Day of the Triffids

The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Everything seemed fine with the domesticated Triffids until the Earth passed through the tail of a comet, blinding much of the world's population. It was then the Triffids struck!



I love the proto-sf of the first half of the 20th century, when the lines between sf and horror were more blurred than they are now. Day of the Triffids is one of those books that many things that came later owe a debt to. The roots of the survival horror genre can be found within its pages, in my opinion. Many zombie flicks owe a debt of gratitude to this book. Heck, 28 Days Later lifted the beginning directly. Guy wakes up in hospital to find the whole world has changed while he was asleep. Sound familiar?



The Triffids themselves are a little ridiculous but still scary. A walking plant with a venomous sting is nothing to laugh at.



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Stinger

Stinger by Robert R. McCammon

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


The town of Inferno has been slowly dying since the copper mine went bust. The school is closing for good in two days. Most people are leaving town and the two gangs, The Rattlesnakes and the Renegades, are like vultures on Inferno's corpse. Everything gets turned upside down the day an alien ship crashes and the alien takes over the body of a little girl. It's a picnic, however, compared to the second alien that shows up...



Stinger is the story of a dying town turned upside down by two aliens. Just as he did in Swan Song, McCammon creates an ensemble cast that grips the imagination. Cody Lockett and Rick Jurado, leaders of the Renegades and the Rattlesnakes, were both three dimensional characters and neither were scene-chewing villains. The rest of the cast was also well done, the Hammond family in particular. Even Vance, the douche bag sheriff, and Curt Lockett, Cody's alcoholic father, ended up not being all bad.



The aliens were pretty interesting. Daufin was an artificial intelligence contained in a black sphere and Stinger, well, Stinger was complicated, parts man, scorpion, and other components.



The story was fast-paced, especially after Stinger showed up, and reminded me of the movies The Predator and Tremors at times. No one knows when Stinger will strike but he always comes from below ground. One thing I found funny was that Stinger's ship surrounded the town with an impenetrable dome seven miles in diameter, cutting off the power and supplies. McCammon gets a lot of flack for being a Stephen King wannabee but he beat old Steve to the punch by over twenty years with the dome concept.



The ending was believable and done well. Not everyone survived and you got the idea that Inferno would never be the same.



Stinger was a page-turner and shouldn't be missed by horror fans. It's gory and really intense at times.











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Clickers

Clickers by J.F. Gonzalez

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Writer Rick Sychek plans on spending time in remote Phillipsport, Maine, to write his newest book, but his plans are derailed when he wrecks his car trying to avoid something in the road. Before Rick knows what's happening, Phillipsport is swarmed by the Clickers, strange scorpion-like crabs from the ocean's depths. Carnage ensues and the town fights for survival, not knowing that the Clickers are the least of their problems...

Clickers is a tribute to B-movies by J.F. Gonzalez and Mark Williams, and reads as such. There's violence, cursing, and tons upon tons of gore, the hallmarks of a good b-horror flick. The Clickers were suitably scary and the Dark Ones even more so. People got picked off left and right. While I had a feeling Rick would be left standing at the end, I had no idea who'd be left standing with him. Clickers is a good example of survival horror at work. The entire time I was reading it, I kept picture Roland on the beach in Drawing of the Three, trying not to get eaten by the lobstrocities.

Guy Smith, killer crab enthusiast and Goodreads folk hero, was mentioned in both the introduction and the text. I felt nostalgic for some of the references to 80's and 90's music and culture, although I snorted a bit when Rick was looking through his VHS tapes.

So why did I give it a three? Well, most of the characters were pretty thin but the thing that really dragged Clickers down a couple notches was that there was way too much going on. If Gonzalez and Williams had just focused on Sychek and the Clickers, it would have been an easy four. As it stands, there were way too many supporting characters, and too many of those had names starting with the letter R. The Dark Ones diminished the Clicker threat and felt like they were added on for padding or something.

While it has its flaws, Clickers does what it sets out to do: recreate the experience of a B-movie in book form. It was an enjoyable read and I'll probably cave in and grab Clickers II one of these days.



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Wolves Dressed as Men

Wolves Dressed as Men by Steve Lowe

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Maria is interested in a mysterious co-worker named Thiess but Thiess is the bearer of a dark secret: he's a werewolf! Will Thiess share his secret with Maria before the mysterious Tracker guns him down?

Remember the good old days before sparkly vampires and baby-lovin' werewolves, when monster tales were more than excuses for some smut? Wolves Dressed is Men is a throwback to those glorious days.

Wolves Dressed as Men is a slim, 60 page volume but Steve Lowe crams it to the brim with lycanthropic goodness. It's like a Ramones song. It's really short but still the perfect length. You get werewolves, action, intrigue, a touch of smut, and a nosy reporter trying to tie it all together.

I can't say much more than I already have without spoiling things. If you think you can find a better sixty page werewolf novella, be my guest. I'll stick with this one.



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Swan Song

Swan Song by Robert R. McCammon

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


What if the apocalypse that befell the poor souls in The Stand was nuclear instead of viral in nature and the whole thing was written in a style more like Richard Matheson's than Stephen King's? Well, you'd probably have Swan Song.



Comparisons with the Stand are inevitable. Both are about the survivors of an apocalyptic event and both have a devil type figure walking around stirring things up. Swan Song doesn't have that final battle between good and evil thing going like the Stand did, although some of the events could be interpreted as such.



Swan, the title character, starts off as a little girl who's strangely good with plants before the bombs drop. As the story unfolds, she's joined by Black Frankenstein, aka Josh Hutchins, a professional wrestler. They're wandering, looking for other survivors. Josh has been tasked with protecting Swan and does his best. The other main protagonist is a former homeless woman called Sister, who has a glass ring with unusual abilities. Their paths eventually cross with the Army of Excellence, led by Colonel Macklin, an unhinged Vietnam war hero, and Roland Croninger, a young millitary enthusiast caught up in playing soldier for real. Throw in crazies like Lord Alvin and the ever-present Man with Many Faces and you've got a winner on your hands.



I'll just come out and say it: This book held my interest more than the Stand did. The style was much more gripping and I got attached to Sister, Josh, and Swan. I almost let a tear escape my eye at the end but fought it back.



I'd recommend this book to anyone who liked the Stand and other post-apocalypic stories.



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