Good Horror Ebook: House of Corruption by Erik Tavares

Vampires, werewolves,a priestly professor who hunts them and the close of the 19th century. Its a classic combination when you think about it.

House of Corruption brings a new twist to it though.

Yeah, there are Werewolves in there.
Cover art is by Aaron Sims check out his stuff.  Its even more awesome than the cover art.

Set as it is from 1886 onward the world that Erik Tavares creates in House of Corruption is one reminiscent of those Gothic horror classics like Dracula and Frankenstein.  Its a world where technology and science are new and so full of promise providing a stark contrast to the strong religious beliefs and dark superstitions that continue from earlier times.

Against this setting Artemius Savoy is a professor and secular member of the Catholic church who studies the paranormal.  Laughed at by other academics for his fascination with physical manifestations of the supernatural like vampires and werewolves at a time when Seances and the spirit world are all the rage and appropriate for academics to discuss he is an expert almost without peer - having had a loved one turn into a Vampire and almost claim his life.

The story opens with Savoy attempting to slay a beast that has been terrorizing a monastery in Portugal,  slaughtering livestock and avoiding snares and traps laid for it.  A monster that is a horrific beast and yet cunning as a man - a Werewolf.

The character of Savoy left me thinking of none other than Van Helsing himself, the archetypical vampire slaying doctor, but with a bit more humanity.

No, not this Van Helsing.  The old fuddy duddy one.

Thats more like it.  Classic Van Helsing.  Sorry Hugh Jackman your Van Helsing was cool too.

The Werewolf of course is no simple beast, but the other main character of the book.  

A young man named Reynard LaCroix who is cursed by his bloodline to turn into a werewolf.  Until, as we learn later, the silver and wolfs bane laced bullet that Savoy shoots him with keeps him from turning into the beast.

Savoy shoots him, then tries to save him and fight the curse.  That's is where he differs from the classic Van Helsing who would have just offed Reynard not tried to save him and risk him reverting to a monster in the future.

Reynard is a family oriented man who returns to Louisiana, America once the curse is (at least temporarily) under control to renew and expand his dead fathers business and look after his young sister Lasha LaCroix.  The one person in the world you get the feeling he cares for more than anything.

Lasha, who loves her brother dearly, has seen the beast and is terrified of it (possibly because her parents are now dead...) but doesn't know that it was / is her brother .

Of course then a stranger arrives leaving a note for Reynard with his sister letting him know that they know about his "condition".  This occurs at around the same time that Savoy arrives in town because of a series of gruesome murders that could be attributed to a Werewolf occur...

Not long after the note is received Lasha is kidnapped instigating a journey which sees Reynard and his compansions chase her abductors almost across the world encountering horrors along the way - and especially at the end of the journey.

Reynard is not overly like-able but as a major character is really interesting in terms of his constant battle with the beast within, the guilt over things he has done when he lost control in the past and his fears of what he is capable of in the future. 

The other characters in the book are all very three dimensional and most are equally as interesting, including

Mahonrie Grant who is wanted for murder of his wife Emily and has been on the run for some time but falls in with Savoy and Reynard after being arrested for the grisly murders that occur in Louisiana (which he witnesses).

Kiria Carlovec, a young girl who has been sent to find Reynard because her father also suffers from an affliction.  Kiria is innocent, and provides balance to Reynard who is clearly not innocent most of the time, but there is something dark about her as well.

It was particularly refreshing to come across a very different form of Vampire in this book as one of the majoor characters - one much more terrible than the usual blood sucking sort.  The Penanggalan.

A Penanggalan.  Definitely not sparkly and not a Vampire you want to meet.

A Penanggalan is an alternative form of Vampire myth that's based in Malaysia and surrounding countries.  Basically its a woman who has died and come back as a head and organs that float about and feed on people, stealing the bodies of its victims so that it can blend in...  

Its a pretty horrible myth and if I had my choice I would really really prefer not to have my head eaten off and internal organs consumed so that some Penanggalan can puppet the rest of me around.  Yuk.  

Awesome as a creature in a horror book though - especially as it could be almost anyone once its shelled them out.

House of Corruption is well written -  I picked it up to run over in preparation for this post and have managed to get to Chapter 7 in one day and will likely finish it for the second time in a day or so - and enjoyable.   The setting and characters are believable (yes, even the Vampires and Werewolves) and well fleshed out and I cant remember any inconsistencies in either the character or setting.  

As a horror tale the book is effective.  Throughout I was left with a sense of dread. The writer has done this well not only through description and a general buildup but also because you spend the whole book worried if Reynard will lose control as well as about what will become of his sister.

Definitely a book worth picking up.  A great horror book really that is clearly inspired by the classics - and  was self published on Amazon which makes it even cooler.

There is a blog and website for Erik here.  There is not much to it and House of Corruption seems to be the only horror book he has written at this point - but hopefully there will be another like it.

SciFi Ebook: Embedded, by Dan Abnett

As a major nerd I have known about Dan Abnett for some time.

He has had a number of successful books for The Black Library, a Games Workshop publishing house that specializes in books based on their tabletop gaming products (Warhammer / Warhammer 40k).

Of the writers for The Black Library he is one of my two favorites (the other being Bill King) and his Eisenhorn and Gaunts Ghosts series are by far the best of the product offering there if you ask me.

So it was with a level of excitement that I found Embedded, a book written outside of the Warhammer universe.

Dan Abnett.  Not Warhammer.  Awesome.
Bad ass cover too.

Embedded is a military science fiction book set in a future where colonization of worlds by the human race has become fairly common place.  Mega corporations manage the process, and  two major governments rule the stars: the United Status or the Central Bloc.

There is a Cold War feel to the whole United Status vs Central Bloc relationship in the book, which some may not like as it is a little dated.  The Central Bloc settlers, as well as their military, certainly seem to have a very Soviet feel about them.  Personally I liked this as part of the atmosphere - and it offset the very capitalist and marketing driven feel of the United Status (early on in the book you find out that a cola company has even paid to have people "chipped" so that they will say Freek (the brand) rather than swearing...) to provide a sort of alien menace.

The main character in the book is Lex Falk, a jaded and ageing journalist who has come to the as yet unnamed Planet 86 to investigate and report on what appears to be a small conflict involving rebel settlers.

When Lex arrives on the planet he gets fed the usual dribble that journalists in this futuristic world are fed including being taken out to see the "wall with bullet holes" like every other journalist.  

The beginning of the book is a bit slow, however, it does build quite a bit of atmosphere.  

In fact the first part of the book reminded me quite a bit of the movie War Inc. starring John Cusack - a movie where journalists are "embedded" with soldiers by going into a cinema and watching a VR movie.  They aren't really investigating anything but just being fed what the military wants them to see and report on.

Of course not all is as it seems on Planet 86 and Lex Falk is too experienced to simply take the company line.  He begins his own investigations and eventually a contact gets him enrolled in a secret program to actually embed the consciousness of a journalist in the mind of a soldier - in this case the much younger soldier Nestor Bloom.

Once that occurs the book speeds up rapidly as Nestor and his squad mates are dropped into action and Lex goes along for the ride.

While this is military science fiction and Dan Abnett is excellent at writing combat scenes Embedded is a much better read than most other books in the genre. Its definitely not all hardware descriptions and Pew Pew Pew action -  the characters, especially Lex Falk, develop over time and the story itself is quite interesting.

In fact at the beginning of the book I remember thinking Lex Falk is cool, but what a dick.  He was so jaded and ready to use everyone he came across to further his own ends.  Towards the end he had grown, and grown on me.  I liked the guy, and felt like he had become something more - like being embedded had given him something to believe in.

All in all a very good book and I really hope there is more of this type of work out of Dan Abnett. 

(If you are interested in the Warhammer 40k books check them out at the Black Library.  Its almost pure military science fiction / fantasy but Abnett's work is definitely still a good read.)

   

A Super Zombie Ebook: Ex Heroes, by Peter Clines

Yeah, yeah.  Its a cheesy blog title.

Its also appropriate - Ex Heroes is a tale of superheroes and the zombie apocalypse after all.

Zombies V Superheroes. Yeah.

A fairly random purchase one afternoon based on a "customers who bought this also bought" recommendation from Amazon (I cannot for the life of me remember the other horror ebook I was looking at), I was initially put off by the premise of the book.  

It sounded original, something the zombie genre desperately needs, but I was worried it was going to be shallow and hammed up.

I was happily surprised.

Ex Heroes is set in the aftermath of a major zombie outbreak which sees the US Government collapse as zombies overrun the populace.  These are the slow old school zombies but as you would expect no one believes zombies are real until its too late. 

The only place of safety?  A walled off movie studio in Hollywood under the protection of a band of superheroes - St George, Stealth, Gorgon, Zzzap, Cerberus, Regenerator.

The superheroes have a range of different powers and fit different superhero archetypes: 

Stealth is a genius with the body of a model who is the leader of the group.  She is fast and agile but her super power does appear to be her ability to think through situations and plan really fast, as well as being well equipped.  Sort of like Batman.   Her drawback?  She is emotionally removed from everybody around her and is always covered head to toe so that no one can see her.  

St George was called The Mighty Dragon before the zombie apocalypse and, like a dragon, can fly short distances, breath fire, is really strong and has a tough skin that is almost impossible to cut or penetrate.  St George is also the most moral of the heroes and reminded me of a limited Superman.  

Gorgon is a strange hero with an ability kind of like the one Cyclops from X-Men has, only instead of shooting energy out he sucks it from anyone who makes eye contact with him. When he drains people he gets super strength for a short time.  The only problem?  It doesn't work on zombies.  

Zzzap is a cripple when normal, but can shift into a form of pure energy at will and when he does so can fly, and of course burn zombies.  Zzzap is also the major power source for the fortified area in which the survivors are holed up.  A useful man to know all round.

Cerberus is like Iron Man, only without an infinite power source and much less agile - a couple of weaknesses I really liked.  A prototype robotic suit designed for the military the Cerberus suit was deployed by its inventor who is a young scientist.  She isnt anything like Tony Stark and is instead weirdly addicted to being in the suit - you get a real sense that she likes the power it gives, and hates being vulnerable out of it.

Regenerator is the man that cannot be killed, the man who can heal from any injury.  A doctor who developed super powers and can heal almost anything except the sickness in his arm from a zombie bite that is consuming all of his power just to keep him alive...  As the story progresses you find out that Regenerator lost his wife early in the zombie apocalypse  and learn about his frustration as the infection his power is fighting basically makes him just a normal man, no longer a superhero.  

These are not the only superheroes in the book - there are a couple of others who crop up - but they are the main characters.

One of the major features of the book is that you learn a lot about these superheroes and they develop in character as the story progresses.  I always like character driven tales and this book delivers on that as each of the heroes develops over time - some become darker, some more driven, but they all become more real as you read on.

In addition to the normal story driven character development the writer also uses a series of flashbacks to help provide background and rationale to the superheroes.   Going from a "now" chapter to a "then" chapter which covers a major event in the superheroes past can be a bit offputting at times - it breaks up the story flow after all - but once you get used to it this actually adds a lot of depth to their character and some of their tales are actually quite moving and others show a very dark past.

No superhero book would be complete though without a villain and in the case of Ex Heroes the villains are a street gang that has also managed to survive the zombie apocalypse and is a constant threat not only to the compound in which the superheroes and their charges live but also outside of it when they are scavenging for supplies.  

They have a particular enmity for Gorgon who was, and is, one of the least like-able of the superheroes and definitely the quickest to resort to violence.

The majority of the story covers escalation in tensions between the superheroes and the street gang, both of whom offer a viable method for survival for the remaining survivors, but the street gang does it through using people as serfs whereas the superheroes are trying to help people survive to return to a normal way of living.

Now I mentioned other superheroes and that is one of the coolest parts of this book.  See, some superheroes are immune to the whole zombie bite thing because they are too tough, but not all of them, and a number of superheroes have already fallen and - you guessed it - become zombies.  

Scary thought isnt it.

  

Superheroes can become zombies - sucks doesn't it.
Marvel did a run of an alternative zombie apocalypse world
so Peter Clines wasnt entirely original, but he has done it well. 

There are also, as it turns out, other superheroes out there.  Or perhaps super villains?  That is as close as I get to spoilers though so my lips are zipped.

Overall its a good read and a book that I have kept on my Kindle rather than just leaving it in the archive once I finished reading it; a book that I can read again in a couple of months.

The writing is good, the characters engaging, and its flaws are fairly minor - mostly because the villains aren't as well developed in terms of character as the superheroes which is a shame.  It does also fall into the trap of  if superheroes exist, then all problems must be caused by them / super villains.  Normal people are just as capable of changing the world (for good or ill) and this is something overlooked by most superhero tales.

If you have read it, what do you think?  If not I would recommend it to you as a fairly original zombie apocalypse book that is worth your time to read.