Ancient Horror History Unearthed: Blood Sabbath by Leigh Clark REVIEWED.

Not too long ago, Leigh Clark appeared on my radar as an author to get into. His first book, The Feeding, caused some pretty significant buzz in the ravenous 80s horror fiction community. That books sported some fantastic cover art, with some particularly brutal sequences adorning it's pages. While it was fairly pedestrian in it's presentation, the fact Clark writes very well, smearing his cookie-cutter characters with horrific gore and cruelty made it a fun, worthwhile read.

Clark wrote four books in the genre, 1988's The Feeding, 1994's Evil Reincarnate, 1997's Carnivore and this, his 1991 follow-up to the fairly revered debut.

Given the amount of fanfare that The Feeding generated, not to mention that I enjoyed that book, it was a pretty logical decision to move this one up to the top of my to-be-read pile.

Blood Sabbath is the 418 page telling of a 16 year old girl who gets wrapped up in the Occult, unknowing summoning an evil demon that terrorizes her, her family and a community of Californian socialites.

And it's fine.

Leigh Clark continues to be a good writer, skilled in ways many of his colleagues weren't. Just as in The Feeding, his characters read like the literary equivalent of plain Cream of Wheat, but his story is well-told enough to keep you reading and forgiving of his lacking characters.

What rose The Feeding out of the depths of librarian fecal matter was it's over the top approach and blazing pace. Unfortunately, that is missed here.

There's some great moments of brutality, but they're few and far between, with the book being far more concerned with the interpersonal drama that occurs between Heather, our teenage main character, her divorced mother, Karin and whoever is attempting to sleep with them. Most of these interactions would feel far more at home in a Lifetime original movie, circa 1991.

In fact, that's essentially what the book is. The Lifetime October 1991 movie of the month? The Lifetime Halloween Special? But with just enough gore and sex to make it more Cinemax material than basic cable programming.

I didn't hate it, but I didn't love it. I can give Blood Sabbath a decent recommendation on account of some very cool moments, one standing out in particular, where Heather's ex-boyfriend and his cronies get decimated by the demonic ongoings. Fans of The Feeding probably won't dig it as much, but will find it serviceable.

Long and short...you could do worse, you could do better.

3/5.