A blood-soaked freakout that does for gas stations what Jaws did for beaches.
A metalhead bassist’s will to live is tested at an eerie rest stop in the middle of the night, in Cassidy’s horror novella.
Abe is a slightly insecure, nebbishy musician, who plays bass guitar and sings for an obscure death-metal band. When his grandmother Bobbe has a stroke, he decides to schedule a practice with his band miles away so they can get some rehearsal time in before an upcoming gig and he can be by Bobbe’s side in the hospital. He pulls into a rest stop on the way but discovers that—despite seeing a few cars in the parking lot—the entire place is empty. Alarm bells go off, but he needs to use the bathroom. When he tries to leave the bathroom, he discovers that the door’s been jammed…or locked. When creatures start emerging from the air vent in the ceiling—including a large hairy spider, writhing insects, and more—he soon realizes that something foul is at play; there was a reason the rest stop was empty, and he will have to struggle to make it out of the bathroom alive. Cassidy’s tense, heart-pounding thriller moves easily from the freaky to the gory. (Ominous notes, with letters clipped from candy wrappers, are slipped under the door, making the mundane feel nightmarish.) The author’s prose is brisk, clean, sometimes funny, sometimes earnest, and often memorably horrifying (a surface of “[f]athomless, black holes, honeycombed in row upon row across what should be [a] stranger’s face” stands out as a particularly unsettling description). There are moments when Cassidy tries to make the horror cut deeper by evoking the intergenerational violence and antisemitism Bobbe once faced; these elements aren’t as developed or integrated into the rest of the story as they should be. The novella works best when it simply layers fright after fright, trapping the reader in a gnarly bathroom with creepy crawlies coming in and a possible serial killer on the other side of the door.
A blood-soaked freakout that does for gas stations what Jaws did for beaches.Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2024
ISBN: 9781959565369
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Shortwave Media
Review Posted Online: Oct. 8, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Though it falters a bit under its own weight, this series still has plenty of fight left.
In this long-awaited fifth installment of Shannon’s Bone Season series, the threat to the clairvoyant community spreads like a plague across Europe.
After extending her fight against the Republic of Scion to Paris, Paige Mahoney, leader of London’s clairvoyant underworld and a spy for the resistance movement, finds herself further outside her comfort zone when she wakes up in a foreign place with no recollection of getting there. More disturbing than her last definitive memory, in which her ally-turned-lover Arcturus seems to betray her, is that her dreamscape—the very soul of her clairvoyance—has been altered, as if there’s a veil shrouding both her memories and abilities. Paige manages to escape and learns she’s been missing and presumed dead for six months. Even more shocking is that she’s somehow outside of Scion’s borders, in the free world where clairvoyants are accepted citizens. She gets in touch with other resistance fighters and journeys to Italy to reconnect with the Domino Programme intelligence network. In stark contrast to the potential of life in the free world is the reality that Scion continues to stretch its influence, with Norway recently falling and Italy a likely next target. Paige is enlisted to discover how Scion is bending free-world political leaders to its will, but before Paige can commit to her mission, she has her own mystery to solve: Where in the world is Arcturus? Paige’s loyalty to Arcturus is tested as she decides how much to trust in their connection and how much information to reveal to the Domino Programme about the Rephaite—the race of immortals from the Netherworld, Arcturus’ people—and their connection to the founding of Scion, as well as the presence of clairvoyant abilities on Earth. While the book is impressively multilayered, the matter-of-fact way in which details from the past are sprinkled throughout will have readers constantly flipping to the glossary. As the series’ scope and the implications of the war against Scion expand, Shannon’s narrative style reads more action-thriller than fantasy. Paige’s powers as a dreamwalker are rarely used here, but when clairvoyance is at play, the story shines.
Though it falters a bit under its own weight, this series still has plenty of fight left.Pub Date: Feb. 25, 2025
ISBN: 9781639733965
Page Count: 576
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: Dec. 12, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Hair-raising fun!
Two strange deaths in the desert pose tough questions in this fifth Nora Kelly adventure.
In a remote section of New Mexico, a woman walks alone into the blistering desert heat. In a trance, she ignores her horrific thirst and discards her clothing, piece by piece, until she lies down and dies. Five years later, a video crew with a drone discovers her skeletal remains, which they promptly report. Agent Corrie Swanson is part of an FBI team that heads out into the bleak badlands to investigate. She shares a photo with anthropologist Nora Kelly, who is especially intrigued by the pair of rare green lightning stones found under the skeleton. The woman died with perfect health, yet no one had reported her missing. DNA confirms the 40-ish woman was Molly Vine, an apparently vibrant person who “wouldn’t just throw her life away.” Then the FBI finds another body, another woman, same trail of clothing and pair of green lightning stones, but her death is much more recent. And that’s just the beginning of a tale that gets curiouser and curiouser with discoveries of ancient mass murders and modern mind control. Corrie and Nora are a perfect pair: smart and professional, and with bravery they will need in abundance. At one point, they compare approaches: As an anthropologist, Nora is trained not to judge; as an FBI agent, Corrie is trained to judge. As they delve into the investigation, Nora’s younger brother, Skip, and his billionaire buddy, Edison Nash, complicate matters immensely. They decide to go camping and investigate on their own, and Skip reminds Nash that taking ancient artifacts like an obsidian arrowhead is a felony. But as strange shadows lurk around their faded campfire at night, they learn that getting in trouble with the law is the least of their worries. The landscape imbues a special flavor to this engrossing yarn—the adobe kivas with signs of thousand-year-old murders, the slot canyons, the changing terrain as desert yields to ponderosa pine—and the sandstorms that can abort a rescue. In this setting, an unknown enemy causes cringeworthy violence that the heroes may have to face alone. But as Corrie tells Nora, “We’ve got a gun. We’ve got a knife. Now we need a plan.”
Hair-raising fun!Pub Date: June 3, 2025
ISBN: 9781538765821
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 30, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2025
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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