Review: Optical Delusion

Optical Delusion by Hunter Shea
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

When Martin Blackstone's son is given a pair of X-Ray specs from a comic book, they don't seem to work. Martin puts them on and discovers a whole new world lurking just beneath the surface. How far will Martin's obsession with the X-Ray specs take him?

Hunter Shea is my go-to guy when it comes to fun horror. When this came up on Netgalley, I couldn't resist.

First we got a horror novel about sea monkeys. Now, X-Ray specs! Like most pre-pubescent boys who bought comics in the late 1970s and early 80s, I saw the ads for these and always wondered what it would be like to wear a pair.

Pretty horrific, it turns out. Sure, Martin cheats at poker and ogles the hottest woman in town but sometimes, you see too much. Optical Delusion is almost a tale of addiction for that reason. It's also gory good fun as Martin goes off the rails.

Much like Just Add Water, Optical Delusion is a love letter to those cheesy ads in the backs of comic books from years past, only this love letter is written in blood. Four out of five stars.

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