Zraitor

This time the author turns his crazy imagination loose on a horror story and the results are gory and of course very, very weird. ( I expect to say the word weird many times in every review for him!)

A group of teens breaks into an abandoned school to tag it up with juvenile spray paintings. It's planned to be demolished, but before that, they are allowing young students to draw all over the walls. Our group in the story wants to freak them out with their “wonderful” artwork before they arrive.

Led by Petey, a manipulative loudmouth, the group begins their tagging only to eventually come across Bunny, a very sadistic ghost whos entry into the story is absolutely crazy and fun. (And weird!) I hope you didn't like fish sticks too much!

Bunny, who has no real dialogue, still ends up as an incredibly interesting horror villain and his appearance is grotesque and described well. The attacks he launches against the group are both creative and insane.

Much like The Dead Well, this is filled with a lot of weird imagery, but horror flavored this time, but also again grounded by some good character work. Even though it is not very long the characters all have a lot of good moments and thought put into them, and I always appreciate when that is pulled off in a shorter work.

Also like The Dead Well sometimes it was hard to follow along with what was going on, but it wasn't the biggest deal. The action sees a lot of over the top weird moments that weren't always easy to make sense of.

This ends up quite violent and filled with one weird and crazy moment after another as the ghost harasses and attacks the group. The characters who could have just as easily ended up as yet more annoying horror story teenagers are very well done. The language used calls back to some of the stuff I remembered going to school in the '90s... very not PC! So while you should heed the author's warning in the store page description, check out this weird thing anyways, it was a dark bit of fun.

Another great horror short collection with a lot of variety...

Variety not only just in the tales themselves but with the writing, some are quite slow and somber and others zip along fast with lots of action and everything in between. The theme that we can all be monsters allowed for a lot of different stories, sidestepping the usual issue of repetitiveness.

From someone called forth from a swampy grave to get their revenge, people feeding something in a mine, Vampire hunters playing both sides, corrupt preachers to ... were sasquatches, the stories all explore people and their dark sides. Most of the characters here set aside their morals to deal with the things that happen or were already bad, to begin with.

The Cornucopia was my favorite, a preacher whose life was ruined by a fire set to his church now lives on the streets with the poor he once ignored. Eventually, he is given an item that creates a feast every day for the starving people around him, his new flock. He is told to never open it or terrible things will happen... It's such a great and dark story, the preacher and his inner dialogue was fun to read.

With each story being different than the last but yet still retaining the theme, great writing, and lots of wickedness and horror on display this one is worth checking out.

This is my first Shallow Waters volume and with these stories all being picked by votes this seems to have gotten around the usual hit and miss I typically find with flash fiction, these stories are of high quality.

Filled with all kinds of horror tales that range from bleak horror to dark comedy and everything in between this was just fun to read. All kinds of crazy ideas and imagination are on display here. I enjoyed wondering what each new one would bring because they are all mostly unique from each other.

Seeing as how this is a flash fiction collection, I'll keep my review just a flash too and not do my usual rambling on. Just know this is awesome and contains a lot of good, quick horror.

The author brings us back to that dark near-future world in “Shadow of the Day”. Here a woman calls an insurance company to update her policy, and as the conversation goes on very ugly things are revealed to the reader about the state of the world and her current situation...

The USA, now completely ran by the worst of conservative policies, offers tiers for police protection. If you don't pay, you don't get any. Young women, for example, are advised to get tier three, which includes police protection from sexual assault. Did I mention abortion is illegal in this messed-up future?

This is a very short story so I won't go on too long here. Offering an incredibly dark look at where our future is headed, this story just works and is so uncomfortable and believable.

Matt greets his neighbor, a hunter, who comes home with a stag with its head busted in. He tells him it just wouldn't die, no matter how many times he shot it, and that he had to bash its head in with his rifle to finally put it down... Also, it bit his hand. Want some deer steaks?

The next day Matt is awoken by the most horrible screeching sound, and after investigating it he finds his neighbor and family have become zombies, which causes an epidemic that very quickly spills over into the city...

This is action-packed and very fast-moving. The characterizations aren't very deep, and it also follows back and forth with a military base and all the typical soldier type characters and scientists that are working on making a cure that often felt like filler since they pretty much have the same conversation over and over but differently worded. It's always fun otherwise though, and man those action scenes are great. The zombies were done pretty well too, with both descriptions and just the general danger they always pose throughout the book.

It actually opens with one Dr. Blake, the creator of all this nonsense trying to steal some of his materials away after his project is shut down. He crashes his car after the earlier mentioned stag crashes into him, starting this whole mess. They only say at the very end what his project was actually about and it caused me to roll my eyes, how ridiculous!

Matt during his misadventures in the city eventually meets up with Melissa, a pharmacist who also has combat training, because it's a zombie story so of course, she does. Their back and forth banter is amusing and provides a lot of humor in between the over the top action scenes. Neither are great characters, but they are personable and enjoyable enough.

Will Mat and Melissa make it to the helicopter with the antidotes without it crashing? Will thing after thing go wrong for the pair as they try to make their way to the military base in time? Will the military base still be a safe place when they do finally arrive? Do things ever end well in a zombie story? Do zombie dogs infect? You know the answers to all these questions without reading, but it's still a fun book.

Shadow House, the first short story opens the collection and it is about a group of four female friends going on a beach house vacation. While en route one of them tells the tale of a break-in, of another four female friends just like them who torture an old man and perform some kind of ritual on him. But that was fifty years ago, what nonsense they should worry about that now. They are just gonna enjoy their vacation! It was a good story and has a wicked ending.

The other short story, Halloween Nightmare, shows us a woman who wakes up somewhere in a playground with absolutely no idea how she got there. I found this one a little frustrating at times, but I can't deny the incredible tension it builds up throughout.

The rest of the collection is made up of six flash fiction stories, and I enjoyed them all. The author shows a bit of a gift with dark comedy here.

A drug runner encounters a time traveler, a group of friends goes after vampires with a little twist as to how a police detective shows up at a crime scene of a serial killer, two friends find an envelope that just shows up one day in their home with only one word on it, a man leaves a bar stating he has run out of time and must hurry, and finally a woman has some very dark thoughts or does she? There was a lot of creativity here.

I found this to be a pretty solid horror short collection that is worth a look.

“...a butch lesbian plumber faces off with monsters created by science run amok.” With a sentence like that in the store description do you really need more to read this? Fine.

So Becca, the aforementioned butch lesbian plumber, discovers she has a brain disease that runs in her family, causing her much grief. She lives with her girlfriend, and much of the first half of this revolves around their relationship and back and forth dialogue, that got a little overmuch for me after a while. It was certainly cute at first, though.

During this first half, they also discover a strange crab that seems to be able to mutate at will and do a little bit of investigating the strange sickness that is going around town, causing black sores to develop all over people, all while also dealing with Becca's own health problem.

After the first half is finished and all is set up to go wrong, Becca is called into work, even though she is very ill from her brain disease complete with fainting spells, weakness, and the like, she eventually caves in and goes because it is an emergency and all the other workers have gotten sick.

The second half then commences and unleashes one of the most disgusting body horrors I've seen in a while upon the reader. It's glorious, and I'm not gonna spoil it, I'll just drop one little teaser. “A centipede made out of a human spine, with rib bones for its spindly legs, all 100 of them” There's a heck of a lot more where that came from too, as well as just some really gross scenes in general, and I loved those.

The characters aren't terrible but not too great either, and it suffers from too many of those little coincidences like Becca being a worker at the plant where it all goes down, and her girlfriend Kiki being a marine biologist that is seemingly involved in whatever is going on somehow, but the gross-out horror elements make up for everything. So if you're in the mood for that, this will hit the spot and then some. Don't like body horror you say? Don't worry,

“We will fix you. Make you whole”

Here we have twelve Lovecraftian stories being offered as the real cause of events that happened in 1816. Many of the genre tropes are there, and this has stories within stories within stories and is just generally awesome.

Whether you know a lot about the history yourself or don't and just go along with it as I did this felt authentic and offered a huge variety of plots. (It certainly made me do a little wiki diving.) It is filled with all sorts of strange and incomprehensible beings, Ghouls, your usual Lovecraftian “Deities”, and heck even the King in Yellow makes an appearance.

This truth is revealed through documents and letters collected all over the world and each one tells a story for each month of the year. The various narrators all must battle for their sanity as they come across things they can't understand. While most are soldiers and sailors and other sorts of military types, you get a great story about a Rabbi that was my favorite.

This succeeded completely in capturing a dark and foreboding mood and engaging my imagination, which is what I love about this genre. I enjoyed how the history blended in effortlessly with the Mythos stuff. The action is also spectacular. The soldiers, armed with muskets and sabers, must do battle with beings they can't even comprehend but can certainly comprehend that they are capable of tearing them to shreds.

Apart from the gore, which I love but always feel like I shouldn't admit, the descriptions of the creatures are just so fun and gross. There was real creativity going on here.

I won't be going through all the stories here, it would basically just be more of me gushing weirdly like I already have. The tales use a lot of the usual ideas but they felt original and the collection concept kept them grounded. I didn't even think there was a bad story. This was just excellent.

1816: The Year Without Summer ends as a fresh and exciting collection which isn't easy in this well-worn genre. I suppose choosing to stay ignorant and not read the truth this is offering you would be a warning right out of any Lovecraftian story but do it anyway, it is worth going mad for.

Kallie Bennett, a sixteen-year-old girl finds herself in her own version of Wonderland after falling down a hole chasing Alice. While there she must battle the evil Queen Hartley and find a way to escape...

I wasn't quite sure what to expect with this one, anything that likens itself to a bunch of TV shows always gives me a little pause. Although I like most of those TV shows named and I can definitely see the Buffy influence. I am not too familiar however with Alice in Wonderland beyond knowing it in a vague pop-culture sort of way.

Kallie herself is a great character that's quite relatable, she is a rather melancholy young woman who finds herself out of place in the world. She hates the superficiality of her friends and also has to deal with her abusive alcoholic mother. She also only confides in her cat Midnight her innermost thoughts. I wasn't expecting to relate to a teenage girl but I connected to her right away.

While in Wonderland she must deal with many crazy encounters, but she comes to rely on Ches, a vampire. Both pretty much fall in love with each other instantly, although they also both act horrible towards one another and push each other away. I always find this stuff tiresome but that's okay, they eventually get past it all and become quite close. Of course, he only exists in the Wonderland and she must deal with thoughts of losing their love as she gets closer and closer to escaping.

Most of the book is told from Kallie's perspective, but in a few chapters we switch over to Ches. We see from him the usual type of conflicted vampire character, and I wasn't too into him, to be honest. He basically just sees her, his humanity that was locked away begins to stir and he instantly loves her... He is not a horrible character and there is a chance he is given more development in the upcoming books.

While it seems all the Alice in Wonderland characters are there, just a twisted new version of them, Queen Hartley steals the show. She's absolutely ruthless and manipulative, and every scene she is in pure entertainment. Through all her mind games and spells she is a constant thorn in the side of Kallie and Ches and she was my favorite character by far.

Queen Hartley also yells off with their head a lot at everyone. Here, however, she doesn't mean it literally, it just turns them in a broken shell of a person who will never dream again. I found it to sound rather like living with depression and found it to be chilling stuff.

There are odd scenes in this I must point out. When Kallie's mother is introduced, she is said to be rolling around the floor like a dog. This was incredibly odd and I didn't get it. The mother scenes do their job well of showing the troubled life Kallie was living at the beginning of this and her growth of character later on though.

Then after Kallie falls through the hole and into Wonderland, she sees a bathtub and stops and takes a bath? That was even odder, why would anyone do that? I realize there needed to be a way to get her into the iconic dress, but it seemed rushed and against the logic of a person very much in danger.

This book is a little rocky to start, but once it hits it's stride it becomes so fast-paced which I felt worked for it because it moves quickly from one crazy scene to the next. It was easy to imagine it in my head like a TV show that the author so loves.

As Kallie makes her way through Wonderland, you begin to realize through all the crazy happenings and danger posed by Queen Hartley that this a journey of self-discovery and a coming of age tale, and a charming and likable one at that.

–>I received a free copy of this in exchange for an honest review.
Opening up once more in Redwater, this time in the past, we see a younger Hangman taking a group of children along and showing them just what happens to people who break the laws of the kingdom. Clearly intended to remind the reader just how dark and oppressive this place is, and it just does that, setting the tone once more. It was interesting to see things from his perspective as well as others besides our two main characters at times in this book.

But the story is mostly told from Nate's point of view. We see how he recovers from the effects of the serum, and how he gains new abilities from it. He also fills in all of his backstory, such as his time in the Underground Club. As he learns of Kitty's fate he plans his escape from the hard labor sentence and attempts to rescue her and the other survivors...

Apart from the new journey that the characters take, one that is headed towards the Outlands finally, we see things from the mutant's perspective too. We learn much about them, and how they see humanity. Nate even stops by a library at one point filled with books from the old world, and much of the history is revealed. Many questions are answered in this one. So many great things are brought up and I find it hard to talk about them without heavy spoilers so I'll just move on from that and say it was all well done.

This second book remains consistent with the first and what I found to be the strengths and weaknesses. The writing and world-building are still phenomenal, but Nate's and Kitty's overdramatic dialogue take up a lot of time yet again. Now that I was both used to it and expecting it, it wasn't so bad for me, but man they do go on. Nate also does some very annoying things with threats and whatnot that I felt were just there to up the drama factor, but I do have a very cynical mind. To be fair, there a lot of musings about freedom that I enjoyed, and I want to clearly state I enjoy them both as characters. They are joined by quite a large cast of side characters this time, and their presence thankfully added more dialogue scenes than just the romance stuff.

With this being the second book, most of the introductory things about the oppressive nature of their society didn't need to be explained again, and so we had a lot more action scenes and a lot of things that move the narrative forward instead of just the set up like in the first book. The rabid mutants were finally shown, so of course, that made me very happy. And because it amuses me to bring it up, so many scenes were bursting full of lovely descriptions of all kinds of food again, and hey Nate was able to enjoy it this time.

We end book two on a cliffhanger, and a promise of a fresh new look at things in book three, full of many more reveals and continued world-building I'm sure.

Sticking with its TV influences we start with Kallie trying to live a normal life and her relationship with West in between reading the lore sessions at the library. But soon enough she is drawn back to Wonderland after it calls for her help...

Once she gets there she and Ches, taking turns narrating again, are drawn into a rebellion against Queen Hartley. Hartley is once again amazing and basically the book version of an actor chewing scenery, and I loved every minute of it.

Kallie like the first time is just pulled this way and that way by everyone in Wonderland and she felt pretty passive once more, which undid her character development in the first of her coming into her own. She didn't seem to be the strong person that she was at the end of the first book anymore. Her romance with Ches is also constantly interrupted by something bad happening which just drags it out forever and this annoys me.

Ches though regains his memories including how he becomes a vampire. It is done with a dark twist of folklore which is fitting to the entire series. I found him to be more likable this time around, although the angst still grates a little.

In this installment, everyone's backstory is revealed. Kallie's destiny, why Alice is the way she is and Hartley and her sister Alana, who leads the rebellion. Pretty much everything about Wonderland is explained.

There is also a lot of action this time around. The rebellion means constant fight scenes with a lot of magical characters flinging around spells and it was fun.

More crazy characters, magical mayhem, and darker versions of fairy tales like you'd expect. Hopefully, Kallie regains her confidence back in the third and final book and the romance between the two ends in a satisfying way.

–>I received a free copy of this in exchange for an honest review.
After a flashback to Blaise to fill in some backstory on him, we are back to the three main characters, Kitty, Nate, and Thom navigating their new lives in the Outlands. The group tensions that the third book ended with are still there, threatening to tear the community apart...

We really hit the breaks and slow down the main story on this one. As the group argues and debates, argues mostly, on what to do about going back to the Kingdom or staying out of it for good. The drama this causes takes up a lot of the story, and the constant back and forth fighting and making up wore me down quite a bit. I like the characters, I really do. But this stuff irritates me to no end, they really just need to get over things sometimes. This one takes a long time to get rolling because of this, and finally, when they are attacked we get to some fun bits again.

The group is still living in constant worry about the Radiant outcasts attacking them. They hunt them everywhere they go and they do battle with Quen quite a bit throughout the story, who makes for a good and menacing villain.

And of course, with this taking place in the Outlands, we get a lot of lore in between the constant group bickering. I enjoy the Outlands and the descriptions of scenery always so it is still an enjoyable entry despite the drama. Outside of the characters and their relationships, this one is mostly about filling in everything about the Outlands and we learn even more about the Radiant's culture.

Since the story is slowed down so much, we get to see a lot more about all the many side characters. Riddle especially gets a lot of character work and is a great character. All the characters find themselves changing and their relationships are tested and changed too. As this is told from Kitty's perspective, we follow her as she trains as a warrior and deals with the two brothers' frustrating bond.

There is also a lot of action, just spaced out a bit. The battles with the Outcasts as I mentioned earlier are bloody and intense. The main group fights a lot too, and not just in arguments, a lot of fistfights break out in this one.

This book mostly felt like a huge set up for the inevitable returning to the kingdom and rebellion that we've been waiting for since they hopped the wall in the first place. The characters are well developed and established at this point so often I just found myself waiting for the other shoe to drop so to speak and for things to happen.

Seeing how they lived in the Outlands in great detail was well done and the action that eventually came was awesome. The characters fight simply way too much, but I do enjoy seeing how far they've all come from book one. Everything that has happened from the beginning plays a part in how this one ends and sets the stage for a huge showdown in the final upcoming book.

A group of bounty hunters escorting their prisoner come across the town of Barclay which is under attack by something or someone that leaves its victims torn to shreds...

This one is extremely well written, and the journey through the forest to find the attacker, whatever it may be, a war party of angry Indians or some unknown creature, sets a beautiful scene. Naturally, what happens in it is anything but beautiful...

Several bodies, or the remains that can barely be called that, are found in town. They have been torn apart so viciously they can't even tell who they were before. This book is filled with so much violence and gore, but it never felt excessive to me, and just added to the horror.

The town of Barclay is described well and brought to life by the author as well. From the lumberjacks, it's aged but capable Sherriff, and gold rush mining town history, it was fully realized. It made for a great setting.

All the characters in here are great, and once I got all their names down, that took me a bit, I started to enjoy them. They all have their own backstories and POV sections, which fills the book with a lot of personality. Led by Weston, a cowboy type who wanders after the death of his family, you also get Dutch and Phillips in his group, who you will slowly learn everything about.

They are accompanied, quite reluctantly by Baker, the deputy of Barclay, who is a racist loudmouth and immediately doesn't get along with any of them, least of all their Native American prisoner, Farway Sue who they brought along for his tracking skills in desperation.

The group's trek through the snowy forest and the battle with what they find are excellently done and the story has so many bloody action-packed scenes. But paced perfectly with this is the backstory of every character and the town, and there are just so many good sentences that stuck in my mind while reading.

Added to the physical horrors, the group undergoes psychological torment as well as they come to grips with what is real and isn't, and its effects on them. Weston especially deals with this later on in the story and no spoilers of course, but what he sees is pretty gruesome!

Wonderfully written, great characters, action, and gore and horror all done so well, this is a great ___ (Not telling!) tale. And lastly, while I don't normally comment on book covers, this one is effective and cool looking and is actually what drew me in while browsing for a new book to read, so there you go.

–>I received a free copy of this in exchange for an honest review.
Kitty is taken in for questioning by the Rebels on who is responsible for the plague and everyone prepares to take the fight to the Kingdom...

Where I felt book four was too slow this one, however, moves at an incredibly fast pace. We see the characters deal with all their various trauma and manage to repair most of the relationship woes that have always been a huge thing in these books. It was nice to see them all finally just chill a bit.

And of course action, lots of action! It's a war, sort of. Realizing they can't take the fight to the Kingdom directly the Rebels do all sorts of underhanded things to win which unfortunately includes some icky stuff with Thom. It does resolve his major issue of being used in that way though at least.

There are also a few more twists and turns left yet waiting for the reader even this late in the game. Every book in this series always still manages yet more backstory and world building and it was great again one last time.

This time we take turns with each of the three main character's perspectives, although Nate doesn't get nearly as much as the other two which I felt was a shame as he is finally likable. From needing to say darling every other sentence, to fighting with everyone for no reason, and just generally being annoying he makes a complete turnaround at the end at least...

As this is the final book in the series most of the story outside the fighting is about bringing the main character's issues to a close and it does so in a satisfying way. They still have their many mental scars but they all have grown and changed so much since the beginning and it was rewarding to see them all move on finally.

Kitty, Thom, and Nate and all the still-living side characters gather to take down the Kingdom once and for all. Can they, and what will they do with their freedom if they manage to win it?

After his adult children fail to come back from a supply run, eighty-year-old Vietnam vet Bill Hastings is forced to take his great-grandchildren out to look for food themselves, right into a zombie-infested world.

This short story handles the vulnerabilities of the children well and also the limitations of their great grandparent. He has all the skills, but his body just isn't up to the task anymore. He also has to attempt to teach them how to survive in the middle of a zombie apocalypse, but they mostly don't understand. I enjoyed his musings about the situation and his frustration with the children, this story had a bit of dark charm to it.

As he finally readies the children into his van and heads off to the grocery store, the story kicks into high gear with plenty of action. Does everything go well for the old man and his grandkids? Check it out yourself, it is a short read at twenty-two pages and very worth the time.

A collection of stories, most short and some very short, all about people trying to live in a zombie-filled world.

A man gets forced into a partnership with a skinhead, another gets thrown from an oil rig and ends up temporarily blind.. he hopes. In another, a mom estranged from her daughter drives across town to her burning neighborhood to attempt to save her, a man invites an attractive woman and her annoying kid into his bunker, because he hopes to get with her... This collection has plenty of variety in characters and situations all centered around trying to survive in the world after the zombie apocalypse happens.

It also has all the gore and ugliness you'd expect from the genre. Quite a few of the stories inject a bit of dark humor. But really like most good zombie stories, it is more about the characters. There was a lot of touching moments in this, in between you know, blood-soaked action scenes and people running for their lives. As they figure out how to survive, or just realize that there won't be consequences for their actions now, the characters do some messed up things to one another.

Also like most zombie stories, you have to deal with abrupt endings, and a bit of repetition in the fact you always know things just aren't gonna end well. There are flash fiction stories in here, but still.

Great gore and action, and good characters to give it all meaning. I'm not the greatest fan of flash fiction, but they were OK in this because they were treated a bit like a dark joke, usually with a gory punchline. I found the writing to be strong throughout. Pretty fun horror collection.

–>I received a free copy of this in exchange for an honest review.
->>Also, the very synopsis of this book is a huge spoiler for what comes before in previous books and there is no dancing around it so be careful if you are looking ahead in order.<
Switching to Thom's point of view this time, we learn how he survived and made it to the Outlands at the end of book two...

We flashback in the beginning to the night Thom, Kitty, and Nate are figuring out what to do about being called in about their then-unknown disease. As Thom eventually leaves he is of course captured after a short investigation into things and asks for an audience with the King. Although Thom is granted his wish, Nate and Kitty are spared; he is sent to the Hangman for his fate to decided. After a long period of imprisonment, he finds himself sold into slavery, and a gladiator forced to fight to the death in the Red Arena...

So right off the bat I happily say book three ups the action scenes considerably and is filled with a lot of violence and gore. Thom is also given incredible development throughout this book so the characters and meaningful moments are still there too, it was a great balance of the two I found.

Muntenia, the place Thom finds himself stuck in, is a place where certain prisoners are sent to die away from the eyes of the Kingdom. A very awful place for all involved, even the citizens who find they have no options to make a living so they bet their entire life savings on fights at the arena and hope for the best, creating a very bleak scenario. The people forced into this situation have to win twenty times to be free and to make it worse if they are purchased again the count resets to zero...

With this being the first time in the story we are taken to this dreadful place, the author makes a lot of great scenes describing Muntenia and the way of life there. It was rather depressing, but excellent world-building.

As Thom doesn't know how to fight himself, he always used manipulation and others to do that kind of thing for him in the kingdom, he luckily befriends Charles whom he trains every day with and becomes quite close. Outside of the fighting and surviving in this part of the book their relationship is the highlight and was done pretty well. In addition to Charles, Thom is part of a whole group of others that struggle together to survive this ordeal and it was all touching and rather sad at times.

As Thom fights and kills other innocent people to survive he develops post-traumatic stress disorder and dealing with his mental anguish caused in this time is a constant throughout the book. We know he escapes and gets to that place where Nate and Kitty found him battered and broken, but his journey to get there is filled with new friends and a lot of terrible experiences. With this section of the book so many old questions are answered and a lot of important missing details are filled in and so many story threads and characters are handled well.

In the Outlands, at last, Thom takes a long time to heal his many mental and physical wounds. He learns along with the reader many details about the Radiants and their way of life, and as I love the Outland scenes I really enjoyed this part of the book. Well I enjoyed the whole thing honestly, the things that irked me in books one and two were kept to a minimum, and with all the action nothing was slowing this book down.

In the end, with the three main characters and all their new friends finally reunited, we get one emotional scene after another as they debate and argue about their futures. Do they return to Cutta to take down the oppressive regime or forget it all and live in freedom?

–>I received a free copy of this in exchange for an honest review.
Set in a dystopian society, a thousand years after the fall of mankind, two people mysteriously infected with some kind of illness or disease, now branded criminals, take flight...

Opening with an awesome and gruesome scene in a prison, we see Nate beaten and tortured for his crimes against the crown and king, which are too numerous for me to name and mostly all unfair. We are shown just how brutal this society is to those who disobey its many laws.

Freedom and History are called “the most insidious and destructive aspects of human nature” and the most important aspects of society should be CONFORMITY, CONTROL, AND CONTINUATION, yes in all caps as you'll read in the very beginning. We are reminded again and again just how oppressive this place is during this tale. Anyone who goes against these laws is set to the same prison as Nate either to die or be committed to hard labor and he only survives because his family is rich and affluential. The wealthy can buy their way out of the smaller crimes, but they too are killed for most things to set an example and keep everyone in fear.

Nate barely survives his ordeal, and leaves for a few years, only to come back and get into trouble once again. This time, however, he drags his brother Thom and the one Thom is betrothed to, Catherine into his problems as well. Leading Catherine away from the guards in a mad dash to escape, they run all night only to narrowly escape the guards. Afterward, they discover they contracted some sort of illness during this, and as being infected with one of the many diseases that exist in the kingdom is a crime, they flee from the Crown and search for the cure...

Most of this takes place during this adventure, and Nate and Catherine have so much dialogue and back and forth arguing that it really wore me out and got on my nerves. They aren't bad characters, they have a lot of development and good moments, but man the constant bickering got old and fast. It was what the author intended, Catherine hates Nate at first and so, of course, they would fight. But it's obvious to everyone I'm sure a relationship is going to form here, and I found myself just waiting for them to get on with it.

The disease that inflicts them both, which I won't spoil too much, also completely ravages Nate. He is described as losing half his weight and looking skeletal, and always in pain and exhausted. It kind of seemed unrealistic that he was able to run around and travel as much as he did towards the end. Almost further taunting the poor guy is the crazy amount of food on display in so many scenes, I know it made it me hungry, at least.

The world-building is amazing, and this very dark and bleak place is so well done and fully formed, and I wanted to know more about it, which made this arguing dialogue all the more frustrating. I was being teased of tales of rabid mutants, plagues, the bite, and something called ‘The Thinning' but all I was being shown was them fighting and making up, only to fight again.

There really was a rich history and world developed here, and I'm sure it is greatly expanded on as this series goes on. Being the first of five! books this had to set up a lot, and so I'm quite understanding to the characters and not everything being shown at once. Maybe someone would be into their relationship, and I have serious doubts that I as a thirty-four-year-old man, and a very grumpy one at that, was the target audience for their budding romance.

But despite my issues with the main character's relationship drama, this book had a lot to like. The action scenes, although few in number were exciting, and the writing was great as well as the author's attention to detail. Every bit of the adventure is described wonderfully, and the world despite its darkness had a lot of imagination put into it, with all it's futuristic technology, like hovercars and many items that heal and change a person's body features.

As again this is the first of five books this doesn't offer a complete ending to the story, and everything is still up in the air waiting to be resolved. What fate awaits those who survive to the end of this book?

Unfortunately, I found these stories to have too much relating what is going on instead of just showing me. A lot of the mood and atmosphere was hurt by over-explaining everything. Just too much of they did this, and this exact thing happened, and not building up the tension enough.

Quite a few of them, especially the science fiction stories, seemed more like ideas and snippets of stories than anything fully realized. Now I really did think the ideas were great, the execution not so much.

I did enjoy the creativity and variety on display despite my issues though and I found this one to be just okay overall.

Short summary attempts:

Into The Dark- Two kids celebrating Halloween on their own seem to be hunted by some evil force.

Aspiration- In the future a resource-starved Earth attempts to send colony ships to another planet.

Jack's Lantern- A man makes a wager for his soul thinking he can outsmart the game.

Sable Woods- While at a cabin he uses for inspiration a horror writer finds his words and stories may be more real then he realizes.

Scourge of Colvine- A young man discovers a photo of his deceased grandfather that shows him an evil beast lurking in the woods.

Virtual Disjunction- A near-future Earth is heavily polluted and everyone is addicted to virtual worlds as an escape, ignoring the environmental dangers around them.

The Drenched Woman- A man sees a ghostly woman in the rain who is said to be an omen of death for a loved one.

Unforgotten- An elderly woman recalls the time she and her friends were attacked at a cabin in the woods.

Among the Fallen- We follow a young lady and her family trying to survive in a post-apocalyptic world full of zombie-like creatures called the Fallen.

Spectre- A woman coming home on the subway alone finds herself stalked by some strange alien creature.

Yes, that's right, a self-help book by a serial killer to you, his potential disciple. I'm sure nothing can go wrong.

Dr. Jason Carson takes us step by step telling us how to be more like him. Well at first he does. He often goes on ego-driven and way, way out there tirades on how he is God and you are a stupid weak person for believing him. Which is fine, you the (fictional) reader certainly would be.

He divides the world into two types of people, Heroes, and Victims. Naturally, he is a Hero for the things he does. Taking what he wants and savoring living. As he gives his lessons and manipulates the reader we see into a seriously messed up mind.

As this is satire (probably) it's very tongue in cheek at times, but switches back and forth from dark comedy to something quite disturbed at a moment's notice. He describes many violent acts against people and some very gruesome stuff about animals. It's not just the violence, he has many weird issues he goes on and on about.

He's obsessed with body parts, relishes the smell of rotting corpses, and glorifies charismatic con artists who use and abuse people to get what they want. He tells us stories from his life where he takes extreme lengths to get his kill such as losing a lot of weight to slip into the back of someone's vehicle.

There are sections where we take a little timeout and get a SURVEY where scenarios are presented to us and we are tested with three multiple-choice options based on what was said, one of course always being very bizarre and the “Hero” thing to do.

As it goes on he gives us a complete look into everything that made him how he is, even if he won't admit he was created that way by things that had happened to him and not born, or perhaps he just can't even comprehend that. Many of the typical tropes are in there but it's all cleverly shown to you.

The only problem this really has is that is it is limited by the very concept of it. It was not hard to guess what the outcome of his self-help would be and his ramblings get a little repetitive. But otherwise, it was very well written and done and the dark humor is enjoyable granted you can stomach the incredibly disturbing subject matter.

In a very cool and vivid opening, an explosion and a strange storm afterward cause those caught in it to fall dead only to reanimate later as blue-eyed zombies later named the Fallen.

Our main character Ryan Pendleton, or Rye as his friends and family call him, (also the many women that are always hitting on him probably) tells us the following fall of order and society. I liked this part as it seemed a realistic sequence of events that would actually happen. We have to get through a large information dump to get into this one but it was interesting at least.

Rye who was not only a lawyer but also incredibly rich due to selling a website he developed for two hundred million dollars used his wealth to secure a lot of supplies and a fortified position when he saw the way things were going with the Fallen. He is also handsome, a hit with the ladies, looked towards as a leader by everyone instantly, a skilled fighter, and picks up new skills with ease. Yes, quite the relatable everyman.

Initially, he hides out with just his wife whom he wooed with some truly cringy pick-up lines that he relates to us with pride for some reason. However, she becomes frustrated at the lack of power and running water and really wants a hot bath so she melts the snow. The same snow that fell due to the storm that created the Fallen. Yep. Sigh.

While trying to get meds to help her, Rye meets up with another group and they become fast friends. Rye finds he likes having others around and decides to build a community and works to secure it and find others to survive this apocalypse...

So while usually, I want things to move quickly, this moves TOO quickly. In a short period of time, the characters have a conversation, fight something, get supplies, and get back home. I would have liked these scenes to be slower and more fleshed out as they just end up without a lot of weight attached to them. This is problematic when a character dies and they just build a little grave for them and move on without any real impact on the group.

There is was also a ridiculous scene where the two ladies who end up in a relationship want to enjoy a hot tub with one another. That is all well and good but what is the problem here? The water! They even say that it isn't safe and still they do it. Rye himself even has thoughts that this was how his wife died and he shouldn't do it. But when they invite him for a threesome he, of course, joins in readily. Well, they don't die and then declare the water safe, plot point solved!

However, there is a lot of action in this I enjoyed and zombies are just always fun. (Well maybe not always but close enough!) The building up the community scenes were intelligent and thought out. I simply wasn't into the main character, but the supporting cast was fine even if very undeveloped.

Book two will switch to someone else's perspective so I'm all in for that. This still has some mystery going on and the stakes get quite high at the end so I'm still interested in seeing where it all goes.

Kallie now trains with Ches and tries to keep her life in Wonderland a secret while she suffers many attacks in the real world. The two must find a way to save Wonderland once and for all...

Ches is now her Guardian who must protect her while she fulfills her destiny and he travels back with her, much to the irritation of West, whom Kallie breaks up with. Although thankfully they keep their fighting to a minimum mercifully saving us from the most dreaded thing of all in stories... love triangles.

The love story was handled in this well so even I can't be too grumpy about it. If Ches succeeds he will be granted a wish and he wants his humanity back. But before that can happen they must maintain a platonic relationship as Guardians and Gatekeepers aren't allowed to be together but also thankfully this wasn't played up for cheap drama and was treated respectfully.

Kallie's training goes well and she becomes quite the formidable fighter and she somersaults around a lot. Her powers grow as well and she learns to open and close portals with ease which comes quite in handy. Ches is of course there to fight at her side and they make a great team battling the many evil mages and demons that pop up in this installment.

Yes, demons. The group learns of The Prophecy of Three, and Kallie has premonitions and dreams of hell dimensions opening up and their evil inhabitants pouring forth and destroying the universe. The author goes nuts with their imagination and gives us many different types of crazy monsters and it was wonderful. And just like the second book, the magical mayhem is again on full display and I enjoyed that also.

Stopping all these portals from opening and unleashing hell on Earth will take a ritual performed under a blood moon and requires three ingredients, the blood of the most powerful firstborn witch, the voice of a mermaid, and the Gatekeeper. Unfortunately, this will take the help of the traitorous Mr. Tibbar and although Queen Hartley is imprisoned, who knows what she could be plotting?

The writing in this one is great and very detailed and the author clearly has a passion and enthusiasm for their story. It moves so fast which works very well for it. We see a lot of fighting in this one too which is great.

I know the story has many TV influences but Buffy is by far the strongest as I see it and it was really cranked up here and this felt like a long episode of that at times which I mean as a compliment. It mixes very well with the Alice and Wonderland setting and the author brings it to life the best in this book in my opinion.

If it has any problems at all it is that the big plan in the middle goes exactly how I'm sure everyone will think it will so I was just waiting for that to happen... Also, the author really has a thing with eyes. The colors of everyone's eyes are constantly mentioned and almost always flashing. It's not a big deal but it happened enough for me to notice it certainly.

But anyways this brings the trilogy to a satisfying conclusion. Everything is answered and resolved, lots of action and adventure is had, and we even meet an awesome mermaid character. So read and enjoy one last fun and imaginative journey with Kallie, Ches, and all the others.

In the wrap-around story, Dan Suppers car breaks down in Kecksgille, Pennslyvania and he continues on foot only to eventually come across a burnt down building full of corpses. Further wandering brings him to a building with journals of four inhabitants of the town whom he reads, giving us four short stories. As he reads the details of their lives he begins to question his own sanity...

He reads of a group of teens going to a party at a church that ends disastrously. And of a hypochondriac who's deteriorating mental health causes him to pick up other mental illnesses and murderous intent. Another follows a seven-year-old boy with heroin-addicted parents trying to run away. The last is of a teenager inflicted with a medical condition that makes him tall and his limbs incredibly long who decides one day to fight back against his bullies.

These stories are all well written and the character work is great. They all offer a completely different view of life in this small town in Pennslyvania. They are also quite bleak and often extremely violent. The only thread that connects them is a being that manifests as different things throughout - Frankie Red.

Why does Dan just stop and read these stories instead of further seeking help? Why are these first-person accounts of these people that they couldn't have written themselves here as journals for him to read? And what do these four specific people have to do with him and his situation?

So while the writing in this is great and I loved all the characters... It is just so confusing at times. I mean I understand it all now but during reading it the transitions between stories happened without warning. One moment Dan is wandering around and figuring things out and the next a story just randomly starts up out of nowhere. In fact, the first time a story transition happened it wasn't even clear that Dan started reading a journal, it just started into Mikey and his friend's ill-fated party at the church.

Also while going through it nothing seemed to be really connected outside of the Frankie Red bits and I wondered what was going on with this. The author sheds light on this at the end with a little explanation telling us they didn't know at first themselves and they just made it up as they went along to make some of the already written material work before they turned it into a novel. Ahhh.

Now it does all get explained and makes sense if you stick in there and outside of the confusing short story transitions this was pretty good once I got into the weird flow of it. The author has a seriously deranged imagination. (That is a compliment.)

Although when I say make sense I mean be prepared for a completely out there bonkers ending that you may have sniffed out hints of as it goes on but no way are you prepared for the entirety of it. What the heck?

A ten-year-old girl is abducted and held in captivity as a child bride. Seven years later her older brother and the Sherrif of their town conduct an unsanctioned investigation of their own while the now seventeen-year-old girl plots her escape...

The character work in this is great. We see from the perspective of an abused little girl, the predator that took her, a police officer haunted by his failure to solve the case, the older brother who is obsessed with finding her, and even the alcoholic father. Every character had a lot of thought put into them and it showed. It certainly grounds this in a bit of realism that isn't ruined even by the out of place supernatural elements.

I'm not sure if out of place is the right way to say it but the psychic visions/dreams the brother and sister share clashed with the rest of the themes in the story in my opinion. They also never amount to much and everything would have worked out just the same if they weren't in it.

The main bulk of this is Cordelia James being held prisoner by a man that tells her to call him “Papa Stu”. He's a total nutcase who pretends God tells him that he deserves a child bride and commands him to do these things. The disgusting things he does to her not just in body but in mind are awful. Conditioning her and keeping her as childlike in thinking as possible is the way he keeps her control. If she steps out of line he chains her up in the basement for weeks at a time with little food and water.

Seven years of this go on and “Papa Stu” finds himself no longer attracted to Cordelia who is maturing into a beautiful young woman. He decides God tells him to get rid of her and find a new child to replace her. If you haven't figured out where the book gets its name from by this point don't worry it will become clear to you in incredibly gruesome fashion soon enough.

Just a really smart and well-written book. Nothing is wasted and everything is thought out from the characters to the police investigations and the impact on the communities hurt by this act. It also gets quite dark and violent. I like it so much I won't even do a bad joke about how YOU would be sorry not to read it. I mean you would, but I won't. Check it out.

Ray Siplino slowly loses his mind as his dreams are haunted by a woman he calls The Hag...

What starts as possible sleep paralysis turns into much, much more. Supernatural or mental illness? We go back and forth as we watch a teenager's life unravel.

The author brings his usual great character development to this story. Ray is a seventeen-year-old living with his brother and step sister after the death of both his parents. He has an obsession for having blueberry pop tarts for breakfast as he is constantly longing for the blueberry pancakes his mother once made. (And he absolutely flips out if given strawberry ones instead!)

The absence of his mother plays a big part in the story as her death seems to set up his issues and you feel the emptiness in this well not quite broken home, but certainly many things are not right. The two adults allow the underage Ray to drink all he wants and he soon becomes an alcoholic.

We see from his step-sister Jenna's point of view as well and she is always going back and forth from wanting to take to care of Ray to realizing he's not her family by blood and shouldn't be her problem. His brother Matt on the other just simply ignores everything as he has a problem with alcoholism too.

As the encounters with the Hag go on and Ray's mental health deteriorates more and more the story takes a very crazy and dark turn with a lot of out there talk about God and controlling the world with your will. With his newfound “realizations” he comes up with a plan to destroy the Hag once and for all...

Another great story. The shorter length is to its advantage as it would have overstayed its welcome otherwise. The imagery and violence that come later are quite vivid and gruesome. It does have a rocky start as the set up takes a bit of effort but once you settle in you're in for a (crazy) treat.