Really should have been two books following the two facets of the story - the vagrant killings and the evil carnival- having them run side by side kind off made both feel a bit rushed and half finished. outside of this Laymonds world building was spectacular as ever and his ideas brilliant, I hate that even his strong female characters can't seem to exist without a male counterpart to live and breath for, I find it incredibly disappointing that even when he does give them real character they just seem to be there to help the male protagonists because they're idiots, sex crazed or both ( )

DNFing at 200 pages. This book is very 90's. It has everything that would get an author canceled on twitter nowadays. It's trashy, and at first, interesting enough to keep going but I read almost half of this book and so far it's just teenagers being garbage people. I literally couldn't wait until these people got horribly murdered so I gave up because it didn't look like it was happening anytime soon.

The cover for this book is so amazing!!! I've caught myself drooling over it multiple times. It's 100% the reason I picked this book up to read. Didn't read the blurb or who the author was, just had to read whatever was behind that cover.

Thank goodness what was there was awesome! Loved this book so much! From the sigil magic to the lizard wizard van to all the hierarchy. ugh. I'm ready to reread it.

I'm a sucker for inks & pens, and the research the author put into the main characters craft is high five worthy. The book is life like and mystical. You can feel the time put into to making sure the setting is culturally accurate, and all lore lines up. Some books fail at sinking in real world dialect into a fiction novel but this book works so freaking well. I feared i was going to be referencing the authors notes and half confused at the crazy spellings, but it never happened. The flow of the sentences supported the dialect perfectly.

All of the characters are well crafted, and the personalities of each are distinct and compliment the story perfectly. The grey of the 'villains', to the grey of the 'good guys' so much yes for this one. I'm also here for the commentary on 'human' trafficking, and how the magical world is dealing with the same problems we are dealing with in humanity.

Book one hasn't even released yet, but I'm ready for book two. Also a poster for my wall of this cover *drooling*

I received this book via NetGalley. ( )

Really liked this. The ending was naff, what with the giant spider and all but I really had a good time getting there. You can always rely on Mr Laymon to go into great descriptive detail whenever a young lady appears on the scene, right down to what colour of her undies. A great game in fact whenever you're reading a Richard Laymon novel is 'spot the Red Gym Shorts'. I think it became one of his little trade marks pretty early on. If you get bored of that game, there's always the 'count the pervy encounters with women' game, which is a kind of extension of the 'Red Gym Shorts' game in that you have to look out for the detailed descriptions of various bits and pieces of women's anatomy. It's a great game, and we all thank you for it Richard.

Recommended, except for the naff ending. ( )

I love Laymon’s books. I could do without all the sex but that is his brand. This book is typical Laymon with horny boys who will do almost anything to have sex. I picked up this book because of the setting, a beachfront carnival on a boardwalk. I will read just about anything set at a carnival or circus.

This book tackles the homeless problem. A group of local teens are sick of the homeless and want to do something about it. Unfortunately their vigilantism goes to far. But wait, there is a large group of homeless that are doing some truly terrible things. So both sides are bad.

There are a few redeeming characters that help balance things out. The ending was bloody and exciting. ( )