Soultaker

What would happen if you took an episode of Buffy and removed all the restrictions on it based on American tv censorship - something like this, as long as you moved it to somewhere more rural as well.

The Harvest monster here is a Lamia. Possessing people, feeding on their energy, making people her servants, all that sort of good stuff.

Enter one almost-40 year old come back to town to see if he can do something for a younger brother stuck with their trailer trash mother and useless stepfather.

Cue combinations of sex, death and eating of people in entertainingly large does. Plus possession of multiple girlfriends by said demonic entity.

3.5 out of 5

http://freesf.strandedinoz.com/wordpress/2010/11/soultaker-brian-smith/ ( )

Pulp horror-paperback-author Jack McAllister returns to his small, white trash hometown to discover his brother's girlfriend Myra is a lot more than she appears to be on the outside. In fact, Myra's an ancient demon who gains power from taking the souls of those around her. Having taken control of influential people across the town of Rockville, she's planning on a mass soul-harvest at the local high school, a massacre to dwarf all other Columbine-type tragedies.

While SOULTAKER reads like a novel the protagonist himself would have written, Smith once again manages to take a simple premise and keep the pages flipping. There's some scares, sex, conspiracy and BUCKETS of gore, i.e. everything a fan into old-school "supermarket" horror novels would want. The author knows his audience and he delivers the goods.

As pre-possessed high school snob Bridget says, "A teenager's soul is the equivalent of spiritual crack or Ecstasy" (pp. 162). So, too, is the spirit of a Bryan Smith novel. This one (his 5th for Leisure Books) is a lot of blood-soaked fun, just don't expect anything too different. ( )