DEAD WORLD By Shaun Jeffrey, Published by Deshca Press 2012, £0.97 Kindle edition

Reviewed by David A. Riley

Shaun Jeffrey has written an enjoyable romp through a post Apocalyptic world years after a zombie holocaust has devastated civilisation. Anna and her husband Isaiah live with their children in a tightly controlled community inside a former prison, safe from the undead that prowl around the outside world. Through a twisted theology the undead are regarded as gods because they are seen as immortal and any attempt to destroy them is regarded as heresy. Impoverished, living off what scraps of food can be produced inside their dreary concrete world, strict controls are maintained on numbers. For every birth there must be a counterbalancing loss in numbers. This is carried out through the use of a lottery; the names included normally being those amongst the elderly. The winner is honoured by being ejected into the outside world to become one of the gods.

Anna has begun a guilt-ridden affair with Roman, a leading priest. When she tries to end it Roman takes his revenge by falsely reading out the name of one of her children as the winner of the next lottery. Even though her young daughter believes she is being honoured, that she will become a god, Anna is distraught. Roman lets her know what he has done, intending to use this as leverage against her to resume their affair. This sets off a train of events that result in catastrophe for most of the people in the community and revelations about what has really happened as Anna escapes from their community with her children in tow, and Roman, her husband and a band of enforcers set out in pursuit.

This is a tense read, with plenty of action and credible characters. And a world in which it is often hard to decide who the real monsters are. Some humans have descended to cannibalism while others have succumbed to greed, enslaving others or selling them off as food. It is a harsh, cruel, merciless world in which there is little to hope other than to live through another day.

At approximately 75 pages, it’s a good, brisk read, with enough originality and action for those who enjoy a zombie story.

THE SPOOK AND THE SPIRIT IN THE STONE by Jilly Paddock, Cathaven Press, Ebook, £0.77, http://tabbycat.wordpress.com/about/the-spook-and-the-spirit-in-the-stone/

Reviewed by Stewart Horn

It’s usually a positive thing if a story is difficult to categorise.  This one is set in the future on another planet; only some of the characters are human; and there’s a scary supernatural beastie.  At heart though, it’s a noirish thriller, complete with kidnapping, assorted murders and a gruff but engaging first person narrator.

An ambassador’s child is kidnapped, and policeman Jerome is assigned to the investigation along with his career-driven female partner and a spook, an agent from Earth with apparently supernatural powers.  I’m not telling you any more about the plot because I don’t want to spoil it for you.

It takes both confidence and skill to mash up genres like this, and Ms. Paddock has pulled it off nicely.  It’s competently set up in the first chapter, with further surprises along the way.  The characters are well-drawn, and I enjoyed spending time with all of them.  Her prose is classy and smooth and the unfolding of the plot is paced to keep us on our toes.  The narration felt quite dry at first, but it fits the character.

My only complaint is that I wanted more.  There are half a dozen good characters in here, two or three of whom are well fleshed out, but I really liked Jerome, Lamont, Sophie, Giselle, even Vincenzo.  It felt like meeting some really cool people, having a brief chat about all the things you have in common, then never seeing them again.  I wanted to relax a bit with Jerome and Val and find out about Lamont’s home life.   I wanted to get the feel of Ms. Paddock’s world.

There is enough invention here to fill a novel, and it would be a more satisfying read at maybe three times its current length.  It could even succeed as a series of novels, especially since the rules of her universe are so fluid.

An enjoyable taster, but I’m looking forward to reading the rest.

HORROR FOR GOOD: A Charitable Anthology edited by Mark C. Scioneaux, R.J. Cavender, Robert S. Wilson, Cutting Block Press, p/b, $15.00, https://www.createspace.com/3829545

Reviewed by David Brzeski

OK, this is “A Charitable Anthology”. All proceeds will be donated to amfAR, the Foundation for AIDS Research, which is a great cause that I would hope we all would want to support.

Now we’ve got that out of the way, let’s forget it. For the purposes of this review, this is just another horror anthology and I’m going to judge it on that basis alone.

It’s not a small collection. There are thirty-two stories in all and twenty-one of those are original to this collection. One of them is the author’s first published work. The eleven reprints are pretty rare material, by popular horror writers such as Ramsey Campbell, Joe R. Lansdale, Ray Garton, F. Paul Wilson and Jack Ketchum. You’d be challenged to acquire copies of the original appearances of these stories now.

There isn’t a turkey amongst them! Trust me, I searched. Granted, there are some stories I didn’t like as much as others, but the truth is (and I’m not saying this just because it’s for a good cause remember) this is the highest quality collection of horror short stories I can remember reading for a very long time.

The anthology covers all sorts of horrors. There are ghosts, demons, werewolves and those vilest monsters of all- human beings. There are even zombies, but even these most overused of horrors are handled with remarkable flair and originality. There are passing nods to King, Lovecraft and Rod Serling, alongside traditional monsters and science fiction horrors.

There just isn’t the room to comment on the individual stories in this review, but I’ve singled out a few for special mention.

Nate Southard’s ‘Mouth’, and Brad C. Hodson’s ‘The Other Patrick’ are both on my running shortlist of stories to consider when the time for award nominations for stories published in 2012 comes around. Joe McKinney’s story, ‘Sky of Brass, Land of Steel’ only misses that list due to it being one of the rare reprints in the collection, as does ‘Shiva, Open Your Eye’, by Laird Barron. There are many others that came very close, but these were my favourites. There are, I suspect, other stories that will appear on other readers’ best of 2012 list.

I’m going to go out on a limb here and state that I have absolutely no doubt that the book itself is going to win awards. It’s simply that good!

So, from the viewpoint of quality alone, if you only buy one horror anthology this year, you should seriously consider grabbing this one. When you add to that the fact that it’s for such a worthy cause, then how can you not buy it?

At the time of writing, Horror For Good is only available from to buy from CreateSpace, but it will be available on Amazon, in both paperback and ebook formats, very soon.

DEATH METAL by Armand Rosamilia, Rymfire Books, kindle, £1.92/$2.99, http://rymfirebooks.wordpress.com/rymfire-horror/

Reviewed by David Brzeski

Armand Rosamilia usually writes violent zombie gorefests, which are frankly not my favourite type of book. It was fortuitous then that I should happen upon this one in my “to be reviewed” heap, as it’s not a zombie book. To be perfectly honest, it’s not even horror as such, although it does feature the Satanic death metal music scene as a backdrop.

Daniel Cahill is a best-selling author of Fantasy novels. Until a few years ago, he lead a secret double life as the man behind a mysterious death metal band, DTC, who recorded seven CDs of a proposed ten CD cycle of albums, then quit.

Some of his fans believe his LSD fueled lyrics have a hidden occult message, and they want those last three albums. Somehow they have uncovered D.T.C.’s real identity. When his daughter is kidnapped, Daniel soon finds himself forced to record those final three CDs, or risk losing his child.

Armand Rosamilia is no literary genius, but then I’m sure he wouldn’t claim to be. He is, however by no means a bad writer. If he has any weak points it’s that some of this story seems a little rushed in places, as if the author is in a hurry to get to the good bits.

Despite those criticisms, it’s a good read and has some nice twists and turns.

I hope the author expands his horizons beyond zombie fiction even more in the future. I suspect there’s a sequel to this novella in the works already. In the meantime, I may just be tempted to try one of his zombie books.

RIFTS: PATH OF THE STORM by Matthew Clements, Palladium Books p/b £8.99

Reviewed by Steve Dean

Something different from Palladium this time, a film script, or movie screenplay if you prefer. It’s based on the Rifts RPG of course, and the material within could be used in a campaign of your own, pretty much scene for scene I would have thought.

David and Katie are playing in the woods near their house when a Rift opens and a shed load of angry demons pops through for some friendly maiming and killing. Their father is killed, and David becomes separated from his mum and sister.

Years later, and David is now a special forces soldier. During a raid, which goes horribly wrong, David is rescued by a group of magic users. It turns out they are hunting the same person, a nasty and very powerful mage. They team up, unofficially of course, and set off to hunt down the mage.

Although this is a script and therefore in screenplay format with minimal descriptions, I found it to be very readable. It has everything the reader needs to understand the story, and the rest is filled in by your imagination, which is how it should be.

Would it make a good film? I certainly think so, although, as it says in the introduction, funding is always a problem. I’m sure it would have a wider appeal than just Rifts fans, if only we could persuade the accountants that run the film industry that different is not a bad word. Maybe they could make it in CGI as per Beowolf.

I for one would certainly go and see it, and let’s face it, anything is better than yet another dreary, jelly-mould vampire franchise.

DARK AEONS: THE ATLANTEAN CHRONICLES by Brian-Joseph Baker, Joshua D. Brice, Dillon Langlands & John Bromley, Stardust Publications PDF – $15.00

Reviewed by Steve Dean

Take work by H.P. Lovecraft, now in the public domain, add in some references to Atlantis, Lemuria, Nephilim and other fantasy tropes and memes, such as werewolves, mix in some Greek mythology and this product is what you might come up with. The setting itself then is mostly unoriginal research rather than new material.

As well as the setting, this 410 page monster contains everything you need to run a campaign in this world, from the obligatory character sheets and the making of characters, to an over-detailed price list of things they might want to buy. For instance, I think most GMs are capable of making up a price for a laptop, and don’t actually need three different ones for different qualities.

The system itself uses cards to resolve actions, although there is a, rather pointless, direct conversion to dice, if you prefer to roll rather than deal.

The art work is appalling, the very worst I have ever seen. How anyone could have allowed it to mar their work is beyond me. Much of it is so simple it looks like a child has drawn it, and that’s the best of it. The worst is unrecognisable black blobs on a white background. That was really the best they could find?

Does the table top games market need a new setting? Maybe. Does it need a new system? probably not, and this isn’t it if it did.

Overall then, I found nothing new here. I suppose it comes down to whether you are prepared to pay for someone else to trawl the internet, or to just do it yourself.

The games market is saturated with downloadable material at the moment, and this product would need to be a whole lot better to even start to compete.

THE FEMALE OF THE SPECIES & OTHER TERROR TALES By Richard Davis, (“Writers from the Shadows #1″), Shadow Publishing 2012, Paperback 240 pages, £7.99

Reviewed by David A. Riley

Richard Davis, who died in 2005, was always far better known as an editor than as a writer, with ‘The Year’s Best Horror Stories’, ‘Tandem Horror’, ‘Space’, ‘Spectre’ and the Armada Sci-Fi series, not to mention his work on television with the BBC’s ‘Late Night Horror’ and ‘Out of the Unknown’. But he was also an extremely good writer, as this collection shows. All the stories here were previously published in anthologies from the 60s and 70s, such as the ‘Fourth and Sixth Pan Books of Horror’, ‘The Ghost Book’, ‘New Writings in Horror and the Supernatural’, ‘No Such Thing as a Vampire’, and ‘The Jon Pertwee Book of Monsters’, which contains Richard’s last story in 1978, ‘The Nondescript’. The collection is rounded off with an introduction by David A. Sutton, an article that Richard wrote (‘What We Were Looking for in Horror’), an interview originally published in 1969 in the literary fanzine ‘Shadow’, a further article by Richard (‘Horror in Fiction’) and a bibliography.

These constitute all of Richard Davis’s stories, and illustrate the versatility of his subject matter and the easy style of his writing, which reminds me very much of R. Chetwynd-Hayes without the (often unwanted) humour.

The title piece, ‘The Female of the Species’, is written as a journal, detailing the protagonist’s increasing fears about his sinister wife, both before and after her death. It’s a chilling story that grows increasingly tenser, involving love, death, and witchcraft.

‘Elsie and Agnes’ is a straight forward ghost story, though with more than one twist, and involving one of Richard’s recurring themes of a loveless, wasted life.

‘A Day Out’ is another ghost story, full of the joys of a 1960s seaside resort but with a final dénouement that may not come as a total surprise but is nonetheless shocking.

The sadness of a wasted life is again the central theme of ‘The Lady by the Stream’. Elizabeth is the harried minder for her over demanding wheelchair-bound mother. Never having had the chance to marry and have a family of her own, she finds fleeting warmth from the friendship of a ten year old boy she meets by a stream, fishing. The inability of other people to let this innocent relationship endure, though, results in an appalling climax, perhaps the most violent and chilling in this collection. ‘The Inmate’ is a tale of bestiality in the truest meaning of the word. I found to be the weakest, least convincing story, though it is well written, with Richard’s customary skills at characterisation.

In ‘A Nice Cut off the Joint’ Helen Bentley, a surgeon, finds that doing a native chief a favour in saving his life results in a Voodoo curse, presumably from a local witchdoctor put out by her skills, and the growth of a dangerous, all demanding appetite for fresh meat.

‘Guy Fawkes Night’, Richard’s earliest story, originally appeared in the ‘Fourth Pan Book of Horror Stories’. A period piece that starts in the 1920s it tells in retrospect what happened one fateful Guy Fawkes Night when the father of the protagonist’s friend disappears. Nearly everyone believed he ran away with his mistress, but thirty years later the horrific truth comes out.

In ‘The Sick Room’ Richard returns to the supernatural with a boarding house with a bedroom that may have an evil spirit. A man decorating has already slipped and broken his back for no apparent reason. Everyone who stays there either dies or murders whoever they’re with. A dark, grittily told story.

‘The Clump’ is set on a small Caribbean island. The clump in question is the local name for a small wood. This one, though, has a sinister reputation. Unfortunately, the young boy who wanders in to explore it when the cruise ship he is on stops by doesn’t know this at the time. Nor does his father, who is more concerned over his plans to poison his wife. The description of the entity that haunts the wood reminds me of the kind of thing depicted in much more recent Japanese horror films.

‘The Nondescript’ is a nineteenth century artefact made of a fish tail and the shaved torso of a monkey, cleverly joined to look like a grotesque creature. Young Bob finds one in the family attic in a glass case. Shortly he comes across another, better preserved, under a large rock close to a local pond. Unlike the first this may not be an artefact at all, as his father finds out when he discovers what happened at a ruined mansion whose owner, a collector of curiosities, died many years ago under suspicious circumstances. This is a rollicking tale, with some great descriptions of the Nondescript and a fittingly action-packed climax.

As Dave Sutton remarks in his introduction these stories are firmly set in the era in which they were written. To me that only adds to their charm. It’s a shame Richard Davis did not write more, but at least, thanks to Shadow Publishing, what there is have been collected together and made available.

PARADOX LOST by Adrian L. Youseman, Matador (self-published), £8.99

Reviewed by R A Bardy (@mangozoid)

This book infuriated me. What starts out as a promising adventure tale about a young woman following a trail of clues left by her now deceased treasure-seeking Dad, and takes you across international borders through various countries on a Tintin-esque adventure, encompassing Atlantis and the Bermuda Triangle among other places, ultimately descends into what I personally would consider a bible-thumping mess, and a genuine travesty.

‘Paradox Lost’ has two story strands, the more interesting of which –as mentioned above– follows Caittie (Katie) as she chases clues and eludes her pursuers in a race against time to seek  answers and follow in the footsteps of her explorer-adventurer Dad . This aspect of the story held the most promise for me, and despite grammatical errors, missing words, and genuinely poor writing in places, I still wanted to forge ahead and find out what would happen next. In this context there is the core of a decent adventure yarn here, and it felt like a story wanting to be told, and for all the right reasons the author’s voice won me over and I was keen for him to succeed. As such, this book could well serve as a fine example of why anyone looking to self-publish a novel should seek out a strong editor: it’s a hazardous business, and the errors here really aren’t difficult to spot, and frequent enough to be stumbled upon with casual abandon.

The other story strand is conversation-orientated, and tells of a character called Andrew in a lengthy battle of wills and war of words with Pierre, later Peter, later– well that would be a spoiler! This psychological word-sparring shows a lot of promise, and as a reader we are keen to find out what’s going on, why he’s being seemingly imprisoned in a single room, held against his will, and moreover, what his connection with Caittie is. And that, I’m afraid, is where everything goes pear-shaped.

The link between Andrew and Caittie never appears, and the one interaction they have is contrived to say the least, and in the context of the rest of the story, baloney. This, ultimately, destroyed things for me – I wanted to know what happened to Caittie, and truth be told was seeking a decent, satisfying end, but this never arrives. Why? Because of Chapter 31, the dreaded Chapter 31… probably the most annoyingly clumsy, pretentious, inept, and soul-destroying disappointment I think I’ve ever encountered in anything I’ve read, ever: 30 pages of quasi-religious, secular claptrap, whacked out theories, and God’s ultimate mission gets shoehorned in there too. Grrrr…     I got so angry when I came upon this, and felt both cheated and abused – until then I’d been happily whizzing through chapters, investing time following Caittie’s thrill-ride and eager to find out what would happen next, and even Andrew’s verbal exchanges with Peter held a crescendo of promise throughout, and then –Wham!– cop-out central arrives: it’s not clever, it’s not smart, it just sucks.

As you may have guessed, this book left me bitter and enraged, and I would urge the author to go back and finish what he started: discard the last two Chapters and either drop Andrew’s strand completely, or forge a satisfying link that will bring the story to a proper close. If not, this is foul, reprehensible chicanery given a platform, and as such, totally unforgivable.

QUEEN RAT by Kim Lakin-Smith.

Murkee. £4.99.

Reviewed by Elloise Hopkins

Princess Ratiana Clementine Saint John of the submersible Victoriana is about to become a queen. Unfortunately to do so she has to get married and that is way down on her list of priorities behind learning to run the Victoriana, learning to fight with proficiency and most of all, vexing her parents. At 14 she is now old enough to become queen and awaits the arrival of her betrothed.

The Aesthetes are perceived as weak, precious perhaps, and Rat, as she likes to call herself, simply can’t imagine Prince Simeon being at all suited to her. It seems the prince has the same opinion of Princess Rat, with her boyish clothes and manners to match. The betrothal has to begin with a series of trials set by the four submerged communities, and Rat and Simeon will have to learn to work hand in hand if they are to triumph.

A young adult steampunk novella wouldn’t fall into my usual reading wish list but I’m always open to new suggestions and I have to say I’m glad I got hold of this book. It was a quick and enjoyable read and a pure run of escapism. The worldbuilding is its biggest strength by far and I found myself in a world where something as simple as looking at the time becomes a beautifully descriptive piece of prose.

Considering the length of the piece, the characters, even the supporting cast, are surprisingly well detailed and likeable in their not always favorable portrayal. The relationship between the two heirs is forced to develop as the trials go on and the result is a story that perhaps whilst not as tension-filled as it could be, is well told and blends elements of steampunk and our own world perfectly to create a believable alternate reality.

LORDS OF WATERDEEP

Wizards of the Coast / rrp £39.99

Reviewed by Phil Lunt

Waterdeep: A “City of Splendours” from the Dungeons & Dragons campaign setting of Forgotten Realms. In this new board game offering from Wizards of the Coast, you get to rule the place as one of the Lords of Waterdeep. It does what it says on the tin, pretty much…

It’s a game for 2 to 5 players, and the goal is simple: Earn as many Victory Points as you can over 8 rounds of play. The player with the most Victory Points at the end of the 8^th round is the winner!

Each player picks a Lord to play as at random, and the choice of Lord effects how they play the game. Some Lords score extra Victory Points at the end of the game dependent on how many “Commerce” quests they complete, or how many buildings they own, for example.
The Agents who work for each player are taken from one of five organisations that the player aligns themselves with at the beginning of the game; these are the City Guard, Knights of the Shield, Harpers, Red Sashes or Silverstars. Each player has a limited number of Agents to play with, determined simply by how many people are playing the game – this helps to stop the game going on for hours and hours. A full 8 rounds of play can be over in just a couple of hours.

Each round is broken down into turns where each player gets to place an Agent in one of the many buildings of Waterdeep to help further their interests in the city, such as: the Builder’s Hall which allows new buildings to be constructed; The Grinning Lion Tavern which is a favourite haunt for roguish adventurers; or Aurora’s Realms Shop which is a haven for trading and gold.

Depending on where the Agents are placed the player can either construct new buildings, hire adventurers, accumulate gold, gain quests or win Victory Points. The player can then, if they have the resources available, complete these quests to win further Victory Points.

Each player also picks up “Intrigue” cards during play which can be played either immediately or if they place agents in specific locations. These cards can be used to help or hinder other players to further your own goals.

At its heart this is an asset management game but one that is fun to pick up and play over and over again. The board, manual and all playing cards are beautifully illustrated as one can expect of something from the D&D stable. Initial set-up is a tad time consuming but once everyone was familiar with the structure of the game the play was fairly pacey. It’s good to play at the beginning of a night of gaming to get everyone warmed up or, heck, just play it through a few times. There are enough variables in the game to keep things fresh and everyone thinking. It reminded me of a more complex version of the popular game Carcassonne in many ways, and that is definitely not a bad thing.