Ancient Horror History Unearthed: Flesh Stealer by Pauline Dunn REVIEWED

Real quick. Two days from now and I will have been running this blog for a year. I just wanted to say thank you to all of my readership, the authors and publishers who send me books for review, all the suggestions made by fellow readers. It makes doing this more meaningful than I ever hoped it would be. Here's to another year of reading and reviewing!

And with this, I have come to a conclusion. So far, in my experience, if Zebra puts it out, it's just not good.

A fellow reader and reviewer whose opinion I honor and trust, Leon, the paperback maniac, (if you haven't checked out his YouTube channel, it's a must see... check it out here), referred to this book as the best Zebra offered in its heyday of putting out an endless supply of horror reading.

If this is THE BEST, and I do believe it is, I am hesitant to do much more exploration of their titles.

It's fine, honestly. Nothing is absolutely awful here. The artwork is particularly awesome. I will say it's endlessly better than Johnstone...

But holy hell, this has got to be some of the most cookie cutter reading I have experienced yet in the blog. And that makes total sense, as the sister duo writting under the 'Pauline Dunn' pen name were popped for plagiarism of entire passages of Dean Koontz' breakthrough novel, Phantoms in their subsequent books.

This one may not be as blatantly ripped, at least not word-for-word, but, I'll be damned if you haven't read this exact story countless times. Or maybe you haven't. And you'd probably find this much more enjoyable than I did, if you hadn't.

This is essentially a more linear, competently written version of the Johnstone formula. Oh, and without the awful right-wing propaganda...

You've got the slightly weathered manly man of a Vietnam Vet...named Cutter, of course. He's got a pile of troubled women weeping all around him and eager to sleep with him. He's a simple, tough guy who is straight to the point, with some traumatic experiences under his belt, to ya know, enrich his character. The hero.

We've got an ancient Indian mummy woman creature who is...you guessed it...stealing flesh every twenty pages or so. The first few times this occurred, it's appropriately gross and fun. After a while, you want someone to get dispatched in a different way.

Cutter and his crew of small town stereotypes, in conjunction with a couple of sciencey know-it-alls from the nearby university with a specialty department on flesh stealing mummy women, chase her around, get picked off, and we get a half assed version of why this is all happening thrown in the last few pages. Followed by the most WTF ending I can think of that has almost nothing to do with the story.

Sure, it's got some nasty, gory moments...an unintentionally funny highlight being when one of the collegiate types, who has never been with a woman, attempts to realize his lifelong fantasy of banging a 1000+ year old decaying one and it goes exactly how you'd think it would.

But there in lies one of the major problems I have with the book. The characters are hollow, dumb caricatures who do things either only to keep the reader alert or exactly what you'd expect. The story veers towards nothing exciting, just the standard deviations of "oh, we are writing a horror book, so let's do all the things we're supposed to."

All in all, it's an empty, repetitious exercise in the the standard of the day, with a little extra blood on top. A purely middle of the road experience.

I must admit, my curiosity is piqued by the widely publicized case (read all about it here) of 'Pauline Dunn' stealing Dean Koontz' literary flesh, so I intend to read "her" other two books, I'm just in no rush at all.

Also, Leon, I still trust you. Because, I am fairly convinced this is, in fact, the best Zebra can offer.

2.5/5.
Maybe a 3 on account of that gnarly cover art.