the horror paperback boom, carrying on writing something else, to be largely forgotten.

One discernable difference, though. Ya boy William Schoell had fans. You'd be pretty hard pressed to find poorly reviewed work of his. Readers rave about the literary blast they have when reading the guy. To my absolute surprise, I found he even has a FANSITE. Sure, it's old and appears to be abandoned, but it's there. That is absolutely more than most of his peer group can say. 

You can hardly find a review on some of these obscure old dust collectors. But this guy, people think he is good enough to have a FANSITE! And he's gory! And his books have monsters! I had to read him. 

Why not start with this, his first book.

Spawn of Hell has something going for it that I just can't put my finger on. At first glance, it's just another "mad scientist/corporation creates a goopy menace with a taste for flesh and blood" story. Well, at last glance too. 

But there's a little more, a something extra that you just don't get with many of these books. It's schlocky to the absolute maximum, much of it playing like a soap opera, which is pretty standard for the time. The love story between our main characters is just out and out unrealistic. A bit boring too. 

So what is it?

The author can write his ass off. That's what it is. He gives a fairly typical of the day tale a vivid life with prose that it just doesn't deserve. I found myself far more into it than your average door stopper. There's some depth here, some comment on socioeconomic status with the Haves being bad guys and Have-nots being the good ones...with the exception of our love duo, who are an unlikely marriage of the two worlds.

I appreciated this, as a lesser book would just throw some characters in a blender and have some gooey tentacles rummage them, happy ending, boom, move on. 

I liked it. But it's no unsung classic. Like so many books from the time, it's overlong by about 50-100 pages, seeming to drag to meet some sort of industry standard. I can almost hear some hackneyed editor howling about all books must run a certain length and this needs MORE. And the same editor hardly could do his job. Holy woahhhhh, there's some HUGE errors in here.

All in all, it's worth checking out. I decided to pick up a bunch of the author's later books on account of the good time I had with this one, so something went right.

Give it a try. 

3.5/5