The Eater of Gods by Dan Franklin

 

Nothing really dies if it's remembered, his wife had told him.

In the dying village of Al Tarfuk, lost among the war-stained dunes of eastern Libya, professor Norman Haas learns the location of the tomb that had been his wife's life pursuit. The final resting place of Kiya, the lost queen of Akhenaten, whose history had been etched from the stone analogues of history for her heresies against the long absent pantheon of Egyptian gods.

He never expected to discover that the tomb was the final resting place to more than the dead. And as his team of researchers find themselves trapped inside the ancient tomb, Norman realizes all too soon that his wife was right-

Nothing really dies if it's remembered...

But some things are best forgotten.

Dan Franklin's debut supernatural thriller is a tale of grief, of loneliness, and of an ageless, hungry fury that waits with ready tooth and claw beneath the sand.

This is a fairly quick read at just 150 pages.

Norman was never that interested in expeditions half a world away. But it was his wife's dream to find and enter the tomb of Kiya, queen of Akhenaten. Sadly, the cancer took her before she could accomplish this, and it is out of respect for her wishes and grief at her passing that Norman now finds himself in this dangerous desert land, seeking out the man who wouldn't help his wife find the tomb.

Norman and his small team have more luck than his deceased wife in locating the tomb, but is that good luck or bad? Should they really enter this sacred space that is said to be cursed and best left forgotten?

The Eater of Gods is a story that is ripe with grief and heavy with longing for things that could have been, and should never be. At the start it feels more like a thriller than a horror, but that will change when our team finds the tomb as their excitement turns to fear.

There is a bit of gore but not what I would consider overly graphic, still I think it's only fair to warn you. 

My thanks to Cemetery Dance for the advance copy.

About the author

Dan Franklin wrote his first attempt at a horror novel when he was seven. It was terrible. He has, since, improved. The winner of several local awards for short stories and an occasional poem, Dan Franklin lives in Maryland with his extremely understanding wife, his cosmically radiant daughter, and a socially crippling obsession with things that creep. The Eater of Gods is his first published novel. He can be contacted at DanFranklinAuthor.com

Limbs by Tim Meyer

 I am not a monster.

Ray Bridges, a professional electronics salesman, is looking for love in all the strange places. He spends most nights sneaking into support group meetings for the disabled in order to satisfy his deepest, darkest desires—to hook up with unfortunate, down-on-their-luck women who’ve recently lost a limb. There's a name for Ray’s preference; it’s called acrotomophilia, a paraphilia involving amputees.

Conflicted, Ray wishes he could change. But he can’t. His body won’t let him. Nor will his mind. He’s destined to live this life, forever. That is . . . until he meets the perfect girl. Falls in love with her. Only problem: her arms and legs are attached.

Unable to find her attractive, Ray embarks on a dark, twisted journey of self-discovery, one that will force him to make an impossible choice: abandon his pursuit of true love or find a way to make it work, even if that means getting the girl of his dreams to shed an appendage.

Ray has never told anyone about his weird kink (or is it a fetish?) of only being attracted to amputees, or the sleazy way he goes about finding women to satisfy his odd desires. After his best friend and co worker tells him about the Hacketstown Hacker, the name given to an unknown perpetrator of brutal assaults on women, he discovers his latest conquest was a victim, and he considers finding the hacker, not to bring him to justice but to have him hack a limb off the new girl at work who he has fallen for. Kayla feels the same way about Ray, but would she accept the truth about him? Can Ray find a way to overlook that she's not missing any body parts or will it take the Hacker to help them live happily ever after?

The cover describes this novella as weird, comedic, and raunchy.  I would tend to agree. I'd also like to add suspenseful, entertaining, well written, and downright crazy. If you normally stay away from conventional romance you may delight in this kooky love story.

4 out of 5 stars

Get a copy

About the author

Tim Meyer dwells in a dark cave near the Jersey Shore. He's an author, husband, father, podcast host, blogger, coffee connoisseur, beer enthusiast, and explorer of worlds. He writes horror, mysteries, science fiction, and thrillers, although he prefers to blur genres and let the story fall where it may.

You can follow Tim at https://timmeyerwrites.com

Identicals by William Brennan Knight

 

In the year and a half since Jack Clausen lost his five-year-old daughter, RosaMarie, his life has fallen apart. Depressed and despondent, he steps off a platform into an oncoming train. Just before impact, a strong hand pulls him away. A strange, small person offers Jack a way to bring his daughter back, but there is a high price to pay. After Jacks’ child is returned to him, he refuses to pay his debt, and events spiral out of control. Revisiting multiple past realities, Jack searches for a solution to a problem that only worsens as he confronts his inner demons and the deep issues that destroyed his family.

Sometimes a loss brings families closer together. In the Clausen family, it has torn them apart. The loss of his five year old daughter has Jack Clausen wallowing in a year and a half of despair. He spends more time in a bottle than with his remaining children. He has lost his job, ruined his marriage, neglected his sons and contemplated suicide.

It is on one of his lowest days, as he is about to step in front of a train, that he first makes contact with an Identical. A strange little being who promises to return his daughter. There is a steep price to pay but Jack is not told what this will be, until it's much too late.

It's much more complicated than a deal with the devil, where you could live happily every after until an agreed upon time when you relinquish your soul. The terms of this deal are less clear and the consequences are more immediate. The harder Jack tries to set things right, the worse off he and his family become.

This is a dark and disturbing story that straddles the line between horror and fantasy. I cared about the family and wanted things to work out for them.

The Identicals. What are they? Where do they come from? Why do they promise to save some people in return for murdering others?  How do they choose their victims? These are things I wish I knew, and which were not answered for me in this book.

3.5 out of 5 stars

I received an advance copy for review.

Available for Pre-order

Visit the author's website

Girl in Ice by Erica Ferencik

Valerie “Val” Chesterfield is a linguist trained in the most esoteric of disciplines: dead Nordic languages. Despite her successful career, she leads a sheltered life and languishes in the shadow of her twin brother Andy, an accomplished climate scientist stationed on a remote island off Greenland’s barren coast. But Andy is gone: a victim of suicide, having willfully ventured unprotected into 50 degree below zero weather. Val is inconsolable—and disbelieving. She suspects foul play.

When Wyatt, Andy’s fellow researcher in the Arctic, discovers a scientific impossibility­—a young girl frozen in the ice who thaws out alive, speaking a language no one understands—Val is his first call. Will she travel to the frozen North and meet this girl, try to comprehend what she is so passionately trying to communicate? Under the auspices of helping Wyatt interpret the girl’s speech, Val musters every ounce of her courage and journeys to the Artic to solve the mystery of her brother’s death.

The moment she steps off the plane, her fear threatens to overwhelm her. The landscape is fierce, and Wyatt, brilliant but difficult, is an enigma. But the girl is special, and Val’s connection with her is profound. Only something is terribly wrong; the child is sick, maybe dying, and the key to saving her lies in discovering the truth about Wyatt’s research. Can his data be trusted? And does it have anything to do with how and why Val’s brother died? With time running out, Val embarks on an incredible frozen odyssey—led by the unlikeliest of guides—to rescue the new family she has found in the most unexpected of places.

Val is a brilliant linguist, grieving the loss of her twin brother, and struggling with anxiety that is not fully addressed by her medication. There are very few places that she is comfortable enough or even able to force herself to go. Her life is basically work at the university, visiting her dying father, and home. But when she gets an email from her deceased brother's mentor that includes a recording of a girl he claims was frozen solid and defrosted alive in the Arctic, she decides to get on a plane not only to see if she can interpret this girl's language but to visit the place of her bother's death and find out what truly happened to him.

The small cast of characters being basically trapped together in a desolate sub zero setting created an instant atmosphere of dread and cabin fever. Add to that the mystery of how a child could be defrosted alive and the sci fi  sub plot of climate change leading to people all over the world being flash frozen and I was hooked on this thriller from the start.

4 out of 5 stars

I received an advance copy for review.

Get a copy

About the author

Erica Ferencik is a graduate of the MFA program in Creative Writing at Boston University. Her work has appeared in Salon and The Boston Globe, as well as on National Public Radio. Find out more on her website EricaFerencik.com and follow her on Twitter @EricaFerencik.