Ancient Horror History Unearthed: Shivers by William Schoell REVIEWED.

William Schoell and I meet again! Frankly, we are going be meeting a whole bunch, because his books are fun, goopy and pulpy, just how I like them. In fact, three or four more of his books are in my to-be-read pile right now.

This, Shivers, is his sophomore offering to the literary world, originally published by Leisure Books in 1985. I reviewed his debut, Spawn of Hell, a few months back and you can read that here.

Upon that post, Mr. Schoell was kind enough to endorse the blog, as well as comment on the review, shedding some backlight on his career. He stated that his books got better as they went along. And I would say Shivers is indicative of that in many ways.

Shivers plays a bit like Spawn of Hell on a bigger budget, with a clearly more solid editing job, a cleaner presentation and aesthetic to boot. What a killer cover on this thing.

We have many of the same story tenents going on, (searching for a lost sibling, goopy menace dwelling under the city, corporate entity vs. the every-man, etc.) but much more well told. On Leisure's end, it seems that they put more funding behind this release, too. The books seems to have been submitted a good extra handful of times to editors to ensure none of the silly errors that plagued the first book occurred here. That foil, embossed cover lends itself to the marketing of the book too... outside of the fact that it has absolutely NOTHING to do with the book. However, if you've read some 80s horror fiction, that shouldn't bother you much, as that practice was pretty common place.

Slap a cool cover on a book and it's sure to sell a few copies in 1985.

The story itself is fun, a horror/sci-fi/mystery hybrid telling the story of a mind controlling creature that lives under New York City. A cast of characters are subjected to it's ways in various goopy and vicious ways, being smashed, smooshed and slashed by all sorts. It gets a bit tangential and overloaded with characters to the point where it can be a bit hard to follow, but it's still worth a read.

I stand with Schoell in that I believe it is marginally better than his first book, which I also enjoyed, only feeling that this one is more polished. He does a particularly good job of creating the vibe of NYC circa the mid-80s.

I look forward to watch Schoell grow as a writer, as I read through his bibliography of gruesome horror novels.

You can order the book under it's original title in e-book format here for just 2.99! But you won't get that awesome cover art...