The Fall by Guillermo del Toro & Chuck Hogan
Authors Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan move the world of their apocalyptic vampire saga to a darker place in the second of their STRAIN trilogy, The Fall. This second volume is short, at less than 300 pages, and makes for a satisfying companion when read back-to-back with the first in the trilogy, The Strain. I will reference some spoilers to The Strain below,
June 17th, 2016. Jason Golomb´s rating: 4 | Guillermo Del_Toro | Horror | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |
The Strain by Guillermo del Toro & Chuck Hogan
Abraham Setrakian had witnessed and survived horrible evil when he was a young man. He’d made it out of a Nazi death camp in Poland, but the horror brought about by the Germans was not what kept the professor awake at night. It was the Stroigoi — the vampire — he’d seen feed on his camp mates. It was this that haunted Setrakian. And now it was time for revenge.
What he saw before him was not an omen — it was an incursion.
June 16th, 2016. Jason Golomb´s rating: 4 | Guillermo Del_Toro | Horror | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |
The King Must Die by Mary Renault
“The voices sank and rose, sank and rose higher. It was like the north wind when it blows screaming through mountain gorges; like the keening of a thousand widows in a burning town; like the cry of she-wolves to the moon. And under it, over it, through our blood and skulls and entrails, the bellow of a gong.”
Mary Renault weaves a tale so mythic in scope, that the story itself is only outshone by her fabulous prose. Renault takes the myth of Theseus and the Minotaur and works her narrative like Hephaestus works meta:;
June 15th, 2016. Jason Golomb´s rating: 5 | Mary Renault | SFF Reviews | 6 comments |
Steve Alten’s The Loch is full of clichés — the dialogue, the narration, and the plethora of borrowed plot lines from Jaws. You know the good characters from the bad. You can predict which ones will die violently (and deservedly so), and you know which bad guys will turn out to be good guys. But you know what, I thoroughly enjoyed this thriller and I’m not ashamed to admit it. I found myself staying up through the wee hours to get through “just one more chapter.”
June 9th, 2016. Jason Golomb´s rating: 3 | Steve Alten | Horror | SFF Reviews | 5 comments |
I defy you to read Ezekiel Boone’s The Hatching and not feel that persistent but subtle pull against your leg hairs, or periodically feel for that brushing sensation against the back of your neck. The Hatching is the first novel in a series about spiders killing everyone and taking over the world. They don’t take over the world a la evil scientist, but attempt to take the Earth for their own 8-legged arachno-purposes. You know, eating,
June 7th, 2016. Jason Golomb´s rating: 3.5 | Ezekiel Boone | Horror | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |
Here are a few shorter SFF works that we read this week that we wanted you to know about. Some great finds this week!
Blood Grains Speak Through Memories by Jason Sanford (March 2016, free at Beneath Ceaseless Skies, free ebook available on the author’s website)
Frere-Jones Roeder is the anchor of her land, charged with its protection and maintenance. The blood grains flow through her body, sharing memories of past anchors and giving her senses knowledge of all of the life and activity on her two-league plot of land,
June 6th, 2016. Tadiana Jones, Marion Deeds, Jason Golomb and Kat Hooper | Jo Walton, Joe Hill, Michael J. Sullivan, Paul S. Kemp | Short Fiction | SFF Reviews | 3 comments |
Black Rain is terrific summer reading fodder that fits squarely in the realm of the lighter-weight Dan Brown-esque genre of tech-thrillers. Other leaders of this genre include James Rollins and Jeremy Robinson, whose stories are a bit formulaic and their characterizations often thinly built.
Graham Brown, however, brings new energy. His core plot involves the Mayan creation myth called “Popul Vuh.” After having discovered several crystals that suggest the existence of a tremendous new energy source, a semi-secret non-governmental organization goes to Brazil to find their source.
June 3rd, 2016. Jason Golomb´s rating: 3 | Graham Brown | Horror | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |
The City of Mirrors by Justin Cronin
The lengthy journey from Justin Cronin’s vampire apocalypse The Passage comes to a full conclusion (and maybe a bit more) in the third and final book, The City of Mirrors. If The Passage was absolutely great (and it really, really was), and the sequel The Twelve was good but not quite as, mostly due to it feeling much more its length than the first book did, then The City of Mirrors falls somewhere in between,
June 3rd, 2016. Bill Capossere and Jason Golomb´s rating: 4 | Justin Cronin | SFF Reviews | 4 comments |
My only disappointment in Stephen King’s Desperation is that it isn’t longer. This book contains all that makes King so enjoyable to read: strong and believable character development; intuitive and subtle understanding of the childhood psyche; horror as defined by what’s creepy, intense, psychological and sometimes gothic; mythological back-story that superbly connects past and present; and the believably supernatural.
Several travelers, mostly strangers to each other, are abducted by a seemingly deranged Sherriff and taken to the dusty Nevada town of Desperation.
June 1st, 2016. Jason Golomb´s rating: 5 | Stephen King | Horror, Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |
Justin Cronin’s 2010 apocalyptic-vampire thriller, The Passage, debuted in the midst of the mass consumer love affair with the weird and supernatural. In the evolution of the vampire in pop culture, Anne Rice turned Bram Stoker’s blood-sucking villain into a romantic lead. Stephenie Meyer morphed Lestat into a high school heart-throb. Justin Cronin pulled the genre up and out of its romanticized and stagnating plateau to give the publishing world something more epic,
May 30th, 2016. Jason Golomb´s rating: 4 | Justin Cronin | SFF Reviews | no comments |
What a fascinating exploration of Edwige Fenech's contributions to the giallo genre! I love how the post highlights her unique…
Pretty challenging book. Cut by half, speed up the cadence. Trying to figure out the plot, the main point of…
Thanks for the kind words, Marion! Coming as they are from a professional writer, they are much appreciated!
Wonderful review, Sandy.
The "body count" bothered me a bit less because being dead seemed more like an inconvenience than anything else... unlike…