Recent Reads From HELL Part IV

 Here's a quick rundown on a few books I recently read.

Spawn of Hell by William Schoell

What can I say about this one? Not much, unfortunately. Kind of an interesting premise...kind of. Plagued by uninteresting characters, more typos than you typically see in mass market paperbacks, and just kind of typical in every way. I read this one a few weeks ago and I can't really remember much about it. It just wasn't all that remarkable. Creatures living under an abandoned building in a small town, devouring those unfortunate enough to get in their way. They get a taste for human flesh and become more bold. This was Schoell's debut. It's not a bad book, but it's not very good at all. I will try another of his novels some day. I know I'd hate to be judged by my first two books. They're not very good either.

The Silent Enemy by Ernest T. Jahn

This book had a fascinating premise, and being set in Hawaii was a plus, considering I've only read a few books set in the Aloha State. Unfortunately that where's anything good ends. It was readable, but in a pulp sort of way. The back cover copy promises mutated seaweed, and though there are hints of that, I felt it was a missed opportunity. Most of the story is bad character development and terrible dialogue. It felt like the book was written by whoever wrote old episodes of Scooby Doo Where Are You? That's not a knock on Scooby Doo (I'm a fan), but I expect more out of a novel. A lot more. A quick read, there are a few things to like, but I felt like this story could have been so much more.

Fright Night by John Skipp and Craig Spector

This is officially the first movie novelization I've ever read, and it didn't disappoint! I've seen the film several times, but not in a while. The book brought it all back in vivid detail. It was well written, as you would expect from Skipp and Spector, but clearly it wasn't their own original work. It has their fingerprints all over it, but I felt it was far more stripped down than their other books. I'm very interested in reading novelizations of movies I'm even more familiar with just to see the differences. This one was a hell of a lot of fun.

Toplin by Michael McDowell

Despite my adoration of McDowell's work, this one just didn't do it for me. I DNF'd it (to those in the back, that means Did Not Finish). The writing was solid, and very unlike McDowell's southern gothic style prose that I'm used to. I wanted to like the story, but I just didn't find it very engaging. It was almost dream-like, which made it very confusing. What turned out to be the final straw was when the narrator continued to detail the six or seven suits he has in his closet. I'm sure his obsession with those suits was indicative of some kind of
mental illness he was dealing with, but I just couldn't take it any more. This book was originally published around '85 in a special limited edition, but wasn't published in a mass market edition until the 90's when the Dell Abyss line picked it up. Dell Abyss published some amazing books, and also some that were a bit too experimental for me. Toplin fits in the latter category.

That's all for now. I'm currently working through the wonderful stories in Ronald Kelly's collection The Essential Sick Stuff, Prophecy by David Seltzer, and...I really want to read One For the Road by Wesley Southard,
but I can't remember where I put the book!!!