William Hall

While this could be considered Horror literature, to me Bradbury uses the horror device, through the demonic personages of a carnival from hell, to unfold a coming-0f-age story. Bradbury points out that the decisions a young person makes in that time of transition to adulthood can help or haunt them the rest of their lives. And, the decisions made are also very dependent upon the adult role models around them who are also carrying baggage from their own pasts. It is also possible that responsible adults may help slay their own demons by successfully guiding the young through their problems during their time of transition to adulthood.

This book follows an established horror trope where an old, wealthy man, wanting to know if life really continues after death, offers to pay a large sum to a small group to spend a week in a extremely dangerous haunted house. The small group is made up of four people - a somewhat crippled by polio physicist, his mousy wife and two mediums. Two former expeditions into the house, one in the early 1930s and another in the early 1940s had both ended in insanity or death. It is now 1970 and the one, now older, surviving member of the 1940s group is one of the mediums willing to enter the house to overcome his fear and defeat the evil that permeates the house. The physicist, not believing in ghosts, has invented a machine to clear the house of what he believes is residual noxious energy from past horrendous behavior that occurred there. His wife, though warned about the dangers, is more afraid of being away from her husband and will not leave his side. The other medium is a beautiful redhead who is the leader of a spiritualist church and has her own plans to clear the house of the ghosts that linger there. But whoever or whatever exists in the house has other plans and considers any of the living who enter toys to be played with and eventually destroyed. The story is filled with supernatural occurrences and violence, including sexual violence.

A fast read that kept my interest. However, I can't help compare the story to a blend of four Sci-Fi TV series: Sliders, Quantum Leap, Stargate-SG1 and with a little Time Tunnel thrown in for good measure. I take off some marks for reliance on the overused Nazi trope. Come on authors, find something new and imaginative rather than relying on the evil Nazi stereotypical villains. It wouldn't hurt to have some Stalinist Soviet Communist villains for a change. I was also disappointed that the ending left a lot of questions unanswered, but I guess the author plans to write a sequel or sequels to this book.

This second book in the Commonwealth Saga reveals that the Starflyer alien entity from the ancient crashed ship, named the Mary Celeste and found on the planet Faraway, actually exists. It is this hidden-in-the-shadows enemy that has infiltrated the Commonwealth's galactic society for centuries and through its controlled human agents, has brought about the mutually destructive war between the released Dyson Alpha Prime species and the Commonwealth. Old Commonwealth enemies must now come together in the fight to stop the Starflyer from returning to its refurbished spacecraft on Faraway and escape to continue its own deadly quest to conquer known inhabited space.

While sometimes slow in parts, this huge book, with an almost overwhelming cast of characters, was able to keep my interest until the spectacular, action-packed conclusion. Peter F. Hamilton has created a very imaginative and descriptively detailed version of a far-off multi-planet spacefaring society in which interactions between enhanced humans and other alien species is a given. Part detective story, part Sci-Fi action-packed thriller, and with just a hint of fantasy, the Commonwealth saga is well worth the read for those who enjoy well-written space opera fare.

After watching the streaming series Black Sails that is billed as a prequel to Treasure Island, I decided to pick up and read the original classic. Treasure Island has always been tilted toward a young adult readership. This is logical, since the main narrator and protagonist of the story is a young boy caught in an exciting, life-endangering pirate adventure. Even though many of the characters in Treasure Island appear in the streaming series prequel, I would never recommend the very adult themed streaming series to a young adult audience. It was interesting to see the continuing storylines and fates of many of the characters from the streaming series, so I can recommend this book to adults who watched Black Sails if interested in following the continuing story and to young adults as a stand-alone pirate adventure.

Even though this huge book ended on a cliffhanger, it was one of the best Sci-Fi books I've read in a long time. The Commonwealth is another tale of multi-planet human civilization set far in the future. It uniquely mixes together imaginative qualities of Frank Herbert's Dune, Isaac Asimov's Foundation and Dan Simmons' Hyperion. The core of the plot hinges on the discovery of highly advanced Dyson Spheres suddenly enveloping two star systems hundreds of light years away and the tragic cascade of events that occur when humanity builds and sends a special ship with its crew to investigate (hence the opening of Pandora's box). But there is so much more detail to the story, with its many well-developed characters, that includes the concept of life regeneration and body enhancement; practical wormhole travel, trade and communication between hundreds of unique worlds; a super AI assistant that inhabits its own world; interactions with truly strange known alien races; political manipulation and intrigue; and an over a century old, ongoing detective investigation into the terrorist activities of a group trying to stop what they believe is a shadowy alien entity, released from an ancient derelict spacecraft, manipulating humanity towards its own destruction, and who just may be right.

While I didn't dislike this book, I'm not sure why so many highly recommend it. Like so many authors, Nayler delivers a prediction and a warning about a future collapse of Earth's ecosystem, zeroing in mainly on the destruction of the Earth's ocean life. It is a world of fully developed AI and ruthless corporate/scientific machinations. In Southeast Asia a protective area has been set aside after an intelligent species of octopus is discovered to be creating its own form of civilization in that area. Split into three separate storylines, it can be somewhat hard to follow any connection between them until the very end. While the interaction with the octopi is the most interesting aspect of the story, it is disappointing that this aspect is not covered nearly enough. Subject matter of the book also considers the problem of finding a mode of communication between humanity and any form of possible future alien intelligence.

Like the past few novels by Blake Crouch, I finished Upgrade in record time. Crouch is best at making speculative science readable for the layman while rolling it into an exciting action-packed novel that unfolds at breakneck speed. However, I only gave this book three stars because it seems like Crouch has bought into the Greta Thunberg cult of belief in the near future total collapse of Earth's environment with flooded coasts and mass human die off leading to the subsequent future extinction of humankind. I was really rolling my eyes when I found he actually included a quote from the insane ramblings of Israeli troll Yuval Noah Harari. At this point in time the people of the world are being threatened from all sides. But are these crises created by the world's population or are they synthetic creations of a power-mad elite (like the World Economic Forum) with their hooks in compromised politicians and control over fiat currencies, corporations and commodities? Messing with human DNA will not create supermen, but can only lead to human suffering and death like the experimental MRNA injections are now causing among those who bought into the propaganda around a so-called “pandemic.”

I've read and enjoyed Peter Clines' Threshold series of books, although Dead Moon didn't seem to fit with the other three books in the series and I didn't think the fourth book Terminus was on par with the first two books 14 and The Fold. This book was another page turner that merged sci-fi/horror with Jason Borne-like intelligence agency, black ops bloody action. Such stories often work when a hard-bitten ex-agent teams up with a government-exploited child running from the bad men. There are only a couple of criticisms I have with the story. One, it doesn't do enough to explain the origin of the creepy phenomenon that affects the little girl Natalie and the other exploited children within the off the radar government “Project.” However, the concept that the children taken for experimentation come from the victims of those crossing the U.S. southern border illegally may unfortunately be closer to reality than fiction. Secondly, I was troubled that Clines, like so many in media today, was always hinting that racism is rampant in the U.S. The hero/protector Hector and the little girl Natalie are both Hispanic. The story mainly takes place in the Southwest where the Hispanic population is large and for the most part accepted, so why write that Hector constantly has to be worried about being targeted because of his race? It just seemed like another cheap shot at pushing division based on racial stereotypes to the general readership.

This is an excellent book for those who want some dark creature horror reading material with nice twists for the holiday season. The main character, Mina, lives in Galway, Ireland. She is a young artist, without a steady job, making enough money selling a few commissioned paintings and occasionally making a killing gambling at cards in order to afford her rent and keep her in booze and cigarettes. Her passion is sitting at public places drawing in her sketchbook the faces of people she finds interesting in the passing crowds. When a boozy friend, Peter, hits her up at the local pub to sell an expensive golden conure parrot to a friend and split the take, Mina sees a chance to make some extra holiday cash and agrees, using Tim's hastily drawn map, to drive the parrot to the friend who lives in a desolate part of the Connemarre countryside. After getting helplessly lost, her car then stalls just outside a dense, dark winter forest. With night falling, one horrific shriek comes from the forest, and Mina, locking the doors, beds down in the car until morning. The next day Mina with the caged parrot traverses the cold, dark forest looking for help. As the short winter day begins to wane Mina sees a tall thin woman standing in an open lit doorway of a compound wildly gesturing for her to hurry. As she runs into the lit room and the woman slams and locks the door behind her, Mina will soon realize she has entered into the nightmare world of the watchers, underground monstrous forest creatures who come out at night looking for prey. She joins a ragtag group of two women and a young man all trapped in a compound that keeps them safely behind a lighted, glass partition away from the roaming packs of creatures outside. At night in the glaring room light the glass reflects their image back to them, but the creatures on the other side can see and watch them. Mina and the others have to now try to survive on what little food and water they can gather from the almost impenetrable forest during the day. But they must be back in the compound before the light comes on at night or meet a horrible fate outside. Answers to questions remain to be discovered about the origins of the compound and the underground creatures. And, can Mina and the others ever hope to escape the dark forest? Taking Irish folklore to a very dark place, A. M. Shine has written a horrifically creepy, fast paced, suspenseful tale that also includes some twists that catch the reader off-guard and leave a lasting impression.

Considered a “sensationalist” novel of the mid 19th century, this complex story of love, friendship, betrayal, tragedy, deviousness and heroism was highly entertaining. Set in the world of 19th century England, with its caste system, the many and varied characters that come and go throughout the twisting plotline bring life to the story.

This book will give you the chills even if you're reading it in the middle of the hottest day in summer. Set in the middle of a Siberian winter along the twelve hundred mile long R504 Kolyma Highway, two men are traveling to a small isolated community in Siberia to film a documentary about the supernatural in this sparsely populated area of the world. The Kolyma Highway is known as the Road of Bones because it is built atop the frozen bodies of the hundreds of thousands of Stalin era gulag victims that died helping build the road that then became their grave. Teig is the idea man behind the project who is trying to jump start his failing career as a producer of documentary films. He owes his one last loyal friend, companion and cameraman, Prentiss, eight thousand dollars. If successful, the earnings from the documentary will more than settle his debt. They've made arrangements to meet a guide who speaks the local language and will take them the final leg of their journey to their destination. Traveling the highway in the middle of the long deadly cold Siberian night they find and rescue a girl, Nari, whose car has broken down. When the now four travelers reach the small village destination they soon find that it has been deserted; signs that all the people abandoned their warm homes and walked through the snow into the surrounding forest, some even barefoot. But one small girl, Una, the niece of their guide, is found in a catatonic condition huddling in her home. Why she was spared is unknown but the group soon realizes that something mysterious and dangerous is lurking in the surrounding forest. Nari calls it the parnee, a thing of nature; an antlered spirit with an army of animalistic wolf-like beings that can shift from the physical to shadow. With the little girl in tow, the four travelers now find they must flee for their lives back down the frozen highway pursued in the deadly cold night by powerful supernatural forces. The terror has just begun. A fast read that somewhat reminded me of the classic Algernon Blackwood horror story, The Wendigo.

I will give credit to the author for a very complex plot; however, I can't say I really enjoyed this book. This is a long confusing book in which the main characters are all suffering with mental disorders of one type or another. Due to this, the character narrations and time flow can never be trusted. Through these narrations plot points are doled out in confusing dribs and drabs and it is not until almost the very ending that the true story is revealed. Though many consider this book to be part of the horror genre, and while it at first has the feeling of horror, the book deals mainly with child abuse that occurs every day in the real world and the often unforeseen and lasting consequences from such trauma. I would say that the book falls more within the mystery genre and has absolutely nothing to do with supernatural horror.

According to the author, Peter Clines, he's hanging up the Threshold universe for now with the conclusion of Terminus. That's probably a good idea. Though I still enjoyed the read, of the four books in the Threshold series, I think this is the weakest. I read 14, the first book, some time ago and Terminus references that book a lot and in fact uses one of the main characters from that book in the story. My memory is hazy about the details of 14 so I always was left thinking I should reread the book to clear up a lot of what was taking place in Terminus, but nah. This time the boundary between perceived reality and a Lovecraftian nightmare reality is centered on a small uncharted island about a thousand miles from Madagascar. Like the apartment building/machine in 14 there is another such building on the island, but the machine is beginning to fail and the boundary between worlds is weakening, allowing creatures from the nightmare world to cross over. What's even worse, a cult of semi-mutated people, touched by “The Great Old Ones” and led by a beautiful but deadly zealot, is heading to the island to destroy the machine and make sure the boundary comes completely down, giving “The Great Old Ones” they worship free rain to destroy. With all the action taking place inside and outside the building, as I got nearer the big finish I found the story became confusing trying to distinguish between which reality the characters were actually in. I guess it was the Albuquerque Door effect, a reference to the second book, The Fold. And, on top of all that cloning plays a part in the story as it relates to a particular character. IMHO it didn't need to be in this story and it and the character could have been jettisoned for something more satisfying. Oh, and why do we never learn if the bright green cockroaches do anything but hang around the Threshold boundary areas?

The feel of John Langan's long, detailed, narratively driven Horror novel is very Lovecraftian. Veronica Croydon's tale, she being the younger member of the May/December marriage between herself and the missing professor Roger Croydon, reminds one of a Lovecraft story in which the narrator relates a horrific event or situation that happened to a friend or colleague (or in this case husband) that the narrator witnessed and took part in. Like in Lovecraft stories, the reader is given a glimpse into another, almost indescribably dark reality or dimension that the character(s) have unfortunately opened a way into. Langan doesn't rush the reader through Veronica's tale of her husband's disappearance, but slowly lets the horror build with all its many faceted details. A short excerpt from the book gives you some idea of what I'm talking about. “I had more information than I knew what to do with. Alcoholic painter-shamans; magic formulae for bringing houses to some kind of weird life; malevolent entities offering sinister deals; ghosts trapped who knew where by paternal curses; strange visions and sensations; and, to cap it all off, a spirit map; I wasn't living one horror story; I was the screaming heroine in a B-movie marathon.” The reader must me patient because Veronica has a lot of ground to cover, but it's a long, strange trip well worth travelling to its final dark destination.

Interesting read, but Nazis again? The story theme is kind of a rip off of Indiana Jones: Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Peter Clines' Threshold universe reminds me of the filmic Cloverfield universe. It's strangely Lovecraftian and sits lurking just on the other side of perceived reality waiting to grab with its tentacles the unsuspecting and pull them to their doom. This third journey into that universe is set at a future time when permanent manned bases have been built on the moon and spacecraft are routinely launched from and return to hookups on Earth's space elevators. In a time of future Earth's overpopulation one of the main uses for the moon is to preserve and bury Earth's dead. It is the main job of Caretakers at various graveyard outposts to bury and mark the graves of the deceased who are constantly being shuttled to the moon for internment. Of course there are also tourist and mining industries on the moon with the main city/base being Luna City. When an ancient Lovecraftian “something” crashes into a graveyard near one of the Caretaker bases a horror is unleashed and the continuing story merges elements from tales of zombies, hostile aliens and space action-hero adventures (think Alien II combined with World War Z and The Thing). And, it mainly comes down to one of the novice Caretakers and her veteran and former Marine Caretaker partner to try and save as many lunar lives as possible and keep the menace from reaching Earth. Somehow Peter Clines manages to pull together all these elements to create an edge-of-your-seat, page-turning, Sci-Fi/Horror tale.

This is another book covering the quantum alternate/parallel universes topic that has been a hot theme of late (having also recently completed reading Dark Matter by Blake Crouch). While the action is non-stop I found the characters and set pieces somewhat irritating at times. This story swirled around a near perfect father, with the silly name of Jeffy, and his near perfect pre-teen daughter Amity. After the quirky “homeless” Ed leaves a mysterious package with Jeffy, telling him to never open it but keep it hidden and safe for a year, things soon spiral out of control. Jeffy and Amity will soon find themselves pursued by Deep State thugs, looking for Ed and the device contained in the mysterious package. Forced to use the device, Jeffy and Amity soon learn that other versions of their reality exist, most of them far more bizarre and dangerous than their home reality. While confronting one dangerous situation after another, Amity still looks to replace the mother that abandoned her and her father, Michelle, with another, better version. They must find help along the way in order to stay alive and reach a safe haven in a new reality.

This is one of those books you don't want to put down until the end. But, before you read this book I suggest, if you haven't already, read the classic horror story The Willows by Algernon Blackwood. This story, that definitely falls under cosmic horror, is an excellent homage to Blackwood's story. Like many such tales it poses the idea that there are other dimensions or worlds separated from our world by a thin veil and that sometimes openings may be torn in that veil allowing bleed through. In this case an object brought into a quirky museum, made up of strange objects and various preserved animals through the taxidermic arts, holds the power to punch a hole through the wall of the museum and into another world of cement bunkers, flowing water, misty white light and massive amounts of foreboding willow trees. While newly divorced Kara is looking after her uncle Earl's museum, she and her friend Simon, from the coffee shop next door, find and enlarge an opening in the wall of the museum and discover a cement bunker and tunnel that leads them to the dangerous Willow world. What follows is an edge-of-the-seat, unforgettable horror adventure into the unknown.

A rift develops between Duke Leto and Lady Jessica when she is ordered by the Bene Gesserit to secretly limit Noble House genetic selections for a possible arranged marriage for the young Paul and Leto discovers Jessica's manipulations. The rift widens when the Bene Gesserit forces Jessica back to their home world against the express demands of Leto that Jessica should not go. Meanwhile a vendetta against Emperor Shaddam IV by a radical family member from the leadership of CHOAM wipes out many heads of the Noble Houses when a terror plot against the Emperor is carried out. Leto considers requesting the Emperor grant him other worlds to be placed under Atreides control in lieu of the power vacuum created by the terrorist event while at the same time the terrorist leader contacts Leto and asks him to join with him in overthrowing the Emperor.

I wouldn't rate it as high as the author's book The Hollow Places, but it is still a good, fast-paced adventure into the strange unknown and I like that she pays homage to classic horror stories, in this case The White People by Arthur Machen.

Searching for another book in the horror genre I came across The Rust Maidens which seemed like it would be a unique and strange tale. Though very unique, the book turned out to be nothing like I expected. I guess it does fall into the genre of modern gothic horror, but I found the story only mildly interesting. I would say unlike creepy horror this story is more like a modern dark fantasy fairy tale. After twenty eight years the main character, Phoebe Shaw, comes back to visit her mother at the place she grew up, on Denton Street in Cleveland, Ohio. She left soon after her graduation in 1980 and after the strange events that occurred there that summer. Her best friend and cousin Jacqueline, along with four other neighborhood girls, began to metamorphose; their flesh withering and falling away to reveal rusted metal instead of bones, gray water pouring out of the wounds and finger nails turning to shards of glass. What happens to these girls is symbolic of the Cleveland environment they are living in. The main employment for the fathers on Denton Street is the local steel mill. The summer of 1980 sees an impending strike about to take place; a strike that will lead to the closing of the mill and a foreshadowing of Cleveland becoming another rust belt city. The eighteen-year-old Phoebe is an angst filled wild hair that longs to escape with her best friend Jacqueline a desolate Cleveland future. Their plans are foiled when Jacqueline begins to change and Phoebe tries desperately to find a way to stop the metamorphosis, even though the adult inhabitants of the street seem to have little empathy for the girls, including the girls' parents. After the story of the Rust Maidens is published by the reporter sister of one of the girls, government agents arrive and gawking tourists flock to the street. It will take the now forty-six-year-old Phoebe to unwind the full story and fate of the Rust Maidens as all the houses on Denton Street are methodically being demolished to make way for new condos. And, when she meets an eighteen-year-old girl, Quinn, still living along the barren and decaying Denton Street she will be confronted with the fact that what occurred twenty eight years ago is happening again.

This is another edge-of-your-seat mind-bender of a story by Blake Crouch, as good as his Dark Matter novel. His book poses the questions “What if something like the “Mandela Effect” were real, called False Memory Syndrome, and what if through technology the manipulation of peoples' memories could actually change reality?” He takes those questions and with some scientific speculation leads the reader through a nightmarish type of “Groundhog Day” scenario that ultimately may lead to the end of civilization. Romance and heartache involving the two main characters is woven into the story, but this is far from a romantic comedy. I couldn't stop turning the pages and highly recommend this book for those who enjoy speculative Sci-Fi thrillers.

A fairly good follow-up to Wyndham's original “Day of the Triffids” that started out well but went a bit over-the-top at the end. Years after the ending of the original book that left the main character Bill Masen, his partner Josella and a group of survivors taking up residence on the Isle of Wight, Bill Masen's grown son and pilot, David Masen, begins an adventure of his own after a passing cosmic dust cloud blocks out most of the sunlight, throwing the world into darkness. When David is forced to make a crash landing on a floating mass of debris, weed and triffids during a reconnaissance flight, he finds a young feral girl survivor who appears to be immune to the triffids' stings. Eventually he and the girl are picked up by a passing steamer and the story moves to America and into what appears to be a restored and thriving New York City. But the city holds a dark secret and David will eventually find out that the fanatical leader of the city is an old enemy from his father's past. After becoming romantically involved with the beautiful daughter of the city leader, David is shanghaied and taken by submarine to a settlement in the Southern region of America. There he soon falls in with a group of rebels called Foresters trying to stop the evil plans of New York City's leader. All the while the main story unfolds the triffids are continuing to mount greater threats against humanity and David and the Foresters soon find out that the triffids are rapidly mutating, creating different and more dangerous versions of the menacing plant.

While remaining true to the Lovecraft Mythos and its pantheon of the Great Old Ones, Michael Shea provides his own more modern unique and entertaining twist on the Mythos in this anthology. Shea moves the focus of the majority of the Lovecraftian horror from the New England east coast to the west coast San Francisco Bay area, although he does return to Antarctica in couple of the stories where HPL set his story “At the Mountains of Madness.” There is a running theme throughout the anthology of the Great Old Ones, with the help of their minions, beginning to establish a beachhead on Earth where they seek to reveal themselves to various individuals and either recruit them or physically absorb and merge them into themselves. A quote from the end of the short story “Dagoniad” points this out. ““But I've been hearing things. Before all this I mean. I've been hearing about shoggoths. I've been hearing about Cthulhu himself. “ What are you telling me?” “That somehow, this is a focus. That the Great Old Ones are...at the gates. Are picking the locks.”” These stories are full of skin-crawling horror that should satisfy fans of H. P. Lovecraft.