The Horror Book Review Digest Volume III: The Horror Book Review Digest, #3

By Michael Patrick Hicks

"For the last few years, Michael Patrick Hicks has been my go-to for horror novel reviews."

Tim Meyer, author of Kill Hill Carnage and The Switch House

 

In addition to crafting his own works of horror, Michael Patrick Hicks has been reviewing books for more than two decades and has written for such outlets as Audiobook Reviewer and Graphic Novel Reporter.

Now, he returns with The Horror Book Review Digest Volume III, his third collection of reviews covering some of the horror genre's biggest releases and hidden gems from 2021-2024 from authors like Chuck Wendig, Nat Cassidy, V. Castro, Christopher Golden, Tananarive Due, TC Parker, Adam Cesare, Brian Keene, Stephen King, and many, many more.

This third volume of The Horror Book Review Digest features reviews of over 100 books that promise to give you chills and nightmares! Settle in, keep a light on, and find your next great read.

• Language: English
• Publisher: High Fever Books, LLC
• Release date: Feb 7, 2025
• ISBN: 9798227522993

Michael Patrick Hicks

Michael Patrick Hicks is the author of a number of speculative fiction titles. His debut novel, Convergence, was an Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award 2013 Quarter-Finalist. His most recent work is the horror novel, Mass Hysteria. He has written for the Audiobook Reviewer and Graphic Novel Reporter websites, in addition to working as a freelance journalist and news photographer. In between compulsively buying books and adding titles that he does not have time for to his Netflix queue, he is hard at work on his next story.

Book preview

The Horror Book Review Digest Volume III

THE HORROR BOOK REVIEW DIGEST VOLUME III

MICHAEL PATRICK HICKS

High Fever Books

About The Horror Book Review Digest Volume III

For the last few years, Michael Patrick Hicks has been my go-to for horror novel reviews.

Tim Meyer, author of Kill Hill Carnage and The Switch House

In addition to crafting his own works of horror, Michael Patrick Hicks has been reviewing books for more than two decades and has written for such outlets as Audiobook Reviewer and Graphic Novel Reporter.

Now, he returns with The Horror Book Review Digest Volume III, his third collection of reviews covering some of the horror genre’s biggest releases and hidden gems from 2021-2024 from authors like Chuck Wendig, Nat Cassidy, V. Castro, Christopher Golden, Tananarive Due, TC Parker, Adam Cesare, Brian Keene, Stephen King, and many, many more.

This third volume of The Horror Book Review Digest features reviews of over 100 books that promise to give you chills and nightmares! Settle in, keep a light on, and find your next great read.

Also by Michael Patrick Hicks

In the End, Nothing (A Short Story Collection)

Friday Night Massacre

Broken Shells: A Subterranean Horror Novella

Mass Hysteria

The Salem Hawley Series

The Resurrectionists (Book 1)

Borne of the Deep (Book 2)

DRMR Series

Convergence (A DRMR Novel, Book 1)

Emergence (A DRMR Novel, Book 2)

Preservation (A DRMR Short Story)

Non-Fiction

The Horror Book Review Digest

The Horror Book Review Digest Volume II

The Horror Book Review Digest Volume III

THE HORROR BOOK REVIEW DIGEST VOLUME III

Copyright © 2025 by Michael Patrick Hicks

High Fever Books

First Edition: January 2025

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

NO AI TRAINING: Without in any way limiting the author and publisher’s exclusive rights under copyright, any use of this publication to train generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to generate text is expressly prohibited. The author reserves all rights to license uses of this work for generative AI training and development of machine learning language models.

Vellum flower icon Created with Vellum

Contents

Foreword

Dead Silence by S.A. Barnes

Crypt of the Moon Spider (Lunar Gothic Trilogy #1) by Nathan Ballingrud

The Wind Began to Howl by Laird Barron

The Gulp (Tales From the Gulp #1) by Alan Baxter

The Fall (Tales From the Gulp #2) by Alan Baxter

Ghost Recall by Alan Baxter

Sallow Bend by Alan Baxter

The Leaves Forget by Alan Baxter

Sweet Tates of Betrayal: An Erotic Horror Novella by Harleigh Beck

Shiver: A Chilling Horror Anthology (edited by Nico Bell)

Wild Hunters by Stuart R. Brogan

The Beyond by Ken Brosky

The Scourge Between Stars by Ness Brown

Mary: An Awakening of Terror by Nat Cassidy

Goddess of Filth by V. Castro

The Queen of the Cicadas by V. Castro

Out of Aztlan by V. Castro

Clown in a Cornfield 2: Frendo Lives by Adam Cesare

Influencer by Adam Cesare

Fresh Hell (Autumncrow High) by Cameron Chaney

Wake Up and Open Your Eyes by Clay McLeod Chapman

The Broken Room by Peter Clines

The Spite House by Johnny Compton

Reap, Sow by S.H. Cooper

Guillotine by Delilah S. Dawson

Of Men and Monsters by Tom Deady

Faith of Dawn by Kristin Dearborn

Alien: Isolation by Keith R.A. DeCandido

The Reformatory by Tananarive Due

The Despicable Fantasies of Quentin Sergenov by Preston Fassel

The Ghosts of Who You Were by Christopher Golden

Road of Bones by Christopher Golden

All Hallows by Christopher Golden

The House of Last Resort by Christopher Golden

The X-Files: Perihelion by Claudia Gray

Just Like Mother by Anne Heltzel

Near the Bone by Christina Henry

The Day of the Door by Laurel Hightower

The Devil Takes You Home by Gabino Iglesias

Blood Country by Jonathan Janz

The Dismembered by Jonathan Janz

Children of the Dark 2: The Night Flyers by Jonathan Janz

The Abrum Files by Beau Johnson

Black Tide by K.C. Jones

My Heart Is A Chainsaw by Stephen Graham Jones

Don’t Fear the Reaper (The Lake Witch Trilogy #2) by Stephen Graham Jones

The Angel of Indian Lake (The Lake Witch Trilogy #3) by Stephen Graham Jones

We Are Legend by Daron Kappauff and Ward Nerdlo

The Wehrwolf by Alma Katsu

With Teeth by Brian Keene

Island of the Dead by Brian Keene

The Rising: More Selected Scenes From The End Of The World by Brian Keene

Cold, Black & Infinite by Todd Keisling

Killer Flies by Mark Kendall

Nothing But Blackened Teeth by Cassandra Khaw

The Salt Grows Heavy by Cassandra Khaw

Revival by Stephen King

Later by Stephen King

Fairy Tale by Stephen King

Holly by Stephen King

You Like It Darker by Stephen King

Absolute Unit by Nick Kolakowski

Beach Bodies by Nick Kolakowski

Bad Movie Night by Patrick Lacey

Children of the Fang and Other Genealogies by John Langan

The Hollow Gaze by T.D. Lawler

Island by Richard Laymon

The Last Storm by Tim Lebbon

Among the Living by Tim Lebbon

The House by Edward Lee

Maeve Fly by CJ Leede

DMV by Bentley Little

Behind by Bentley Little

Cannibal Creator by Chad Lutzke

Kagen the Damned by Jonathan Maberry

Son of the Poison Rose: A Kagen the Damned Novel (Kagen the Damned #2)

The Dragon in Winter: A Kagen the Damned Novel (Kagen the Damned #3)

Cave 13: A Joe Ledger and Rogue Team International Novel, Book 3 by Jonathan Maberry

NecroTek (The NecroTek Series Book 1) by Jonathan Maberry

Black Mouth by Ronald Malfi

Small Town Horror by Ronald Malfi

Curse of the Reaper by Brian McAuley

Extant by Michael McBride

Sleep Alone by J.A.W. McCarthy

Lure by Tim McGregor

Infestation (S-Squad #1) by William Meikle

Paradise Club by Tim Meyer

Lacuna’s Point by Tim Meyer

Skin Deep by Renee Miller (Rewind or Die #31)

The Banquet by Villimey Mist

Spermjackers From Hell by Christine Morgan

Trench Mouth by Christine Morgan

Despatches by Lee Murray

Aliens: Bishop by T.R. Napper

Aliens: Infiltrator by Weston Ochse

Maiden by T.C. Parker and Ward Nerdlo

Hummingbird by T.C. Parker

To Coventry: A Hummingbird Murder Mystery by TC Parker

Consequential: A Hummingbird Murder Mystery by TC Parker

Children of Chicago by Cynthia Pelayo

Unfortunate Elements of My Anatomy by Hailey Piper

Even the Worm Will Turn by Hailey Piper

Hell’s Bells (Rewind-or-Die #8) by Lisa Quigley

Camp Neverland (Rewind or Die #29) by Lisa Quigley

Antifa Splatterpunk (edited by Eric Raglin)

Monsters: We’re All A Little Different (Dark Tide Book 5) by Glenn Rolfe, Tom Deady, and Nick Kolakowski

Pay the Piper by George A. Romero and Daniel Kraus

Hungers as Old as This Land by Zachary Rosenberg

Twisted Anatomy (edited by Sci-Fi & Scary)

To Offer Her Pleasure by Ali Seay

Hysteria: Lolly & Lady Vanity by Ali Seay

They Rise by Hunter Shea

Faithless by Hunter Shea

Combustible: A Post-Apocalyptic Road Trip by Hunter Shea

Cult of the Spider Queen by S.A. Sidor

Sister, Maiden, Monster by Lucy A. Snyder

The Navajo Nightmare by David Sodergren and Steve Stred

Suckerville by Chris Sorensen

Bee Tornado by Chris Sorensen

What Happened At Sunrise Gardens by Nate Southard

Mastodon by Steve Stred

When I Look At The Sky, All I See Are Stars by Steve Stred

Errant Roots by Sonora Taylor

Mine: An Anthology of Body Autonomy Horror (edited by Roxie Voorhees and Nico Bell)

The Longest Thirst by Roxie Voorhees

Alien: Prototype by Tim Waggoner

We Will Rise by Tim Waggoner

Paradise-1 by David Wellington

Revenant-X by David Wellington

The Book of Accidents by Chuck Wendig

Wayward by Chuck Wendig

Black River Orchard by Chuck Wendig

The Staircase in the Woods by Chuck Wendig

Alien: Into Charybdis by Alex White

As Summer’s Mask Slips and Other Disruptions by Gordon B. White

Voracious by Wrath James White

It Came from the Sea by Matt Wildasin

The Backrooms by Matt Wildasin

Heads Will Roll by Josh Winning

Soft Targets by Carson Winter

Negative Space by B.R. Yeager

A Note From The Author

About the Author

Also Available From High Fever Books

In the End, Nothing: A Short Story Collection

Friday Night Massacre

The Resurrectionists (The Salem Hawley Series Book 1)

Borne of the Deep (The Salem Hawley Series Book 2)

Broken Shells

Mass Hysteria

Foreword

In 2017, in my review for Kyle Mills and Vince Flynn’s Mitch Rapp novel, Enemy of the State, a reader advised me to leave politics out of my reviews. My knee-jerk response was, FUCK THAT. At the time, we were living in the post-truth world of Donald Trump’s America, and the usual right-wing canard that all opposition must be silenced was already in play. (Sadly, we’ll be back to that skewed viewed of reality soon enough.)

I was tired of being silent, and even more tired still of others trying to silence me. In 2019, I began writing reviews for a website called Thrillerfix. My first review for them was for a near-future science fiction book, The Coming Storm by Mark Alpert. Alpert’s novel revolved around CRISPR gene-editing, climate change, and the undermining of American democracy by rogue government agencies and bad actors, like the President of the United States. Although not explicitly named, Alpert is very, very clearly writing about Donald Trump. One of his advisors notes how difficult it is to explain even basic concepts to POTUS, and that speaking with him is like talking to a child. The president is suffering from dementia, refers to events and people as either terrific, tremendous, or awful, possesses quite the imagination when it comes to estimating crowd sizes at his rallies, and keeps on rallying simply to receive the adoration of his supporters since nobody else can stand to be around him.

My review for The Coming Storm didn’t last very long. In hardly no time at all, the editors at Thrillerfix decided to take down my review because it sparked a lot of unwanted backlash from Trump supporters. For the team at Thrillerfix, it was a simple business decision. For me, it was a sign that these editors didn’t have the integrity to support their writers and were willing to bend over backwards to not make waves in the face of authoritarianism’s rising tide, and so I terminated my affiliation with them. It wasn’t a difficult decision to make. I could either keep my morals, my spine, and my freedom as a writer, or not. I opted to keep all three rather than be censored.

And now, here we are all over again, right back at square one. I’m writing this in the wake of the 2024 Election and Trump’s second victory, this time post-insurrection and post-conviction of 34 felonies, during the campaign for which he promised to turn US armed forces against his fellow Americans, who he referred to as the enemy within, should he win. Apparently, 72 million Americans wanted this also, in addition to an increase in the cost of consumer goods via promised tariffs and forcible mass deportations, and so they opted to put back into the head of our government the very same lying, racist, raping, cheating pig who tried to overthrow that government on January 6, 2021.

But here’s the thing when it comes to politics and art, particularly in an era defined so completely by Trump and his MAGA acolytes. They are inseparable. Art is not created in some walled-off, oxygen-less bubble. It’s created right here in the muck. For us writers, we see what’s happening in the world. We live in it. We breathe it in, and we breathe it out, onto the page. Politics affects us the same way it does everybody else, and in some instances even a little bit more. We’re affected by the increased costs we must bear due to tariffs and taxes. We’re affected by the constant inundation of grievances over policy airing out on the nightly news and social media every minute of every single day. And for those writers who are the wrong skin color, the wrong gender, who have the wrong sexual partners, or the wrong politics, who tell the wrong kind of story, they get to face the added challenge of book bans on top of the culture wars their work can so often land in the middle of. Write a POC protagonist or a gay character, even if only peripherally, then some readers of a particular religious and/or political background bemoans your story for being woke and publicly and loudly demands the local library or schools ban the work lest it continues to offender their obnoxiously snowflake-delicate sensibilities.

We write about the world we live in, and dear readers, this is it. This is the world. We live in politically charged times, where everything from baking a cake to finding a better paying job carries with it clashing undertones of right versus left. And it’s never reflected more soundly than in the horror genre. When we read a horror book, when we carefully examine it, we have to place it within the context of when it was written — the politics of the time and the author’s place within that sociopolitical sphere. We live in a time where being Black or gay — where just existing as a human being — is a political action, a political controversy. And a number of the books I’ve reviewed herein deal with those topics head-on. You don’t get anthologies like Antifa Splatterpunk under a government not explicitly led by fascists. You don’t get anthologies like Twisted Anatomy or Mine, or the witchy feminism of Lisa Quigley’s Camp Neverland, in a society where women’s bodies aren’t increasingly controlled by conservative Christian fanatics. You don’t get the politics at the backbone of Clown in a Cornfield 2 without Don’t Say Gay legislation and the insurrection of January 6. You don’t get Chuck Wendig’s Wayward (or its previous volume, Wanderers, reviewed in Volume II of this series) without Donald fucking Trump, the rise of American nationalism and white supremacy, and the US government’s catastrophic mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic. Ditto Stephen King’s Holly. You don’t get the post-2016 works of V. Castro, Cynthia Pelayo, or Gabino Iglesias without Trump, either, and the anger generated from his defaming Mexicans as rapists and murders, or for refusing to provide aid to Puerto Rico in the face of disasters (or hosting a rally where racist comedians call it a trash island). You don’t get Tananarive Due’s The Reformatory without right-wing promises to Make America Great Again and return to an era of segregation and Jim Crow laws and Supreme Court justices mulling over a return to the illegality of mixed-race marriages.

Even those works that are supposedly not political at all, or whose authors abhor politics, are, in fact, political. Their silence is political. Their refusal to take a stand and not rock the boat, as Thrillerfix opted to, or risk having a target painted on their back in the face of rising authoritarianism is political. Their acquiescence in advance is political. Their apathy is political, and it shows.

Many of the reviews collected here are political. Some look at the politics of the story. Some put the politics in context of the times we are facing and soon to be repeating. Others draw parallels, while others still are cries of frustration, anger, and disappointment.

Art is political.

Horror is political.

You can’t have one without the other.

For those readers who cannot stand the truth of this simple fact, you have two options. You can fix yourself, fix your heart and your soul, and make better choices when you cast your voting ballots. Or you can get the hell out of the way and fuck off.

Michael Patrick Hicks

Nov. 12, 2024

Dead Silence by S.A. Barnes

TOR NIGHTFIRE | FEB. 8, 2022 | 352 PAGES

Although the promotional copy for Dead Silence advertises S.A. Barnes's story as "Titanic meets The Shining," it feels more like a severely watered-down derivative of Aliens and Event Horizon with an unwanted dash of romance tacked on for good measure.

While repairing a communication satellites in deep space, Claire Kovalik picks up a distress signal from the lost luxury cruise ship, the Aurora. Immediately sensing fame and fortune over such a discovery, they chart a course to make their salvage and find way more than they expected. The Aurora, it turns out, is a literal ghost ship and the vacuum-frozen corpses floating throughout the Titanic-inspired vessel show signs of extreme violence. For the ghosts aboard, as well as for the readers, Claire's team represents fresh victims. Yay!

Told in alternating Then and Now chapters, Barnes builds up an ominous background for Ripley's, I mean, Claire's ordeal aboard the Aurora as she's interrogated by a pair of company-men from Weyland-Yutani Verux, the corporation that owns the lost ship and wants it back. To be fair, Claire really isn't all that comparable to Ripley, as she lacks the latter's brains, brawn, and is hardly as compelling a heroine. Claire, you see, has amnesia and doesn't recall how she escaped from the haunted vessel or how all of her crew died. But she is certain she can't let this greedy, evil corporation get their hands on it!

Barnes does have some neat ideas and scenes over the course of Dead Silence, even if they don't all play out to their fullest potential and the ending we're provided with is inexplicably, unsatisfyingly mundane (and, to its further detriment, largely unexplored). When we first meet Claire in the opening Now chapter, we get the impression she's an unreliable narrator thanks to the combination of psychiatric drugs being pumped into her and the hallucinations of her dead crew coming and going and drilling holes in their ghostly noggins. It's fun stuff, but Barnes forgoes giving her central character, or the story Claire relates to us and Verux's investigators, any sort of ambiguity. For a book that is ostensibly about madness, insanity, and psychosis, it's sadly straight-forward, which makes the head-games rather unfulfilling and ultimately as passive as can be.

Better was Barnes's depiction of Claire as a trauma survivor with a decidedly suicidal bent, as well as the commentary on corporate greed via Verux. But, again, this latter point isn't really a fresh or compelling take on bad businesses compared to the Alien flicks that clearly inspired it, and which Barnes liberally borrows from at regular turns throughout the story's plot. About the only element she hasn't taken from those movies is Jones the cat, who is sadly missing here. Well, Jones and the xenomorphs, since Barnes is cobbling Event Horizon's ghost ship conceit atop Ripley's story to make it her own.

Sadly, Dead Silence failed to live up to the expectations generated by Tor Nightfire's marketing team, thanks to its lack of originality and any genuine scares, its Scooby-Doo finale, sluggish pacing, and a heavy focus on Claire and Kane's will-they-or-won't-they romance. And, why yes, Kane was a character in the first Alien movie! This book also violates my general rule of thumb for stories that rip off are inspired by other better known properties to either be smarter or more entertaining (if not both!) than the material they're cribbing from. Ultimately, you can skip Dead Silence and watch Aliens and Event Horizon instead. Those movies are much better than this book, and you can thank me later.

Crypt of the Moon Spider (Lunar Gothic Trilogy #1) by Nathan Ballingrud

TOR NIGHTFIRE | AUG. 27, 2024 | 112 PAGES

With the recent release of Yorgos Lanthimos's film, Poor Things, and two other Frankenstein movies slated for 2025 release - one from Guillermo Del Toro for Netflix, and another in Maggie Gyllenhaal’s theatrical The Bride - Mary Shelley's shadow continues to loom large as a source of inspiration for modern-day horror talents. Enter into this fray, Crypt of the Moon Spider, Nathan Ballingrud's latest novella and first in the Lunar Gothic trilogy for Tor Nightfire.

As with Ballingrud's previous release, The Strange, the author presents us with a fantastical alternate history and a voyage to the stars more in keeping with the imaginings of Jules Verne and Edgar Rice Burroughs than Neil deGrasse Tyson. In Crypt, it is 1923 and Veronica Brinkley has been entrusted by her husband into the care of Dr. Cull of Barrowfield Home for Treatment of the Melancholy on Earth's moon. The clinic has been built upon a tomb that once housed the legendary moon spider, and although this species is no more its webs still cling to the treetops of the moon's forest surrounding Barrowfield Home.

Veronica is a waifish sort, the type of person upon whom events occur to and are heaped upon with little care or who lack any awareness of their own power for agency. Her victimhood is learned, instilled upon her by her own mother as a child in their Nebraska farmhouse who taught her that her life is not her own and that women exist only in the wake of men. Mother's is an old-fashioned viewpoint in lockstep with the times -- the suffrage movement, if it existed at all in this askew historical, would not yet have led to the ratification of the 19th Amendment, which itself would only be a couple of years old in Veronica's adulthood. Women are second-class citizen, and Veronica's institutionalization has little to do with her own wants or desires so much as her husband's, who has consigned her away off-planet in an effort to wash his hands of her entirely. She's passed from one man to another in a series of victimizations that culminate, but do not end, in an unorthodox medical procedure involving moon spider silk and intracranial surgery.

With both Crypt of the Moon Spidery and The Strange, I've found an awful lot to love about Ballingrud's alternate histories and star-flung exploits. What they lack in scientific rigor they make up for with fun and spectacle. He clearly has a vision with these tales, and he does a fantastic job realizing them. The modern technologies and antiquated world views of the 1920s setting provide intriguing dichotomies against the fantastical lore, and its impact on the sciences, upon which these worlds are built. Ballingrud presents us with imagery that alternates between the marvelous and the terrifying in equal measure, granting us visions that are both awe-inspiring and chill inducing in their terrestrial and extraterrestrial horrors, and the mishmash of ideas and concepts he weaves together are keenly unlike anything else you're likely to read. Or, as Tyson might more eloquently put it, with Ballingrud, we got a bad-ass over here.

The Wind Began to Howl by Laird Barron

BAD HAND BOOKS | MAY 16, 2023 | 152 PAGES

After a three year wait, following 2020’s Worse Angels, Isiah Coleridge is finally back. It’s a novella that almost didn’t happen, twice-over, if fate and timing had been crueler. As Laird Barron notes in the book’s Acknowledgments, he fell gravely ill while writing this story at the tail-end of 2022. Following its completion, Barron collapsed and was rushed into surgery in January 2023 to, according to a GoFundMe set up to help him cover medical expenses, treat a mass on his lungs. His recovery is ongoing months later. The release of The Wind Began to Howl was slated and, fortuitously, arrived just before the recent blow-up at New Leaf Literary (you can read more on that at The Mary Sue) and their split from Barron’s literary agent, Jordan Hamessley. Needless to say, we’re lucky that Barron is still with us, as is his ex-mobster thug turned PI, Coleridge.

This time around, Coleridge is hired by a film director to track down a pair of indie musicians in order to secure license to use a piece of their music in his latest film, the titular The Wind Began to Howl (Catchy, Coleridge says of the film’s title). In the grand tradition of PI noir investigations, what at first blush sounds like a simple job grows increasingly complex.

Over the course of the first three installments of the Isiah Coleridge series, Barron has slowly but surely been edging closer and closer to the supernatural, carefully injecting an increasing amount of occult and cosmic horror influences into these noir crime capers. What began as a hunt for a serial killer and decorated with femme fatales and wealthy elites operating multinational corporations and private security firms burgeoned into explorations of defunct, underground large hadron colliders, occult influencers, secret government experiments, and the uncaring universe above.

In some ways, Barron is charting a similar path with his creation as John Connolly did in the early Charlie Parker books. The Wind Began to Howl represents a significant ramping up of oddities, but Barron is careful not to overzealously play his hand. See, Coleridge has been bonked in the head a few times too many and has suffered a fair amount of trauma besides. He experiences what he calls occasional perceptual glitches, like hallucinations and lost time, in addition to recurring nightmares. Whatever horror elements Barron is pulling in are thus-wise couched in Coleridge’s unreliability as a narrator. Is it real or is it Memorex? The people he surrounds himself with, too, have discussions on the viability of cryptids, such as Bigfoot and the Jersey Devil, which provides a bit of a barometer for readers on how literal Barron may or may not be in incorporating these more esoteric elements. Much like The X-Files, of which the Coleridge series is beginning to feel more and more apiece with as it progresses, it’s a matter of whether or not you want to believe.

Coming as it does as the fourth entry (or 3.5 due to its more diminutive novella size in comparison to the preceding full-length novels) in the Coleridge saga, The Wind Began to Howl is not necessarily the best place for newbies to begin. As Coleridge’s investigation heats up, Barron ties his subjects into some of Coleridge’s earlier cases in intriguing fashion, drawing some truly interesting connections between the past and present. New readers will likely find themselves confused and in over the heads despite the slim reading. For Coleridge die-hards who have been there since the beginning these developing plot threads are richly rewarding, particularly as they give shape to Barron’s deftly developing overarching mythos. I suspect this novella will be an integral piece as this series develops, cluing readers in on what to expect in whatever comes next. From the sounds of it, there is certainly plenty more to come, too, as Barron continues to recover and has been granted a second chance to unravel more of Coleridge’s saga in the years ahead. Bring ‘em on, I say.

The Gulp (Tales From the Gulp #1) by Alan Baxter

DRAGON BOOKS | JAN. 12, 2021 | 316 PAGES

Over the course of five novellas, Alan Baxter introduces up to the secluded Australian harbor town of Gulpepper, aka The Gulp, as it's known to locals. Those who live there never leave, and outsiders know enough to stay away. Thanks to its oddities, The Gulp has a certain Innsmouth-like flavor and shades of Stephen King's Castle Rock, but it's a small town that Baxter has made all his own. Over the course of this mosaic novel, he slowly peels back the various layers of mystery and undercurrents of connectedness that give The Gulp life.

We're introduced to The Gulp by way out of Richard Blake, a deliveryman whose truck has broken down on his first trip into town. While waiting for repairs, Blake takes a room at a local hotel and becomes witness to a crime that will change his life forever. Presenting The Gulp to us through Blake is a smart move on Baxter's part, and we share in this sense of discovery and unease alongside Blake, one outsider to another. Out on a Rim introduces us to the darker, seedier side of Gulpepper with its focus on the intersection between organized crime and the supernatural. Supernatural crime stories are something Baxter's done really well in previous stories like Devouring Dark and the two Recall book, and Out on a Rim is a fine addition to this oeuvre.

Mother in Bloom centers on two teens attempting to cover up the death of their mother, and the thing she has posthumously grown into. Fans of fungal horror will find a lot to enjoy in this entry, and I really dug the way successive entry in The Gulp featured some small callbacks to this piece, albeit oftentimes in the background. By book's end, though, it's clear that this story is going to be quite the lynchpin in Baxter's mythos moving forward. One of the more intriguing aspects of this mosaic novel is the fact that although these stories carry their own weight, each serve up broader implications about this town and point toward a much larger, yet to be revealed, story.

We get some nice background about Gulpepper in The Band Plays On, which centers around a group of backpackers who catch a rock show at a local pub. Blind Eye Moon gets mentioned from time to time over the course of this book, and this story