Tag Archives: book reviews

books

(book) Dean Koontz´s Winter Moon is not his finest, but it is a decent suspense novel.

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Dean Koontz is probably one of the best known writers of suspense thriller/horror fiction out there and is also one of my personal favorites. I am eager to complete reading of his works, so this one somehow came first into my hands. Story of this novel is about a heroic cop Jack McGarvey who is badly wounded in a shootout with a maniac high on PCP at the gas station. Jack also loses his partner along with couple other civilians and barely escapes with his life.

Second storyline follows Eduardo Fernandez, an old man on his Quatermass(nice homage to Hammer horror) ranch where strange things happen in the woods of snowy Montana. As it goes McGarvey family moves to that ranch and starts fight for their very lives and sanity, but also whole humanity on that little corner of snowy nowhere.

Well, this one was tense, as we are used from Koontz, nice to read and a page turner, especially last ten chapters through which McGarveys struggle to stay alive fighting the enemy. But, the other storyline Koontz somehow started with followers, cult of late maniac director who bother McGarvey family somehow gets lost along the way. As I read this one, I somehow couldn´t escape the fact that Koontz kind of recycles himself and his novels such as Phantoms or Servants of the Twilight, but does not really know which way to take. This is a decent one, but not top of his works.

6/10

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(book) Stephen King – Revival: King´s return to cosmic horror concept

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When I saw the tagline that said vintage King and read a couple of reviews that said about this one King returned to horror, it was mandatory for me to check out this piece of novel for myself.

Jamie Morton grew up with his family in a small village in Maine, one day a preacher called Charlie Jacobs came into his life and life of other people there. Charlie cured Jamie´s brother Conn with electricity experiments when Conn was left without his voice. Everything was fine and idyllic till one day tragedy struck, Charlie changed and horror spread through coming decades leaving Morton, now drug addicted musician to find Charlie again and stop the madness.

I am sorry but I can´t discover more about story of this novel because that would be spoiler for all those who want to read this beauty. Yes, they were right, King returned to horror with this one, and did it big time. This one is a total homage to old school Universal Frankenstein movies, also, and more being homage to late great Lovecraft and his concept of cosmic horror and what lies behind our world. This one kinda starts slow, like we are used to in many of King´s opus, but evolves into one hell of a tense novel and the ending is such bleak and eerie couple of chapters that leave you depressed and in awe what you just finished. So, first half of the book is Americana King style, with some supernatural signs, but other half of the book is awesome horror for us fiends craving for such work. Because of slowness, the book is not perfect but damn close to highest ranks.

8/10

books, Reviews, Various

(book) Cult Never Dies: Megazine

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Good people at Cult Never Dies never cease to amaze with quality books and zines that they release. After Cult Never Dies trilogy, this is the fourth installment which can be read separately, no matter if you read the first three or not. As the title says, this is a book length zine formatted original work, with beautiful layout and totally reminding me of nineties and a time when we did all those cut and paste zines with master copy being taken to photocopy shop and distributed via mail with tape trading and flyers coming all the way late for gig announcements hehe.

If you read any of previous works you will know that this book contains interviews with many bands and individuals, mainly from black metal side of things, but also from some other aspects of extreme music. For me personally, best interviews in this book are with artist Gareth Elliot. whose work is just fantastic. Also, I love the interview with photographer Ester Segarra who does such perfect job with photos of extreme metal personalities and bands. Jon Metalion from Head Not Found label is also an interesting read. From the bunch of bands, my highlights are Ancient and Mysticum interviews. This one is a worthy read done as love for zines and extreme music. Go check this one out, also other three books from the series.