A pregnant Brazilian lands in an airport in Switzerland. She calls the police because an assassin is hunting her. When the police fail to stop the killer, a young girl appears saying she just wants the lady’s fetus. So begins Undead Messiah 1, an exciting thriller wrapped within a horror manga.
Who hasn’t been entranced by a video game, movie or book and after it’s over you still feel like it has leached into your real life? Tim loves ZAC, a zombie video game, and the Walking Dead television show. He begins to see zombie threats everywhere. However, just because he’s paranoid, doesn’t mean there aren’t zombies running amok.
I loved the innovative plot. Unfortunately, I can’t describe my favorite part since it will spoil the surprise. As a huge fan of the Walking Dead comics, I thought this book would be perfect for me. And it was. Nerdy gamer thinks he can kill real zombies until he meets one. If only there was a wireless controller for real life (heavy sigh…). The art, especially the chapter titles, perfectly set the mood and clearly illustrated the plot.
Undead Messiah 1 has elements of horror, mystery, fantasy, post-apocalyptic thriller and even romance. I can’t wait for the second volume, which comes out November 6, 2018. It is highly recommended for all manga fans looking for something different. 4 stars!
Thanks to ToykoPop and Edelweiss+ for an advanced copy.
Posted in Graphic Novel, Horror, Mystery & Thrillers, Paranormal, Romance Tagged with: Jul 19 2018, Manga
Babyteeth Vol 2 begins with a nice summary of Vol 1. While that is nice for readers beginning here, it spoils the surprises in Vol 1 so I would recommend reading them in order. Also, if you want to read Vol 1 first, please don’t read the rest of this review since it contains SPOILERS for that volume.
I loved Vol 1 of this series. As I stated in my 5 star review of Vol 1, I couldn’t wait for volume 2 and grabbed it off NetGalley as soon as it appeared.
This story begins immediately after the first with Heather, Sadie and baby Clark travelling on a commercial airplane flown by the girls’ dad. The group is accompanied by the wizard Dancy and headed for the Maine castle built for Clark by the dark cultish group, the Way. In the meantime, the quasi-governmental group, the Silhouette, is trying once again to kill them. Both groups believe that Clark is the antichrist, born to usher in the end times. For the Way that is good news but for the Silhouette it is not. Are both groups insane? Well, little Clark does only drink blood and when he cries people bleed and sometimes disappear.
While still a good horror story, this volume doesn’t have the big ‘Clark is who?’ surprise element of Vol 1. There are a few smaller twists in the plot to keep it interesting. An adorable “fire-breathing murder raccoon” and Sadie’s backstory are intriguing. The relative of a past adversary also appears.
Babyteeth Vol 2 collects issues #6-10. Single issues continue to be published so I can’t wait for Vol 3. 4 stars!
Thanks to the publisher, Aftershock Comics, and NetGalley for an advanced copy.
Posted in Graphic Novel, Horror Tagged with: Jun 26 2018, paranormal
Peril in the Old Country is a hilarious quest fantasy!
Sloot Peril is an accountant who has a nervous condition. He lives in the Old Country where swearing causes goblins to physically appear. There is so much bureaucracy that a union provides professional line waiters. Sloot is a patriot who despises the country just past the Old Country’s giant wall, Carpathia. What happens when he:
The puns come fast and furious in Peril in the Old Country. There are running gags about swear words and shoes throughout. It is a zany ride. The world building is terrific and hilarious. Is it fantasy? Is it horror? I don’t know but it is highly recommended for readers looking for something different. This book is perfect for fans of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’s style of humor. 42 stars! [sorry, wrong book] 4 stars!
Thanks to the publisher, Black Spot Books, and NetGalley for an advanced copy.
Posted in Fantasy, Horror, Humor Tagged with: Jun 5 2018
Kamo, a sixteen-year-old boy, is dying from a defective heart. Crimson from the underworld offers him a deal. Trap twelve spirit souls that will allow Crimson to live again and Crimson will repair Kamo’s heart permanently.
Despite a non-Japanese author, the artwork has an authentic manga feel. The ambience is very international. The setting is Bern, Switzerland. The female lead is a Spanish immigrant who occasionally uses Spanish phrases. The plot, based on Goethe’s Faust, is just different enough to be enjoyable without throwing off the manga vibe. 4 stars!
Thanks to ToykoPop and NetGalley for an advanced copy.
Posted in Graphic Novel, Horror, Paranormal Tagged with: Manga, May 2 2018
Roderick is the leader of the Fiat Lux, the fighting arm of the Catholic Church in 1347. The Fiat Luz is tasked with taking the Pope to a safe house in England from his residence in the French countryside.
The world is in the middle of the plague of the Black Death. Eventually 20 million, or 60% of the population of Europe, will perish. Plague victims begin to rise from their graves becoming eaters of the living.
Wow, just wow! The art and especially the lettering of Pestilence Vol 1 perfectly set the mood and evoke the era. I loved the revisionist plot. It is hard to explain why without ruining the wonderful surprises within this excellent comic. Pestilence Vol 1 combines the best of historical fiction, adventure, horror and mystery. It is definitely for adults only and may offend some Christians, especially Catholics. For all others, it is highly recommended. While this is marketed as volume 1, it can be read as a stand-alone story. 5 stars!
Thanks to the publisher, Aftershock Comics, and NetGalley for an advance copy. Pestilence Vol 1 will be published February 20, 2018.
Posted in Diane's Favorites, Graphic Novel, Horror Tagged with: Feb 20 2018, Historical fiction
Have you ever thought, “Every plot has already been used so what’s the point in reading (or writing) another”? If so, Smoke City is going to surprise you. No book or movie is anywhere near its plot for imagination and creativity.
Smoke City is a captivating genre-smashing novel. Here are the major genres that are colliding like atoms within this novel:
It sounds like it would be a huge mess. But somehow it works!
Half-visible wraiths nicknamed smokes are appearing in Southern California and northern Mexico. Mike Vale, a washed up previously famous artist is desperately trying to get to a funeral in Los Angeles.
Mike picks up Marvin Deitz after Marvin is unceremoniously kicked out of his record store’s lease by his shady, possibly mob-connected, landlord. Marvin is convinced that he will die violently before his 57th birthday in a few days. Why? Throughout his multitude of reincarnations, he never lives to 57. Marvin is convinced he is being punished for executing Joan of Arc in 1431. His therapist thinks it is just a delusion. Convinced he has seen the current incarnation of Joan of Arc on a talk show, Marvin is going to Los Angeles in the hopes of finding forgiveness from a woman he has never met–at least in this lifetime.
On the way to LA, the pair pick up a stowaway, Casper. The plot continues to get curiouser and curiouser from there.
Deciding to read this book takes a leap of faith. There is no comparable book or movie to say it resembles. Smoke City was written by a relatively unknown writer and published by a small press. However, take this reviewer’s advice and read this book. It is truly fantastic and totally different from any other book you will read this year! Kirkus Reviews gushed (for them) that it was “strangely satisfying”. It is worth 5+ stars!
Posted in Diane's Favorites, Fantasy, Horror, Literary Fiction, Paranormal Tagged with: Historical fiction, Jan 23 2018, magical realism
Perfect paranormal suspense for fans of early Stephen King like Stand by Me.
Eddie, Fat Gav, Metal Mickey, Hoppo and Nicki are 12 year old friends in an English market town one summer in 1986. At the suggestion of their school’s new art teacher, Mr. Halloran, they use different colored chalk stick figures to send secret messages to each other. However, someone is also playing with chalk leaving messages to a dead dismembered body in their local woods. In 2016, the remaining friends begin to receive ominous chalk messages again.
Alternating time lines between the past and present, life catches up with the friends and their families. The Chalk Man contains graphic dead and ghostly bodies. There are several mysterious deaths. The book also refers to bullying, extremist religious views, rape and abortion.
The Chalk Man has a great atmosphere of dread. Evil is everywhere. Everyone has secrets within their past. There are mysteries within mysteries here. However, The Chalk Man compels the reader to speed toward the denouement as fast as possible. It is highly recommended for thriller readers looking for a paranormal, almost horror, component along with the traditional mystery. 4 stars!
I won this book in a Goodreads giveaway but that has not impacted my review.
Posted in Horror, Mystery & Thrillers Tagged with: Coming of age, Jan 9 2018, suspense
Not one of the better issues but moves from point A to Point B.
The Whisperer War is finally fought. Rick’s group has an internal war brewing with the Sanctuary. Negan loses an old friend and reveals some of his backstory.
Anticlimactic ending to the Whisperer War leaves this volume missable. Nothing much happens that won’t be fleshed out more in the next volume anyway. I get these books from the library. After waiting through a 5 month line, I was disappointed. My only consolation is I didn’t spend $15.
Unfortunately, I can’t recommend buying this mediocre volume in this excellent series. However, if you can read it for free, it is an acceptable way to spend a few hours. 2 stars.
Even though this one was a bust, the next volume, A Certain Doom, looks awesome! All of these books are so much better than the television show (and different people are alive and dead so they could be consumed simultaneously without major spoilers).
Posted in Graphic Novel, Horror Tagged with: series, Zombies
Epic new comic that reads like a classic horror story.
Sadie is 16 and giving birth during a series of earthquakes in Salt Lake City Utah. The earthquakes stop immediately after her son Clark is born. At the same time, a mysterious group called The Silhouette is attempting to kill Clark believing that he is the Anti-Christ. To reveal any more of the plot would ruin the surprising twists to come.
Babyteeth Vol 1 is the best horror comic I’ve read this year. I got goosebumps as good or better than when I read the first volume of The Walking Dead or Preacher. It reminds me of the end of the first Terminator movie where the mother is driving to Mexico with the ominous clouds in the rear view mirror. I can’t wait to read future volumes as we delve further into Sadie’s and Clark’s story. The characters are what make this story feel so genuine like it could be happening around the corner. It is highly recommended to anyone who enjoyed The Omen, The Terminator, The Walking Dead, Preacher or almost anything by Stephen King along with anyone who just enjoys a good tale. 5 stars!
Thanks to the publisher, Aftershock Comics, and NetGalley for an advanced review copy.
Posted in Graphic Novel, Horror Tagged with: Dec 19 2017
Beware, you may not sleep well after reading Kill Creek!
Kill Creek begins with four horror novelists agreeing to a live-streamed interview in a long abandoned haunted house in Kill Creek, Kansas. The interviews are held on Halloween night and the novelists stay overnight within the house. All the novelists have different styles from a Stephen King-type horror veteran to a R.L. Stine-type Young Adult horror novelist. To say much more about the plot would spoil it. However, the aftermath of the interview is the best part of this excellent book.
Kill Creek is definitely not for the faint-of-heart. There is a lot of violence. However, the story is very innovative. It is clear that the author has a love of all things horror. There is even a section that echoes a scene in the movie, Murder by Death. The book is both intelligent atmospheric horror and plain scary. Think of the first Saw movie. I finished reading Kill Creek at night on my Kindle with all the lights off and no one else awake in the house. I couldn’t fall asleep until dawn! However, I also just couldn’t stop reading! I love the insertion of a mystery within the horror genre. Kill Creek is highly recommended. 5 stars!
Thanks to the publisher, Inkshares, and NetGalley for an advanced review copy.
Posted in Diane's Favorites, Horror, Mystery & Thrillers, Paranormal Tagged with: ghosts, oct 31
Interesting setting and plot wasted with a lackluster resolution.
Dawn in Damnation opens in a western bar where a veteran resident is explaining how a newbie got there. Damnation is “hell’s sifter”. Those that have some redeeming qualities included in an evil life, go to Damnation to be judged. Those that kill a man, go straight to hell. Men who can avoid killing for a year might make it to heaven but no one has made it yet. The town, in perpetual dusk with an eerie sky, includes a “dead” vampire and a pack of dead werewolves.
The setup for this plot is innovative. However, foreshadowed events go nowhere and the ending just dribbles to a close without resolution of any of the town or citizen’s issues or questions. Instead there is a preview of volume two of the series that seems to indicate the addition of more problems rather than a resolution of the current ones.
There is nothing more frustrating than rushing to read a book to find out what happens–and then nothing is explained (heavy sigh). I can’t recommend this book even though I loved its innovation. 1 star.
Thanks to the publisher, Lyrical Underground, and netgalley for an advanced review copy.
Posted in Horror, Paranormal Tagged with: oct 31, vampires, werewolves
A former Pinkerton detective, MacGregor, searches for a known criminal in a Western town infected with evil.
Set in 1890, the villainous gangs in this graphic novel are extremely original paranormal creatures. Their originality is the best part of this book. The other characters are western movie stereotypes like the damsel in distress, the old doc and the crooked richest man in town. The plot is a standard western trope too with the usual villainous gangs replaced with monsters. There is also an off-hand reference to steampunk and a sub-plot regarding slavery, which seemed to be afterthoughts.
I love the idea of a western paranormal mashup. It makes sense that an old mine might house evil. The plot is good if somewhat derivative. However, the artwork is murky and it is frequently difficult to tell what is happening. Many of the panels use the exact same color for the foreground and the background with only a thin line separating the two. Also, the shadowing is done using thick cross-hatching, while the outlines are using thin lines that decreases the clarity in many panels. The original online comic won a Harvey award and didn’t have this clarity issue. Hopefully, that will be the way it will appear in the final released version.
The real reason to read High Moon #1 and the next volume due out in May 2018 is to prepare for the all-new volume 3. The original web series ended with a cliffhanger about seven years ago. Fans of the original series and others that want a good quick scary read for Halloween will be interested in this book. However, others should get a free Kindle sample or view the book in person to make sure the artwork issues have been cleared up before ordering a copy. 3 stars.
Thanks to the publisher, Papercutz, and NetGalley for an advanced review copy.
Posted in Graphic Novel, Horror, Paranormal Tagged with: oct 31, series, western
A non-stop roller-coaster of a read!
Subhuman begins by showing the seemingly disparate specialties of five scientists. Dr. Cade Evans is an archaeologist, who has just discovered a mass grave underneath an existing excavated Egyptian tomb. Within it, Evans finds a mass of animal and human bodies, one with an abnormally large skull. In Nigeria, forensic anthropologist Dr. Jade Liang studies the corpses from a recent massacre to obtain evidence for the UN International Criminal Court. Within the piles of the dead, she sees a young deceased girl with an unusually outsized head. Marvin Roche studies crop circles in the English countryside after an earlier career as a cryptanalyst at the US National Security Agency. Kelly Nolan predicts an earthquake in Oregon by reviewing sub-vocal sounds in the earth’s crust. Anya Fleming exhumes a big skulled man in Russia. All five agree to work for Richards, an enigmatic venture capitalist, who has set up a state-of-art base in Antarctica.
Subhuman is a rollicking read that is hard to stop reading. The first half uses existing pop culture alien theories, Nazi Germany myths, and real science to describe what Richards is researching at the base on Antarctica. The author does an excellent jobs merging these divergent sources into a coherent plot. The second half will seem familiar to viewers of some famous 1980s horror films. Still the novel is a compulsive page-turner anyway. Subhuman is recommended for thriller, hard science fiction and horror readers. I can’t wait for this book to be made into a movie! 4 stars.
Thanks to the publisher, Kensington Books, and netgalley for an advanced review copy.
Posted in Horror, Mystery & Thrillers, Science Fiction Tagged with: oct 31, series
Great manga version of the most famous of Poe’s tales.
This volume of Edgar Allen Poe tales includes The Raven, The Tell Tale Heart, The Cask of Amontillado, The Fall of the House of Usher and The Mask of the Red Death. All are famous as Poe’s best work. The adaptation of The Raven holds up the best as it is included in its entirety. Even though I have previously read this work many times and saw it as an adaptation on The Simpsons, I believe this is the best version that I have ever encountered. The Mask of the Red Death explains the plot much better than the original story or the silent movie with Lon Chaney. All of the stories still have a feeling of increasing dread as you read them.
If you have a young adult that can’t get through the old fashioned language used in the original stories, this would be the perfect gift. The pictures explain words that I just skimmed over when I originally read the stories in high school and college. In addition, the adapter’s notes for each story explain items even further. For example, I had no idea about the story behind the beetles in The Tell Tale Heart.
The artwork acts like manga (read back to front and right to left) and the characters look like manga characters while staying true to clothing styles from the 1840s when these stories were written. The artwork sets the mood for the psychological horror ambiance of the tales. 4 stars!
Thanks to the publisher, Udon Entertainment, and NetGalley for an advanced review copy. The Stories of Edgar Allen Poe: Manga Classics was published on October 17, 2017.
Posted in Graphic Novel, Horror Tagged with: classics, oct 17, short story
Propels the plot forward significantly plus fantastic ending!
The Walking Dead graphic novels must be read in order and to summarize any part of this plot will be SPOILERS for the previous volumes. So reader beware!
Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown… Rick decided, after consulting with Negan, at the end of volume 25 to build an army within his group of three groups. In this volume, he starts purposefully using anti-whisperers propaganda to veer the citizens’ minds away from blaming him for the deaths during the last volume. It doesn’t work for one person who is out for revenge.
The plot seems to move faster than usual as many different balls are in the air. The ending is a real shocker that was a total surprise. I would highly recommend this volume if you are a reader of the series. I have to admit that I almost stopped reading the series around volume 17 but now I’m glad I didn’t. Volume 26 is a compelling read that is not to be missed!
Posted in Diane's Favorites, Graphic Novel, Horror Tagged with: Spoiler?, Zombies
Interesting plot but illustrations are not easy to interpret.
This is a graphic novel about a zombie apocalypse. I have read many books with this topic and 25 volumes of The Walking Dead graphic novels previously so I wasn’t expecting much innovation. However, this book’s plot surprised me with its setting in the Pacific Northwest and its simple but plausible zombie solution. I enjoyed the humor in having one of the heroes be basically a Canadian Bruce Campbell who tried to sound the alarm beforehand but was dismissed as being just an actor. I wasn’t that happy about some of the stereotypical characters (I.e. crazy Montana rednecks and conceited scientists) but that didn’t impact my enjoyment of the main plot.
My main concern was that the illustrations were very dark and many of the male characters looked similar. The third, and last, chapter alternated between several different groups of humans traveling and fighting their way across the United States. Rather than just labeling the state or city, the illustrator used different color palettes; green, blue and brown; for the different groups. Unfortunately, it took me a third of the chapter to figure this out so I ended up restarting the chapter so I could see the progress of each group.
The plot is complete within this single volume. I would recommend it to hard-core zombie apocalypse fans but not to most graphic novel readers due to the poor illustrations though the plot was interesting.
Thanks to the publisher, Insight Comics, and netgalley for a copy in exchange for my honest review.
Posted in Graphic Novel, Horror Tagged with: apocalypse, Zombies