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geoffwood's review
3.0
Kinda problematic and poorly written but also verges into Garth Marenghi territory: "The door opened and closed again and again, smacking Willie's head into pulp. Then it closed one last time, and his head came loose, but his face stayed behind, sliding down into the garbage inside the compactor, where his dead eyes stared into nothing but black."
modernzorker's review
1.0
One thing I've noticed in my years of consuming horror literature the way dogs devour their way through whatever you plop into their dish: it's rare to find any writer, whether top-tier blockbuster, mid-lister, or bottom-feeding barrel scraping author, who gives two shits about Indiana. That isn't to say nobody sets books here, but they're usually not horror stories. Think about it: Maine has Stephen King, Rhode Island has Lovecraft, California has Laymon, and Indiana has...?
Well, I guess David Levien if you want to count his modern-day noir detective novels as some form of horror, but let's face it, the worst thing Indiana's seen in terms of horror novel setting is a nod-and-a-wink by Jack Ketchum whose book The Girl Next Door was inspired by the real 1965 torture-murder of Sylvia Likens. Indiana's flyover country when it comes to horror fiction, often ignored for the quaint timelessness of New England, the skyscrapers and high-rises of New York, the seemingly lawless wastes of Texas, or the bastion of incest, baby-eating, and Satan worshiping some authors confuse with 'California'.
(Edit: I should point out Scott Kenemore wrote a pretty awesome trilogy of zombie books set in the midwest with the inventive names of Zombie, Illinois; Zombie, Indiana; and Zombie, Ohio, and I neglected to give him credit for doing so in the original version of this post. Sorry, Scott!)
(Additional edit: Someone reminded me that J.N. Williamson also set a number of books in the Hoosier state. Sorry, Mr. Williamson!)
But all that changed when James Kisner showed up on the scene, folks. Because James Kisner ain't no ordinary author, no sirree. James Kisner was Hoosier born and Hoosier bred (and, apparently after a tragic carbon monoxide poisoning accident in 2008, Hoosier dead). Despite a not-very-prolific output when he was alive, he set his tales of terror just south of Lake Michigan. For those of you who need a map, it's the one between the US and Canada looking like a big, flaccid dong that convinced Indiana to let it put the tip in.
So, being the Indiana native that I am, I was excited to learn somebody out there was representing the 19th state in the realm of horror fiction. So excited, in fact, that I paid a buck plus shipping to get my hands on his final novel, 1994's Tower of Evil, to see how the Evansville native handled things. I selected Tower for two reasons: first, it was the last book he wrote and I assumed would thus showcase him at the culmination of his skills after a 13-year career, and second, it was one of his few works not published by Zebra. Don't get me wrong, I love me some trashy Zebra horror. Where else can one get the gun-toting insanity of William W. Johnstone, the depravity of Ruby Jean Jensen, and the willingness to publish anybody with a 300-page manuscript that could be promoted by slapping a skeleton on the cover? Regardless, Zebra was the gum-encrusted, booger-flecked desk's underside of the horror market. Leisure ranked above them for quality, but only just barely. I discovered a lot of fine talent through Leisure's line over the years...surely they wouldn't steer me wrong here.
Ha.
Ha ha ha ha ha...
Oh when will I ever learn?
So, to get the obvious out of the way first, and with absolutely no disrespect to the dead intended, James Kisner was either having a bad day, or he was a Zebra-caliber author who lucked into a contract above his punching weight. I had low expectations going in, but holy hell, I was not expecting the level of cheese Tower of Evil delivered. Rest in piece, Mr. Kisner. I apologize in advance for what I'm about to write.
* * * * *
Tower of Evil, as mentioned before, takes place in Indiana. Specifically, downtown Indianapolis, in a fictitious analog for what, at the time, would have been the Indiana National Bank Tower before it became the Bank One Tower, then the Chase Tower, and now (as of the time of this writing, at least) the Salesforce Tower. Kisner, from what I've read, used the memories and experiences of his time as a night watchman for the real tower to bring a sense of veritas to this story. This is one part of the book that really works: Kisner has no problem showcasing, through the routine of protagonist Shannon Elroy, the sanity-grinding tedium of working security in a thirty-story office. Whether it's dealing with inappropriate comments and the way security guards are looked down upon by those in the upper echelons of the building's tenants, the bodily wear-and-tear of the overnight shift, or just the unadulterated boredom of walking the same hallways on the same floors, making sure the same doors are locked, the same lights are turned off, and startling the same poor souls who are staying late to finish up tomorrow's presentation, the novel's opening does an adequate job setting the stage for what the downtown life of the blue-collar worker was like in the early 90's. Kisner relates these details in a casual, buddy to buddy manner, and I'd have enjoyed sitting down and listening to him tell the real deal just as much if not moreso than reading about Shannon's experiences.
Nearly everything that comes after this introduction though is an absurdity of coincidence and paranormal/metaphysical buffalo chips showcasing that, while Kisner had some interesting ideas, he had no editorial help in sanding off the suckage and crafting a coherent narrative for the rest of the book's 368 pages.
Tower of Evil's antagonist is a deceased hobo who calls himself "Dead Ted". Ted is a disembodied spirit who discovers he can take control of the bank tower's electrical systems if he tries hard enough. His first casualty is a hapless elevator repairman, called in to diagnose and fix a faulty car. When no one is watching, Ted hauls him into an empty elevator shaft. The man dies, impaled on one of the springs at the base of the shaft, but then Ted realizes he can also control his body despite the giant coil of metal in the corpse's midsection. As the dead elevator tech is stuck in the shaft, Ted can't do much with him, but it doesn't take Ted long to realize that if he can control one dead body, he can probably control more. Intrigued, Ted starts using the building's electrical components, everything from telephones and vending machines to cleaning equipment and personal computers, to raise a zombie army and take over the building.
The one thing Dead Ted didn't count on was overnight guard Shannon Elroy. A twenty-eight year old ex-military veteran and hot blonde possessed of a truly impressive rack which everyone, including herself, notices, Shannon's a straight-shooting, no-nonsense sort who doesn't believe in supernatural bullshit. She's extremely concerned with maintaining her model-perfect looks: the ripe old age of thirty, with its promise of spinsterhood if she doesn't find herself a nice guy to settle down with soon, looms on the horizon. Her shift promises to be extra dull, since a massive blizzard buffets the city, plunging temperatures to sub-freezing levels and making driving hazardous for anyone crazy enough to be out in it. It doesn't take long for Shannon to realize everybody in the building when she arrives, from cleaning crew to late-working employees, will be trapped inside for the foreseeable future until the plow crews can dig out downtown.
Dead Ted goes about his business with alacrity, turning one area of the building after another into his own torture playground, dispatching his victims with vacuum cleaners and ice machines, then re-animating and puppeting them around to continue the carnage. Shannon, in the meantime, stumbles across some of Ted's handiwork...and naturally dismisses it as someone's juvenile prank to scare the night watch.
She's too cool for school and not about to fall for it until she realizes the wounds people are sporting (not to mention the talking, decapitated head of Stan, the guy whom she just replaced for her shift) are way too high-tech and well-executed to be anything but the real deal. She's not sure how, but she's going to make damn sure whoever's behind the bullshit pays in spades as she stalks the floors of the bank tower, dispatching reanimated corpses and everything else Ted can throw at her, in a desperate bid to find survivors and stay alive until the sun comes up and the plows come out.
* * * * *
If you're thinking, "Oh cool, Die Hard with zombies!" then you're right where I was when I read the back cover blurb. "Die Hard with zombies" should be as impossible to fuck up as the Reverse Cowgirl sexual position, but here comes James Kisner bellowing, "Hold my beer!" and, well, look, I gave it one star, so you know where this is going.
This is one of the most absurd horror stories I've ever read. It's filled with violence that's yawn-inducing instead of cringe-worthy, along with the absolute least-sexy sex scenes I've read outside of Bill O'Reilly's Those Who Trespass. Frequently Kisner attempts to combine the two, because no one told him he isn't a good enough writer to do that. One scene involves a man's sudden realization that he can use the dark power inside him to turn his own wang into a sharp-toothed demon dick, which he then uses to devour a woman by humping and chewing up into her stomach with his mouthy meat. If your boning scenes inspire laughter instead of sweaty palms and quickening hearts, dude, you're doing it wrong. I've read better descriptions of gory sex in My Little Pony fan fiction.
Do not follow my lead. Just trust me on that one, will you?
I can excuse inept carnage and impotence-inspiring sex in my horror fiction. They're not the problem. No, my issue with Tower of Evil is it never explains anything. Dead Ted gets nothing more than his moniker until 290 pages in, and then, while Kisner tells us who he was, how he died, and why he might be upset enough at the building's tenants to murder-hump them, it never explains the power animating him. Dead Ted comes to life because James Kisner says so. We don't get a reason for his survival into un-life, it just happened.
Why can he remote-detonate a rat which is jumping from brain to brain and killing off his zombies? Because Kisner says he can. Why can he control the building's electrical systems? Because he just can, OK, gosh! Kisner's got a story to tell, and he can't be arsed to give us so much as a crumb of "because the Devil lives under downtown Indianapolis". That's really all it would take, but instead we get author fiat: the least-enjoyable horror trope of all.
My other major issue is that Shannon's so obviously a 'woman-written-by-a-guy' as opposed to just being a woman that it's insulting. In fact, all of Kisner's female characters have personalities flat enough to make poster board envious, yet bodies top-heavy enough to make porn stars jealous. This type of thing gave people ammo with which to paint the Horror genre with the broad strokes of misogyny and indifference, and unfortunately, Tower of Evil dispenses that ammunition in high-caliber format. I don't care how hot you tell me your female lead is -- if she doesn't have a brain in her head worth dying for, it won't matter that she's got the greatest rack in the history of boob-dom.
But even with that, even with all that, I still could have given this story two stars. I mean, I finished the thing, didn't I? One-star reviews are the equivalent of me waving the white flag. I couldn't stay the course. I tapped out. I gave up. But I read this one all the way to the bitter end, every last moronic page of it. Why one star?
Even I have standards (despite what my 'Currently Reading' shelf may otherwise imply).
Nothing will inspire me to verbally grind a book to confetti like a non-ending. A non-ending sends the signal the writer hit his page count and ran out of fucks. I'm fine with a well-executed open ending, like the way Stephen King ended The Mist. But a non-ending, one where the author fails to answer any of the important questions raised over the course of a manuscript, is the sin I cannot forgive. And rather than resolving anything he's been building up to, Kisner unzips his fly and unloads a steaming stream of asparagus-flavored piss into the reader's face.
That's page 368.
Page 369 is the blank inside of the back cover.
What the literal fuck, James Kisner?
I've read a lot of horror in my life, but I have never in all my years encountered a full-fledged turd-and-hemorrhoid salad dressed with diarrhea chutney and a side serving of microwaved jizz-sticks like Tower of Evil. The action is dull, the sex is anemic, the violence is ketchup-for-blood levels of laughable. Characters are so thinly drawn they could be spokesmodels for bulimia. The plot is so half-baked you couldn't get Denny's to serve it to a table of drunks at 3am. The sum-total of the product is so miserable I don't want to try anything else Kisner wrote--if this was his final novel, I can only imagine what the first or second must have looked like.
Is this why nobody sets horror novels in Indiana anymore? Did James Kisner ruin it for everyone else in 1994? If so, on behalf of Indiana natives everywhere, I deeply and sincerely regret and apologize for the actions of my fellow Hoosier. Tower of Evil earns one enormous gaping anus out of five, along with heartfelt hope that nobody reading this will seek out a copy on the off-chance it's not as bad as I'm making it out to be.
It is.
Don't make that mistake.
Do not read Tower of Evil.
Well, I guess David Levien if you want to count his modern-day noir detective novels as some form of horror, but let's face it, the worst thing Indiana's seen in terms of horror novel setting is a nod-and-a-wink by Jack Ketchum whose book The Girl Next Door was inspired by the real 1965 torture-murder of Sylvia Likens. Indiana's flyover country when it comes to horror fiction, often ignored for the quaint timelessness of New England, the skyscrapers and high-rises of New York, the seemingly lawless wastes of Texas, or the bastion of incest, baby-eating, and Satan worshiping some authors confuse with 'California'.
(Edit: I should point out Scott Kenemore wrote a pretty awesome trilogy of zombie books set in the midwest with the inventive names of Zombie, Illinois; Zombie, Indiana; and Zombie, Ohio, and I neglected to give him credit for doing so in the original version of this post. Sorry, Scott!)
(Additional edit: Someone reminded me that J.N. Williamson also set a number of books in the Hoosier state. Sorry, Mr. Williamson!)
But all that changed when James Kisner showed up on the scene, folks. Because James Kisner ain't no ordinary author, no sirree. James Kisner was Hoosier born and Hoosier bred (and, apparently after a tragic carbon monoxide poisoning accident in 2008, Hoosier dead). Despite a not-very-prolific output when he was alive, he set his tales of terror just south of Lake Michigan. For those of you who need a map, it's the one between the US and Canada looking like a big, flaccid dong that convinced Indiana to let it put the tip in.
So, being the Indiana native that I am, I was excited to learn somebody out there was representing the 19th state in the realm of horror fiction. So excited, in fact, that I paid a buck plus shipping to get my hands on his final novel, 1994's Tower of Evil, to see how the Evansville native handled things. I selected Tower for two reasons: first, it was the last book he wrote and I assumed would thus showcase him at the culmination of his skills after a 13-year career, and second, it was one of his few works not published by Zebra. Don't get me wrong, I love me some trashy Zebra horror. Where else can one get the gun-toting insanity of William W. Johnstone, the depravity of Ruby Jean Jensen, and the willingness to publish anybody with a 300-page manuscript that could be promoted by slapping a skeleton on the cover? Regardless, Zebra was the gum-encrusted, booger-flecked desk's underside of the horror market. Leisure ranked above them for quality, but only just barely. I discovered a lot of fine talent through Leisure's line over the years...surely they wouldn't steer me wrong here.
Ha.
Ha ha ha ha ha...
Oh when will I ever learn?
So, to get the obvious out of the way first, and with absolutely no disrespect to the dead intended, James Kisner was either having a bad day, or he was a Zebra-caliber author who lucked into a contract above his punching weight. I had low expectations going in, but holy hell, I was not expecting the level of cheese Tower of Evil delivered. Rest in piece, Mr. Kisner. I apologize in advance for what I'm about to write.
* * * * *
Tower of Evil, as mentioned before, takes place in Indiana. Specifically, downtown Indianapolis, in a fictitious analog for what, at the time, would have been the Indiana National Bank Tower before it became the Bank One Tower, then the Chase Tower, and now (as of the time of this writing, at least) the Salesforce Tower. Kisner, from what I've read, used the memories and experiences of his time as a night watchman for the real tower to bring a sense of veritas to this story. This is one part of the book that really works: Kisner has no problem showcasing, through the routine of protagonist Shannon Elroy, the sanity-grinding tedium of working security in a thirty-story office. Whether it's dealing with inappropriate comments and the way security guards are looked down upon by those in the upper echelons of the building's tenants, the bodily wear-and-tear of the overnight shift, or just the unadulterated boredom of walking the same hallways on the same floors, making sure the same doors are locked, the same lights are turned off, and startling the same poor souls who are staying late to finish up tomorrow's presentation, the novel's opening does an adequate job setting the stage for what the downtown life of the blue-collar worker was like in the early 90's. Kisner relates these details in a casual, buddy to buddy manner, and I'd have enjoyed sitting down and listening to him tell the real deal just as much if not moreso than reading about Shannon's experiences.
Nearly everything that comes after this introduction though is an absurdity of coincidence and paranormal/metaphysical buffalo chips showcasing that, while Kisner had some interesting ideas, he had no editorial help in sanding off the suckage and crafting a coherent narrative for the rest of the book's 368 pages.
Tower of Evil's antagonist is a deceased hobo who calls himself "Dead Ted". Ted is a disembodied spirit who discovers he can take control of the bank tower's electrical systems if he tries hard enough. His first casualty is a hapless elevator repairman, called in to diagnose and fix a faulty car. When no one is watching, Ted hauls him into an empty elevator shaft. The man dies, impaled on one of the springs at the base of the shaft, but then Ted realizes he can also control his body despite the giant coil of metal in the corpse's midsection. As the dead elevator tech is stuck in the shaft, Ted can't do much with him, but it doesn't take Ted long to realize that if he can control one dead body, he can probably control more. Intrigued, Ted starts using the building's electrical components, everything from telephones and vending machines to cleaning equipment and personal computers, to raise a zombie army and take over the building.
The one thing Dead Ted didn't count on was overnight guard Shannon Elroy. A twenty-eight year old ex-military veteran and hot blonde possessed of a truly impressive rack which everyone, including herself, notices, Shannon's a straight-shooting, no-nonsense sort who doesn't believe in supernatural bullshit. She's extremely concerned with maintaining her model-perfect looks: the ripe old age of thirty, with its promise of spinsterhood if she doesn't find herself a nice guy to settle down with soon, looms on the horizon. Her shift promises to be extra dull, since a massive blizzard buffets the city, plunging temperatures to sub-freezing levels and making driving hazardous for anyone crazy enough to be out in it. It doesn't take long for Shannon to realize everybody in the building when she arrives, from cleaning crew to late-working employees, will be trapped inside for the foreseeable future until the plow crews can dig out downtown.
Dead Ted goes about his business with alacrity, turning one area of the building after another into his own torture playground, dispatching his victims with vacuum cleaners and ice machines, then re-animating and puppeting them around to continue the carnage. Shannon, in the meantime, stumbles across some of Ted's handiwork...and naturally dismisses it as someone's juvenile prank to scare the night watch.
She's too cool for school and not about to fall for it until she realizes the wounds people are sporting (not to mention the talking, decapitated head of Stan, the guy whom she just replaced for her shift) are way too high-tech and well-executed to be anything but the real deal. She's not sure how, but she's going to make damn sure whoever's behind the bullshit pays in spades as she stalks the floors of the bank tower, dispatching reanimated corpses and everything else Ted can throw at her, in a desperate bid to find survivors and stay alive until the sun comes up and the plows come out.
* * * * *
If you're thinking, "Oh cool, Die Hard with zombies!" then you're right where I was when I read the back cover blurb. "Die Hard with zombies" should be as impossible to fuck up as the Reverse Cowgirl sexual position, but here comes James Kisner bellowing, "Hold my beer!" and, well, look, I gave it one star, so you know where this is going.
This is one of the most absurd horror stories I've ever read. It's filled with violence that's yawn-inducing instead of cringe-worthy, along with the absolute least-sexy sex scenes I've read outside of Bill O'Reilly's Those Who Trespass. Frequently Kisner attempts to combine the two, because no one told him he isn't a good enough writer to do that. One scene involves a man's sudden realization that he can use the dark power inside him to turn his own wang into a sharp-toothed demon dick, which he then uses to devour a woman by humping and chewing up into her stomach with his mouthy meat. If your boning scenes inspire laughter instead of sweaty palms and quickening hearts, dude, you're doing it wrong. I've read better descriptions of gory sex in My Little Pony fan fiction.
Do not follow my lead. Just trust me on that one, will you?
I can excuse inept carnage and impotence-inspiring sex in my horror fiction. They're not the problem. No, my issue with Tower of Evil is it never explains anything. Dead Ted gets nothing more than his moniker until 290 pages in, and then, while Kisner tells us who he was, how he died, and why he might be upset enough at the building's tenants to murder-hump them, it never explains the power animating him. Dead Ted comes to life because James Kisner says so. We don't get a reason for his survival into un-life, it just happened.
Why can he remote-detonate a rat which is jumping from brain to brain and killing off his zombies? Because Kisner says he can. Why can he control the building's electrical systems? Because he just can, OK, gosh! Kisner's got a story to tell, and he can't be arsed to give us so much as a crumb of "because the Devil lives under downtown Indianapolis". That's really all it would take, but instead we get author fiat: the least-enjoyable horror trope of all.
My other major issue is that Shannon's so obviously a 'woman-written-by-a-guy' as opposed to just being a woman that it's insulting. In fact, all of Kisner's female characters have personalities flat enough to make poster board envious, yet bodies top-heavy enough to make porn stars jealous. This type of thing gave people ammo with which to paint the Horror genre with the broad strokes of misogyny and indifference, and unfortunately, Tower of Evil dispenses that ammunition in high-caliber format. I don't care how hot you tell me your female lead is -- if she doesn't have a brain in her head worth dying for, it won't matter that she's got the greatest rack in the history of boob-dom.
But even with that, even with all that, I still could have given this story two stars. I mean, I finished the thing, didn't I? One-star reviews are the equivalent of me waving the white flag. I couldn't stay the course. I tapped out. I gave up. But I read this one all the way to the bitter end, every last moronic page of it. Why one star?
Even I have standards (despite what my 'Currently Reading' shelf may otherwise imply).
Nothing will inspire me to verbally grind a book to confetti like a non-ending. A non-ending sends the signal the writer hit his page count and ran out of fucks. I'm fine with a well-executed open ending, like the way Stephen King ended The Mist. But a non-ending, one where the author fails to answer any of the important questions raised over the course of a manuscript, is the sin I cannot forgive. And rather than resolving anything he's been building up to, Kisner unzips his fly and unloads a steaming stream of asparagus-flavored piss into the reader's face.
Spoiler
Tower of Evil ends with a group of firemen breaching the building as Shannon watches, only to be overrun and attacked by a swarm of evil broodling babies that came from who knows where. Then the re-animated body of a character we presumed dead a long time ago, holding his severed Schlong-zilla in one hand and his decapitated head in the other, leers at Shannon and asks, "What's up?".That's page 368.
Page 369 is the blank inside of the back cover.
What the literal fuck, James Kisner?
I've read a lot of horror in my life, but I have never in all my years encountered a full-fledged turd-and-hemorrhoid salad dressed with diarrhea chutney and a side serving of microwaved jizz-sticks like Tower of Evil. The action is dull, the sex is anemic, the violence is ketchup-for-blood levels of laughable. Characters are so thinly drawn they could be spokesmodels for bulimia. The plot is so half-baked you couldn't get Denny's to serve it to a table of drunks at 3am. The sum-total of the product is so miserable I don't want to try anything else Kisner wrote--if this was his final novel, I can only imagine what the first or second must have looked like.
Is this why nobody sets horror novels in Indiana anymore? Did James Kisner ruin it for everyone else in 1994? If so, on behalf of Indiana natives everywhere, I deeply and sincerely regret and apologize for the actions of my fellow Hoosier. Tower of Evil earns one enormous gaping anus out of five, along with heartfelt hope that nobody reading this will seek out a copy on the off-chance it's not as bad as I'm making it out to be.
It is.
Don't make that mistake.
Do not read Tower of Evil.
kurt's review
4.0
Let me start off first that this is going to be a completely conflicting and confusing review and rating. I gave this 4 stars on the sole basis that this book reminds me of the old-time glory days of the cheesy B-rated low budget gore horror films of the 70's and 80's. This would have fit right in with the bad but oh-so-good classics such as Basket Case, The Wizard of Gore, Dead Alive, and Re-Animator. I am a huge fan of the Leisure Books line of horror, and this follows suit with the typical story you would find in such a catalog.
Otherwise... i have to say, this is not my favorite author from the Leisure catalog. I've had my fair share of eye-rolling moments, struggling through implausible situations and reading line after line of completely useless sentences ("The toolbox Shannon had discovered was around the corner from a space in the building that was being remodeled. She had not seen the box during her rounds because she had no reason to go into that area.")... wow, really?!? Just pointless.
There were some parts in the author's writing that had a very small glimmer of hope, then just went straight down the toilet.
Due to the nature and content of a book such as this, there really is no use in describing in detail any of the characters in the story (i won't go into why, as that would be somewhat of a spoiler). So needless to say, the parts where he does go into description were superficial and two-dimensional. Every... and I mean EVERY... female character had their breasts described, one instance even describing her nipples, when she wasn't even unclothed. Tell me, why is that even necessary? I have thick skin and I am not offended by much of anything, but all I'm saying is this was just completely unnecessary.
So, maybe I should really give this 3 stars, but I'm sticking with my original rating because it would just totally kick ass as a poorly made splatter horror film.
Otherwise... i have to say, this is not my favorite author from the Leisure catalog. I've had my fair share of eye-rolling moments, struggling through implausible situations and reading line after line of completely useless sentences ("The toolbox Shannon had discovered was around the corner from a space in the building that was being remodeled. She had not seen the box during her rounds because she had no reason to go into that area.")... wow, really?!? Just pointless.
There were some parts in the author's writing that had a very small glimmer of hope, then just went straight down the toilet.
Due to the nature and content of a book such as this, there really is no use in describing in detail any of the characters in the story (i won't go into why, as that would be somewhat of a spoiler). So needless to say, the parts where he does go into description were superficial and two-dimensional. Every... and I mean EVERY... female character had their breasts described, one instance even describing her nipples, when she wasn't even unclothed. Tell me, why is that even necessary? I have thick skin and I am not offended by much of anything, but all I'm saying is this was just completely unnecessary.
So, maybe I should really give this 3 stars, but I'm sticking with my original rating because it would just totally kick ass as a poorly made splatter horror film.
snood's review
1.0
I feel like I need to formally apologize to the dollar I payed for this...
I wasn’t sure what a one-star book would even be like until today. I tore through this novel not because it was good, but because I desperately wanted it to be over.
For heaven’s sake, Kisner, I don’t need to know every female character’s breast firmness and closest equivalent fruit size. I also don’t want multiple graphic sex scenes in my HORROR novel.
Even between the porn, sexism, and racism, it’s not even effective as a scary story. The protagonist Shannon is convinced the absurdly gory events are a prank for an unreasonable amount of time and flips the switch into action hero mode immediately after. Horror thrives on the fear, vulnerability, and likability of the characters.
Shannon is just annoyed throughout the story rather than scared, Shannon is a judo-trained former police officer so she’s almost never vulnerable, and every single character is either despicable or paper-thin. Beyond not liking her job and not being religious, there’s basically nothing to Shannon.
The over-the-top sex and gore gets tiresome quickly even if you enjoy it at first, and the non-ending ruins the halfway decent climax it all built up to. I love forgotten campy horror paperbacks, but there’s just very little to like here, and nothing that hasn’t been done better in other places. The best way to experience this novel is to read the Goodreads reviews and stash the book in the bathroom in case the coronavirus toilet paper shortage gets worse.
I wasn’t sure what a one-star book would even be like until today. I tore through this novel not because it was good, but because I desperately wanted it to be over.
For heaven’s sake, Kisner, I don’t need to know every female character’s breast firmness and closest equivalent fruit size. I also don’t want multiple graphic sex scenes in my HORROR novel.
Even between the porn, sexism, and racism, it’s not even effective as a scary story. The protagonist Shannon is convinced the absurdly gory events are a prank for an unreasonable amount of time and flips the switch into action hero mode immediately after. Horror thrives on the fear, vulnerability, and likability of the characters.
Shannon is just annoyed throughout the story rather than scared, Shannon is a judo-trained former police officer so she’s almost never vulnerable, and every single character is either despicable or paper-thin. Beyond not liking her job and not being religious, there’s basically nothing to Shannon.
The over-the-top sex and gore gets tiresome quickly even if you enjoy it at first, and the non-ending ruins the halfway decent climax it all built up to. I love forgotten campy horror paperbacks, but there’s just very little to like here, and nothing that hasn’t been done better in other places. The best way to experience this novel is to read the Goodreads reviews and stash the book in the bathroom in case the coronavirus toilet paper shortage gets worse.
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