X-Factor by Don MacPhail

X-Factor
Don MacPhail
Published 2009
ISBN: 9781449904166
Trade Paperback
282 pages
Horror

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Ranging from the Salem witch trials of the late 1600’s to modern day, X-Factor is a door through which we may safely watch the beginning of the end of everything. But this horrific glimpse will not be delivered passively. No, author Don MacPhail shows us a demon at war with himself: Does he finally destroy the bloodline of the evil man who burned his innocent mother at the stake as a witch? Or does he take one of those 3 people and remake him in his own image, creating a new X-Factor, a demon possessing both good and evil, with the free will to choose his future within the hierarchies of hell and who can survive in other dimensions for short periods of time? And can this demon, Toland MacDunn, manage either of his goals before the gates of Heaven and Hell slam shut and the Destroyer of Worlds rips apart all that lies between?

To answer this, we must watch as Toland offers master criminal Jack Sullivan revenge on all his enemies in exchange for his humanity. This is a painful thing to witness. We want Jack to be better than he is. We want him to beat The Devil. Then there’s Toland. He has already given up his humanity for revenge. We understand his hatred, and in that understanding we also want him to be better than he is.

Tough luck. No one in this unique examination of Hell and The End of Days is innocent. The town of Black Rock seems to be a pit of thieves, whores and drug addicts. Perhaps this is the reason that Kayutu, Mother of Chaos, begins her direct attacks on mankind here. Yes, she has many children who will ensure her overall success, but Black Rock is her personal hunting ground.

X-Factor is a self-published book. I bring this up for two reasons. First, the book shows superior editing with respect to other books of its kind. The only suggestion for improvement I could make is a little more diligence in the line editing. Second, it’s my opinion that the structure and content of the book are too different from the mainstream to have come from a big publishing house. This is a good thing: X-Factor justifies self-publishing. Don MacPhail should be proud of his accomplishment.

Copyright © Clayton Clifford Bye 2010

Ghost Road Blues by Jonathan Maberry

Ghost Road Blues
by Jonathan Maberry
Pinnacle Fiction, 2006
ISBN: 0-7860-1815-1
Mass Market Paperback
472 pages
Horror/Supernatural

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Ghost Road Blues assumes its title from a song in the repertoire of the blues playing guitarist known as the Bone Man. 30 years ago the Bone Man killed Ubel Griswald, a serial killer who had been terrorizing the small town of Pine Deep, Pennsylvania. Two unfortunate pieces of evil left their mark that fateful day: first, a vigilante mob killed the Bone Man, having been convinced he was the serial killer, and second, this happened before the Bone Man could finish an important ritual that would ensure Griswald stayed dead. Why was he worried about this? It turns out that Griswald wasn’t just evil; he was a werewolf.

Now the Bone Man has returned. He’s learned a few things the townspeople of Pine Deep need to know, mainly that evil never dies: it waits. And while it waits, evil gets stronger. The thing he buried in the mud of Dark Hollow so long ago is no different. It has plans for Pine Deep that are about to come to fruition. Evil plans. Deadly plans. Horrors that will break minds and souls just as easily as they break bodies.

Bram Stoker Award-winning Jonathan Maberry builds characters and atmosphere with skills reminiscent of Stephen King and Robert McCammon. The setting, weather, characters and their dreams are all brought to life in a way that leaves the reader on edge, building the expectation of violence and obscene horrors to such a level that one literally tears through the last half of the book.

And you won’t be disappointed. Maberry delivers up horror: old and cold; new, hot and bloody; in frightened mind and tortured body; even by hand, teeth, gun and truck. But Ghost Road Blues is just the beginning. “The Man” in the swamp has only made the opening moves of his elaborate plan to destroy Pine Deep. You see, Jonathan Maberry has created a web of possibilities that readers will have identified by the end of the book but won’t get to see resolved unless they read the next two books in The Pine Deep Trilogy.

Maberry sets the hook deep and hard. You will not get away.


Copyright © Clayton Clifford Bye

The Store by Bentley Little

The Store
by Bentley Little
Signet, 1998
ISBN: 978-0-451-19219-6
Mass Market Paperback
431 pages
Horror

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A big box discount store is coming to the small town of Juniper. Its name is simply The Store. It plays ball in a manner similar to WalMart, demanding concessions from the town in return for building there. The problem with The Store (other than the entire construction is built with blood in the mixture—unusual injuries, a death, the dead birds and animals found on the lot every morning) is that once it is established the demand for concessions doesn’t stop. And heaven help you if you get in its way. Businesses are bought out, store owners disappear, competitors burn to the ground and some simply pack up and move away. Before long The Store runs council, the police force, the fire department, the school, the radio station and the neswspaper. You buy what it wants you to buy, and you do what it tells you to do (an example would be a curfew of ten o’clock pm that is established and maintained by The Store’s police force. An easy way to kill off the local bar).

And if you work at The Store? Well… no one wants to talk about it. They’re too afraid. They can’t just quit–they’re contracts forbid it. They know the things they are asked or forced to do are wrong, but somehow they can’t stop.

The Store reminds me of Stephen King’s Needful Things, a tale about a store owner who can create glimmers (make people see what they want to see rather than what they’ve actually bought) and in return for the priceless treasures he sells to his customers at unbelievable prices, he demands one trick or errand. These favours all fit into a plan that sees many townspeople killed and the town itself turned into a disaster area.

Now, in Needful Things, you know the store owner is bad. He may even be the Devil himself. In Bentley Little’s book, The Store founder, Newman King is definitely not human, and his stores seem to be entities in their own right. How else can people who hate the store suddenly become staunch supporters? Why on earth would an 18 year-old woman accept being raped to curry favour for her sister? Why would she kill her superior in order to get his job? How can the entire employee base pray to Newman King each day in The Store Chapel, and reaffirm each day that the store comes before anything or anyone in your life? These things just aren’t believable unless you accept that The Store is somehow a living extension of Newman King.

Watch the novel’s protagonist, Bill Davies, as his town is devoured by the evil store. He slowly comes around from dread and hatred until The Store brings him into the fold. Can he beat it from the inside? Or will he be one of The Store’s strange victims, disappearing into its bowels, never to be seen again.

The Store by Bram Stoker winner Bentley Little is interesting, if a little slow. But as I mentioned in my review of Stephen King’s The Dome, you’re reading about the demise of an entire town; it’s going to take the story a little longer to develop.

Copyright © Clayton Clifford Bye

Lots of buzz for Luke Romyn’s The Dark Path

The Dark Path
by Luke Romyn
Wild Child Publishing, 2009
ISBN -13: 978-1-935013-93-8
154 pages
eBook
Horror

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The Dark Man is coming, and those in the know are ever so glad it’s not for them. Also known as Vain, he’s an assassin of the highest order. A visit from The Dark Man is the same as a visit from death.

There are a number of reasons The Dark Man is named Vain. The author will explain the most obvious one, so I won’t spoil the surprise. I don’t know if he meant it or not, but the author’s choice of name for his assassin also fits the Latin origin of the word vain: empty, without substance. For Vain truly is empty. He has blocked out his previous life so well, nothing remains but a few nightmare images which visit him every night. He’s emotionless, killing without compassion, fear, joy or remorse. Vain doesn’t even use the money he gets for his work. He simply kills: it’s not only what he does, it’s who he is.

So, when a man named Priest (are you getting the feeling we’re dealing with archetypes here?) ruthlessly breaks through Vain’s inner armour, reminding him of the good man he once was, in order to enlist his help in saving a boy who is the next messiah, we hold our breath and wait.

The Dark Path doesn’t disappoint. Luke Romyn has written a story about redemption earned. Vain, The Dark Man, takes an equally dark path to hell and back in his efforts to protect a child from certain death. The assassin also fights a metaphorical as well as an actual battle for his soul and for the power to fight his enemies: demons, hell-spawned beasts, the 4 horsemen of the apocalypse and the devil’s machinations.

Romyn’s story is brutal, to the point and is told in a way that keeps you from comfortably assuming the antihero will win the day and, thus, his personal redemption, right up to and including the end of the book.

If you like a fast moving, thrilling fantasy that keeps you thinking, then The Dark Path by Luke Romyn belongs on your bookshelf.


Copyright © Clayton Clifford Bye 2010

Jason Dark, Ghost Hunter: Theatre of Vampires

Jason Dark, Ghost Hunter
Volume 2: Theatre of Vampires
Guido Henkel
Thunder Peak Publishing, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-9843891-1-7
Chap Book
61 Pages
Paranormal/Horror

I just finished reading Book 2 in Guido Henkel’s new horror series: Jason Dark, Ghost Hunter. A Gothic piece entitled Theatre of Vampires, the story is a quick and interesting read. Because the story is so short it’s hard to give you an outline without spoilers. Let’s just say that a friend of Jason’s returns to London after a 3 year absence and invites him to watch a bizarre play about vampires. The vampires are, of course, real, and Jason is soon involved in a strange, surprisingly personal case.

A story set in the winter during the time and in the world of Sherlock Holmes, the short volume contains surprisingly well-drawn characters and a solid plot. The hook or revelation is a good one that caught me completely by surprise. That doesn’t happen very often. I would have no problem paying the $2.99 USD retail price for this entertaining little book. One note: I counted four grammatical errors, which is four too many in a work of this size.

For those of you who don’t know, Guido Henkel is a long-time game developer with many credits to his name (Planescape: Torment, Realms of Arkania and Lords of Doom for example). After working for several companies, often as founder or CEO, Henkel now heads up (and, I suspect, owns) G3 Studios, LLC, which is an independent developer and publisher of games. Thunder Peak Publishing is an imprint of this company.

I would think the background mentioned above would provide fertile ground for a fellow interested in writing about the fantastic, the paranormal and the horrific. I’m looking for more from Mr. Henkel.

Copyright © Clayton Clifford Bye

The Garden of Ghosts by Scott Thomas

The Garden of Ghosts
by Scott Thomas
Dark Regions Press, 2008
Trade Paperback
ISBN 978-1-888993-62-2
148 pages
Ghost Stories/Horror

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The Garden of Ghosts: a collection of Victorian ghost stories linked together by the common factor of vegetation. Does it work? Absolutely. The tone of this marvelous book is earthy, visceral and surprisingly committed to its theme.

From the uncomfortable humour of The Ghost who Nibbled Fennel to the wonderful A Night on Little Orchard, Scott Thomas skillfully takes us back to a simpler time, when people had no trouble envisioning terrible things that go bump in the night. And he writes as if he is talking to an old friend, toning down the rigid, stilted and (may I say) boring style of most traditional writers of the supernatural.

I’ll tell you a secret: I’m not a fan of ghost stories. I groan when someone sends me such a book to read and review. Nor will you find many ghost stories in my own library. They don’t scare me, most are as dry as dust and none offer up the vibrant entertainment we all look for in stories. Yet, here comes Scott Thomas with a beautiful book of stories that just happen to be of the ghostly variety. Bad things happen to good and bad people alike. Not all ghosts are interested in haunting, nor are they mere spectres; this author reveals ghosts with a need for real shoes, who have sharp teeth and fire rifles with real bullets. Then there’s a truly unique telling of Jack the Ripper’s tale, which is all about the supernatural, but it didn’t feel like a ghost story, and it was a wonderful piece of entertainment.

I read the final story in The Garden of Ghosts and closed the book with a wonderful sense of fullness and satisfaction, of having been given something both substantial and pleasing to the soul. This is a collection of short stories I will return to again and again.

Thank you Mr. Thomas.


Copyright © Clayton Clifford Bye

Moonlit Daydreams by Rebecca Carter

Moonlit Daydreams
by Rebecca Carter
Lulu.com, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-557-35588-4
Paperback and Kindle
72 pages
Horror

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Moonlit Dreams by Rebecca Carter is an interesting collection of 5 short short stories. Each piece examines a very brief slice of time during which the main character comes to some kind of dark realization. The fact that each of Carter’s characters undergo these mental changes leads me to believe she understands the short story. (At the end of all short stories someone must have changed, been changed or have observed some change or event which alters their perception of the world or themselves.)

From the scientist who destroys her world while trying to save it, to the kidnapped woman who learns that happiness is a relative thing (it depends on your perception or outlook), to the “special” woman who finds out that such gifts can demand a price too high to bear—Carter’s cast of characters face what can only be referred to as nightmares. And it is the process of facing the reality of these nightmares that brings on change in each.

I enjoyed these little tidbits, but must confess to a major concern. Moonlit Dreams in eBook format costs $0.99 USD, a good price for what you receive. However, the print version, which is a mass market paperback that costs $11.99 USD is completely unacceptable. The value is not there. Instead of the typical 9 to 11 words per line, Moonlit Dreams offers up 3 to 4 words per line. Carter’s 72 page book, if printed to industry standards would only be about 24 pages in length. I understand she needs to charge such a price to recover her printing and production costs, but this is not the consumer’s problem. The solution to this unfortunate mistake is obviously more content. I would consider one of my own books of 70 pages or 15,000 words to be pricey at $9.99 USD, except the customer is paying for information rather than entertainment. And I actually offer a 272 page fantasy novel (over 60,000 words) for the same price ($9.99 USD).

So, while I encourage Rebecca Carter to continue to write short stories, I also suggest she take a look at what other authors are offering the customer for $11.99 USD.

Copyright © Clayton Clifford Bye

Thought Forms by Jeffrey Thomas

Thought Forms
Jeffrey Thomas
Dark Regions Press, 2009
Trade Paperback
ISBN: 978-1-888993-71-4
268 pages
Horror/Supernatural

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Two cousins, Paul and Ray, make amateur horror films together and also produce traditional art. Ray draws and paints monsters which maintain some semblance of humanity; Paul produces monsters of alien origin. On one fatefull night both will come face to face with monsters that could have come right out of their own work. Ray is terrorized by a group of hooded people who might be ghosts or may be the fiends who killed his parents many years before and left them hanging upside down in the house in which he now lives. Paul is trapped inside the plastic factory where he works, hunted by a strange alien that first appears in a benign form but continues to mutate into something Ray can’t deny links the monster directly to him.

Jeffery Thomas’ Thought Forms is a unique read. You won’t find anything like it anywhere. I suspect his voice is as distinctively his own as his fingerprints. As such, it may take the reader some time to settle in, to feel comfortable reading the book. I know it took me quite awhile to warm up to Thought Forms. Yet, it was definitely worth the effort.

Thought Forms presents an interesting hypothesis: what if all things paranormal—ghosts, psychic powers, even monsters spring from our thoughts? And what if these “thought forms” could take on corporeal form? And what if, once these “paranormal” creations were able to act independently to the point of creating their own thought forms, they have no compunction about eliminating their creator?

As both Paul and Ray spend their days steeped in the macabre, the impossible, the murderous and the mutant, what would their mind creations look like and how would they act? Read Jeffrey Thomas’ Thought Forms to find out just how terrifying things can get.

This book easily rates a 4 out of 5 stars.

Copyright © Clayton Clifford Bye

Blood Pressure: A Vampire Testament

Blood Pressure: A Vampire Testament
by Terence Taylor
St. Martin’s Press, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-312-38526-2
403 pages
Trade Paperback
Fiction/Vampires

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Blood Pressure is the sequel to Bite Marks, Terence Taylor’s 2009, debut horror novel.

20 years have gone by since New Yorkers put down a mob of AIDS spewing zombies in the Lower East Side and also discovered the existence of vampires. Today, Clean Slate Global is a sanctioned, high security company charged with ridding New York (and the world) of the undead.

Jonathon Richmond is the head of the company and works out of a vampire-proof base of operations known as Red Hook. He’s just launched an operation to round up New York’s most powerful bloodsuckers. Ancient records belonging to the instigator of the 1986 horror have revealed that there may be a cure for vampirism, and Richmond intends to gather everyone and everything he needs to get his hands on that cure. It could stop a war.

Little does Richmond know that virtually all of the original players of the 1986 debacle are being drawn together, along with some powerful new players. It’s as if good and evil are bulking up for some kind of fated confrontation.

The demented and horribly damaged Adam Caine is back in circulation. The son of one of his last victims, Christopher Ross has come to New York to find his family and to try and put an end to his terrible nightmares. He has no idea he’s the cure Richmond is looking for.  Perenelle de Marivaux, New York’s unofficial queen of the vampires, is about to be reintroduced to the only person who could ever make her work with the humans. Claire St. Claire, thanks to Richmond, has been reunited with her great love, Tom O’Bedlam, who’s only goal is to destroy the world so he can make it over as he wishes.

And on and on it goes as Taylor fills out characters introduced in the first book, creates some fascinating new people and vampires, and sets the stage for the first battle in what could be a very long war.

Blood Pressure is a terrific book. Unlike Taylor’s first novel/testament, the humans play enough interesting rolls that not only do we care about them, but through them we come to care about some of the vampires. Equally important, human technology is advanced enough that it stands up to the sometimes godlike powers of the vampires. Taylor also makes sure some of his humans develop potent powers, or are at least able to borrow some. Yet, through careful plotting and a lot of hard work on the author’s part, readers should get more of a sense that this actually is a vampire testament (as opposed to a story about humans) than they would have in the first book.

I’m looking forward to your next installment Mr. Taylor.


Copyright © Clayton Clifford Bye 2010

They That Dwell In Dark Places

They That Dwell In Dark Places
Daniel McGachey
Ghost House, Dark Regions Press
Published in 2009
Trade Paperback
ISBN: 978-1-888993-72-1
346 pages
Genre: Paranormal


“This is a ghost story about ghost stories. It tells a tale about the telling of tales, and of the need, the absolute necessity, for stories that strike fear into men’s hearts – stories that delve into the unknown and the uncanny…” So says Daniel McGachey on his MySpace page. And it may be the truth of this statement is the saving grace of his 2009 release They That Dwell In Dark Places.

To read McGachey’s book is to step into a world long past, a simpler world where science has yet to push away century old superstitions. This is a time where very few have electric lights and the candle or gaslight is used by night, and everyone knows there are things that lurk beyond those flickering shadows. Things best not talked about or even thought about. Things that bite.

But I am a modern man used to modern entertainment. To sit down and read this collection of flawlessly written ghost stories is an unusual thing for me to do. I crave action and excitement and danger from sentence number one. Instead, McGachey’s narrator meanders through each story as if he has all evening, just as if I were a member of his group of open-minded men who spend many of their evenings smoking cigars, drinking cognac and telling of their latest ghostly discovery. This was a book I wouldn’t have read for pleasure.

It would have been my loss. You see the stories get darker as the book progresses. The few often visited characters like Dr. Lawrence, whose wholehearted embracement of all things ghostly leads him to true evil—in the shape of a man, his old teacher Lucius Shadwell—who marks him as nothing ghostly ever could. Or the narrator himself, perhaps the most fanatical of all the seekers of They That Dwell In Dark Places, who has awaiting him, at the end of the book, a revelation of horrific proportions.

Daniel McGachey dares us to drop our electronic entertainment and venture into a world that actually existed, where the veil between life and death was, perhaps, less substantial. So, put aside your sophisticated imagination and scientific knowledge of the world, and slow down for just a little while to join his characters as they tell stories about those courageous but foolhardy souls who dared to peer through that perilous veil.

An interesting and deceptively complicated piece of writing that I consider well worth the effort. Thanks for the read Mr. McGachey.


Copyright © Clayton Clifford Bye