For the 4th and final of my Halloween & horror themed reviews, I’m going to be taking a look at a book I stumbled across when I was 10 years old.
And in the 19 years since I acquired it, I’ve almost read it a few times but something always stopped me from taking the plunge.
Now, after all these years, the time has come to crack it open.
Can it live up to that immense amount of pressure and hype?
Let’s find out together, gang!
As is customary around here, this is your official ***SPOILER ALERT***
Okay, first off, let’s talk about the book that I THOUGHT I was going to be reading.
As you can see on the cover above, under the title, it has the tagline “A Tale Of Terror For The 21th Century”.
For YEARS that tagline made me think this was Mary Shelley’s Classic rewritten to be hipper and cooler, a retelling for the happenin’ audiences of the new millennium.
Gang, never have I been so wrong, and never have I been so damn glad to be wrong!
What this book ACTUALLY turned out to be is far far better than that idea could ever hope to be.
When 3 high school kids, Nina, Joe, & an eccentric lad known as Captain Bob, run afoul of some wacky hacking abilities, a bunch of old movies converted to 3-D DVDs, and a freak lightning bolt, the most well known monsters in cinematic history are transported to the real world 21st century to unleash true fear.
Now, having already captured Dracula and The Wolfman, these 3 start to realize next monster on their list of foes may just be the beast brought to life by one Dr. Frankenstein.
DOESN’T THAT SOUND FUCKIN’ AMAZING!?
And let me tell you, IT IS!
If I had read this when I was a kid, I would have shit enough bricks to build an entire city block worth of houses.
The combining of monsters with movies in this specific way is genius.
The twist of bringing the movie monsters into the “real world” adds a new layer of fear and horror that a movie alone could never really inspire.
For a kid’s book, and the 3rd in the series no less (more on that in a minute), the characters are incredibly well fleshed out.
And even more astounding would be the fact that Larry Mike Garmon decided to introduce at least 3 new characters in this book and, somehow, nobody feels pushed to the side and ignored, new or old.
He’s obviously building on storylines from the 1st 2 books, but he does it in a way that doesn’t make you feel like an idiot or lost for having missed the earlier installments.
I mentioned that this is the 3rd book in the series.
Now, it should be pretty obvious that, based on what I thought this was going to be, I had absolutely no idea.
Upon reflection, I should have known, I should have looked at the spine or read the back cover blurb, but damn it I had my preconceived notions locked in place and that was that.
Yeah, I think it’s well established that I’m a jackass, cause that’s a real bummer.
I really wish I could get, or had gotten, the rest of the books in this series, but now they’re either out of print or so damn expensive that it seems unlikely to happen.
It’s sad because this story is just that damn good, gang.
So if you can find a copy of this or any of the books in this series, pounce on it!
This isn’t good for a kid’s book, it’s a good story all around.
Let us know what you think of this horrific review in the comments below or share this post on the hell scape known as Twitter with the Hashtag #TNBBookReview.
Special thanks to @ACFerrell1976 for her bonechilling continued editorial assistance.
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