(out of 4)THE SALT ON THE RIM: I've said it before and I'll say it again: Hell has a special place set aside for Brian Keene. I first thought the management of Hell would have been furious with Keene for giving away their secrets.
Now I'm beginning to think Keene's simply Hell's reigning king. The man simply
THE LIME:In this, Keene's eighth offering from Leisure Books (and ninth mass market release), the contestants on the reality tv show, "Castaways" (think "Survivor"), are stranded on a remote island when a cyclone threatens to deluge the island, leading to the production crew pulling most of their staff back to the homebase ship anchored off the coast. While the castaways are left alone on the island and the cyclone pounds the island to pieces, a tribe of natives, beasts that bear an incredible resemblance to Richard Laymon's beasts that roam the California coast in his Beast House trilogy attack, killing the castaways one-by-one.
THE TEQUILA:This is more seat-of-your-pants horror action from a modern master of the genre. CASTAWAYS might actually be Keene at his very best. You can tell the author was having fun writing the novel. It shows through in many scenes and exchanges of dialog and the characters seemed to nearly jump off the page, dragging the voyeuristic reader along with them through the action.
Grab a copy as soon as you can. CASTAWAYS now sits on the shelf at the Review Hut, for all visitors who saunter in, margarita in hand, seeking something good to read.
-Jack
