Undivine Interventions: Reviews of Horror Novels, Past and Present.

Here it is. My first novel by William W. Johnstone. A prolific and permanent fixture of 80s fiction, the guy turned out books constantly. In fact, he continues to today...even though he died in 2004. Puzzled? Me too. Anyway, the guy wrote hundreds of books, about 50 of which were horror, all published by Zebra. He has a reputation for writing books that are gory, ridiculous and repetitive. Sounds fun enough, right? Sure. Gory and ridiculous is my thing, and given just how much the guy contributed to the genre, I had to give it a go. I'm sorry, Johnstone. Rest ya soul, dude...but you are, hands down, the worst writer I have ever read. I stopped at page 230 or so, over halfway. This incredibly bizarre feeling of "I have read absolutely nothing, but am completely overwhelmed with how much shit is going on in this book at the same time" has enraptured me for days. Frankly, there's too many good books to keep reading dookie. And this is stank dookie. I don't car...

I don't know what happened here. I really don't. We had a classic set-up. A great cover. Loads of great Gothic atmosphere to start. A pretty cool main villain. This should have been a book I got really into. But no. It wasn't. It was an absolute dump of a book. A chore to read. A literary equivalent of watching paint dry. I was bored to tears as we get the ho-hum story of a young down on their luck couple fights off the titular creature, amongst other monstrosities, both supernatural and otherwise. In a graveyard. With a crew of retirement home aged ghostbusters. How the hell did it go wrong? Monsters in a graveyard vs. The old folks home!? How rad should this be!? Way radder than it is, my friends. First of all, the pace is just awful. It kicks off guns blazing, I really thought I was in for a treat in the first few chapters. Then it's a good two hundred pages before the story does anything of substance or semblance off entertainment. Dust settles faster than ...

Oh boy. In just a short time, The Feeding and I have cultivated a pretty tumultuous relationship with one another. I first heard about the 1988 novel through one of the horror reading groups I follow on Facebook, Books Of Horror. The book was making the rounds of several members of the group and garnering great praise for it's gore and general fucked-up-ness. With a cover looking that rad , and the general consensus being that it was fantastic... I had to read it. But everyone else did too. And I watched the price of the thing on Amazon soar in a few short days. I was lucky to grab it while it was still 12 bucks, as the average price of a copy is well in the hundreds right now. Yo, Leigh Clark, where you at dude!? Your almost 30 year old novel is doing some serious business. Anyway, I was so excited to read this thing that it literally trumped everything else in my to be read pile and the day it arrived I started to consume the thing ravenously, blasting through the first hun...

THIS is what I am talking about. What Do Monsters Fear is Matt Hayward's first novel and I am beyond impressed. I'm going to go ahead and say this is a must read, with strong potential for it to be on my favorite books to come out this year list. It tells the story of Peter, a former rock star with a crumbling life and baby on the way. Beyond that, he's got a drinking problem that is on its last legs of sustainability. Hitting rock bottom, he checks into a rehabilitation facility. Rock bottom doesn't seem quite as bad when strange occurrences start happening, patients start vanishing and all hell breaks loose. This book just has it all. Monsters, mad scientists, mutated giant cats, squishy gooey gore to the brim. It's an absolute blast. Great characters, a pace that is relentless, perfect writing... just a top of the line read. Out now on Post Mortem Press, I give this my highest recommendation.  5/5. Grab it here .

Michelle Garza and Melissa Lason, rightfully known as The Sisters of Slaughter in the horror community, have brought us Those Who Follow , their sophomore offering and follow-up to Mayan Blue , one of my favorites of last year. Since I heard this was coming out, I knew it was priority reading, as their aforementioned first novel was pitch perfect, earned rave reviews and even got them nominated for a Stoker award. Not to mention it was a fun as hell blood bath, with countless demonic creatures doing the butchering in a beautifully written hell. Those Who Follow is a short novel, published by Bloodshot Books, who are putting out tons of fantastic reads. One of my favorite parts of opening up a Bloodshot Book is the aesthetic...the small publisher makes their books look fantastic. If you haven't read something they've released, you've just gotta. So it's got the aesthetic going, but how does the story stack up? I am having a very difficult time summarizing the story,...

Man. This is a really hard one to review. Into The Pit was released in 1989 by Pocket Books, in the thick of the horror paperback boom. It was the first book released under the pseudonym Warner Lee by the author B.W. Battin, who'd already put a few books out under that name. The fantastically lurid cover art and some decent reviews of this led me to pick it up.  It's got a very EC comics vibe going for it, telling the story of Jason McGwire, a successful landscape architect. Jason is living it up with his second wife, Nyssa and his infant son, Michael. He's living a real American dream, with a nice house, a thriving business and day dreaming about playing baseball with his son in a few years. Problem is his first wife, Glenda, was a mentally ill witch who attempted to murder him, withheld children and participated it witchy group sex rituals before dying in a housefire. Now, She is attempting to reach him from the other side, to drag him and his son...INTO THE PIT... The fi...