L. H. MaynardCritiques

I honestly don’t know how or where I acquired this limited edition book. I must have been suckered in by the “modern take on the traditional ghost story” shill. Anyway, the stories run the gamut from okay to awful. Most are of the make-it-up-as-you-go variety. The quality is about what you would expect from a campfire make up a scary story on the spot game. A typical example of this is an attempt to set one story in the United States at Halloween where the New Englanders quaintly refer to their car trunk as a “boot,” the garbage can as a “rubbish bin,” and the breakfast dishes as “crockery.” Verisimilitude suffers as a consequence, or as we say in the South, “that dog won’t hunt.” It’s general sloppiness like this that makes the stories seem slap dash and uninspired, like you’re just checking off that trope.

It’s now available as an ebook and paperback but even that is a waste of paper and electricity.

This is October and it's time for Horror reading. Maynard and Sims do a pretty good horror store. It was enjoyable until the very end... when it seemed to flounder and fall apart. It was almost like the authors realized that the had to stop writing at some point and simply said 'ok, THIS will take care of it all.'

It didn't.

Still, I did get a good deal of enjoyment out of the story of an island full of unspeakable evil and the psychics who go there to investigate.½

Shame could not give two and a half stars but the potential of this book just seem to have gradually dropped until one reached a very hurried ending. The best chapter was definitely the first one. Still, will try another book of the Department 18 series when it comes out...

Great, scary read. I would love to see this book made into a movie. I was seeing it in my head as I read it. Very creepy.

Meh. One of the few books that I will ever say would probably be a decent movie, better than the book. Lion's Gate, get on that!

I made it to page 108 before I succumbed to the urge to stop. Too many characters to remember, add to that, some Polish names, and it becomes very tedious to remember who is who. I had no idea what was going on after reading 100 pages and I really didn't care to know, alas I did not finish.½

Shelter attempts to mine a stressful environment for horror chills. Laura Craig is renovating a country house when her workers discover a strange underground complex swamped with fetid water. Being a horror story, it's only natural to assume evil things live in the water. The secondary fungal infection several people catch is honestly scarier than the actual monster. The build-up is very solid, but as action develops in the third act it can't live up to expectations. Awkward, bad sex scenes also spoil the mood.½

Black Cathedral, although a great title, doesn't offer much in the way of substance. Some hastily dispatched characters open the book with a grand supernatural entity. That boded well. However, sloppy dialogue, lack of suspense, tension or character development ensure this short book never takes off. The finale is also lacklustre, taking up some ten pages, including a villain's monologue which you find under the dictionary definition of cliché. A lack of real closure is a poor substitute to ensure readers pick up the next volume. Substandard.½