Author of sci-fi/fantasy, horror and adventure/thriller fiction

SURVIVOR’S SONG by Paul Tremblay

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SURVIVOR’S SONG by Paul Tremblay is a literary “zombie” novel with a lot of heart, not a little heartbreak, and a very high degree of realism such it all felt fairly real. I quite enjoyed it.

In the near future, Massachusetts is under quarantine as a new rabies-like disease ravages the animal and now the human population. Like rabies, it’s spread through saliva, but unlike rabies, it incubates in a very short time. When Dr. Ramola Sherman gets a call from Natalie, an old friend who is now eight months pregnant, she hears a frantic plea for help: Natalie has been bitten. Thus begins a journey across a crumbling state to save Natalie and her child before it’s too late.

What I liked: The first thing has to be the world building. I especially enjoy apocalyptic stories where we see the center give way and the rest falling apart. Tremblay’s quarantine zone is filled with panicking people who react in many ways, from denial (including the main characters, to an extent) to paranoia and aggression, along with infected animals and people who lurch and rave as they randomly attack. The police are still in action but overtaxed, vigilantes are taking matters into their own hands, and the hospitals are flooded and starting to break down. Everything rolls out fairly realistically, which made the world feel utterly real to me. The characterizations are for the most part very strong, even the minor characters, and I rooted for Natalie to make it however dimmed her prospects became. I particularly liked two teenagers who treat the apocalypse as something they’ve long awaited and trained for by watching zombie movies. When the story moves, the tension and action are realistic and satisfying.

I had some reservations, notably some long digressions that broke the pacing and tension for me, as well as finding Ramola to be not being nearly as strong a character as Natalie. Despite this, I enjoyed SURVIVOR’S SONG quite a bit, and after reading dozens of zombie novels, found it a standout in a genre to which I’d grown jaded, along with being a solid horror novel overall.

COMPLEX by Brian Keene

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Brian Keene’s COMPLEX is thrilling survival horror. While it’s short on answers, it’s a lot of fun, a nice pulpy escape.

The novel follows a series of people living in a low-end apartment complex, including a mom and her son newly arrived to the complex, two potheads hiding out after a score, a writer at the end of his career and rope, a transsexual, a tough old lady, a Vietnam vet, and others. The wide cast find themselves in the midst of a bizarre apocalypse, as naked people flood the complex bent on sadism, torture, and slaughter of anything living. Thrown together by circumstance, these people must fight to survive the night.

The madmen are great, tribal and deranged and utterly homicidal, like something from the brutal world of CROSSED or GHOSTS OF MARS. Led by a large brute they nickname Tick Tock, they scour the complex and the town, searching for the living while our heroes suffer, struggle, fight, and sometimes die, delivering plenty of action. As for our heroes, they’re likeable, tough, and resourceful, though their best is no match for the invading horde.

Some might take exception to a lack of answers by the end, but overall, I thought it was a lot of fun, which I’d guess was Keene’s sole intent.

UZUMAKI by Junji Ito

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Junji Ito’s manga UZUMAKI is a weird and wild horror story about a Japanese town plagued by the “spiral curse,” which begins to spread until it threatens to devour everything. I absolutely loved the art, original story, and haunting strangeness of it.

The manga is a collection of series of interconnected stories about Kirie Goshima, a teenage girl whose boyfriend, Shuichi Saito, believes their town is haunted by uzumaki, the spiral and mesmerizing secret shape of the world. Time after time, she sees people become obsessed or infected by spirals. As the incidents mount, the spirals grow until becoming a whirlpool threatening to consume everything.

In some ways, the story reminded me of PI, a 1998 film about a man who discovers a number that is one of the names of God and drives him to the brink of madness. UZUMAKI has the same level of originality and strangeness, though it takes its concept much farther, straight to an unflinching, very satisfying finish.

If you like graphic novels/manga and horror (or anything just plain weird), check out UZUMAKI. It’s a lot of fun.

WASTELANDERS by K.S. Merbeth

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K.S. Merbeth’s WASTELANDERS, which puts her novels BITE and RAID in a single volume, tells the story of Kid, a young girl struggling to survive another day in a post-apocalyptic American wasteland until teaming up with a band of misfit marauders straight out of the Frankenstein child of THE ROAD WARRIOR and the game BORDERLANDS.

The stories are packed with post-apocalyptic tropes and adventures with Kid finding her way in a marauding tribe, where morality has little survival benefit but where she does discover a personal code. Along the way, she toughens up to become a raider herself, as the gang plows through one problem and enemy after another. The fun is in the fact this gang are the bad guys, a mini version of Lord Humongous’s army, and they’re in it to survive and have a good time doing it. Merbeth does a good job making these raiders sympathetic if morally gray, prone to betrayal, and occasionally cannibalistic, largely by showing how worse everybody else is in this insane post-apocalyptic world.

While WASTELANDERS might have benefited with an overarching plot where by unlocking a dormant morality or through naked self-interest they make the world a better place, the stories offer plenty of fun romping around this Mad Max world trashing enemies and surviving by the skin of your teeth, with plenty of action. Overall, WASTELANDERS is just good fun.

SMASHED by Junji Ito

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Junji Ito’s SMASHED is an amazing manga collection of thirteen twisted stories that will scrape your horror bone.

The stories instantly grab you by introducing the main character and the weird element that plagues or obsesses them, and then throws you into some horrific consequences. Many of the stories end rather abruptly, but the overall effect is still satisfying, particularly the almost perfect way the story and Ito’s hyper-detailed, eerie artwork work together.

Everywhere around Japan, people are freezing into unnatural positions … a secret nectar is so delicious it obsesses its tasters, who risk being smashed to consume it … a traveling haunted house leads to a very real hell … a beautiful woman consumes ghosts. These and other stories make up the collection, all of them disturbing and more than a little creepy. They’re like the old EERIE comics, only even weirder, focusing on titillating with the strange rather than going for the gross-out.

I’m going to check out more of Ito’s work–particularly UZUMAKI, which I’ve heard a lot about, as well as his other collections.

THE ENGINES OF SACRIFICE by James Chambers

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“Lovecraftian” is a mythos that feels overly familiar to me and therefore has to be done really well for me to fall under its spell. By “done really well,” I mean take Lovecraft and portray it in a contemporary way that conveys the feelings of mystery, dread, and horror, without sounding hackneyed or borrowed. TRUE DETECTIVE played with the Yellow King mythos in just such a way. A more direct and just as powerful example is THE ENGINES OF SACRIFICE by James Chambers.

This novella collection tells four dark stories firmly rooted in the Lovecraft mythos but told in a rewardingly fresh, direct style. Imagine somebody took everything you loved about Lovecraft, pared out everything that made it boring or dated (like presenting male characters who are decidedly masculine but not toxic), and then made it fresh and contemporary; the result is James Chambers’ excellently poignant horror collection.

All four stories are remarkable, but my favorite hands down is the title novella, “The Engines of Sacrifice.” Like the other stories, it stems from Lovecraft’s mythos while taking it to an insane level and rolls out like a thriller with numerous psychological as well as physical twists and turns. In this story, writer Rowley Cray lives in a world slowly gone mad, controlled by a genocidal totalitarian government, and subsumed by Lovecraftian creatures. The dead tell him their stories to share, but they want more; they have a very special purpose for him. Unfortunately, so does the government. Navigating various parties who see his stories as the key to altering the reality they live in, Cray must capture the power of words and make the ultimate choice.

If you enjoy horror or Lovecraft in particular, there’s plenty in this collection to enjoy.