Wow! This was an action packed blood and gore infested horror romp!

A little backstory:

Come one, come all and take a ride into the haunted forest where you will see amazing creatures the likes of what you have never seen before!

There are trams on tracks that take tourists through a haunted forest with all kinds of oddball creatures and the tourists are hoping to get glimpses of the creatures that are roaming through the forest!



However, with any maiden voyage though comes unexpected problems that are unforeseeable and when one of the trams comes to a stop to view the creatures the last thing expected would be that the tram would lose power, but that is what happens and when the power goes out, so does the chance of escape. When another tram rams into the powerless tram it brings about a horrific crash which that is when things get interesting as now the tourists are considered a prime meal for the creatures out in the forest.

What happened to the tram? What happens to the tourists? Do they escape the clutches of the creatures? What kind of creatures are roaming the haunted forest? No spoilers here as you will just have to read the book!

There are quite a few characters within this story which I am not going into detail with each one, but I will say that I really loved most of the characters as they tried to fight their way to survival against the creatures.

There is lots of blood and gore throughout the story which starts practically right away in the first chapter and doesn't let up till the end of the book!

The story just flows along with the fast paced action but when the trams crash and the tourists are sitting ducks is when the story goes into overdrive. From that point on the story stays in overdrive with constant blood and gore action to the point that I could literally not put the book down as I wanted to stay awake to see what would happen next!

This book was awesome and it is a perfect read for Halloween! Giving this book five "gory" stars!

Highly recommend to all horror fans! ( )

3 1/2 stars.

The good: full of the humor that you expect from Strand. This is my first experience with James A. Moore but I will definitely read other books by him now. Characters are interesting. Main Bad guy is really pretty bad--as are a few of the humans, and snarkiness abounds. Entertaining with never a dull moment.

The bad: Just too much. Of everything. Too many monsters. Too many characters going in too many directions. Too much mayhem. One third of the way in I was hoping that the action would slow down so that the plot could develop. No suspense because the action never stops. No scares because there are monsters everywhere you look. I think if we had less characters and if the story developed slower it would have been better. If we are talking about Strand's lighter books, I like the Andrew Mayhem series and Benjamin's Parasite better because they had more focus.

To see the more serious side of Strand I would recommend Dweller, which is just amazing. ( )

Fast moving gore packed romp through a haunted forest. ( )

I was well pleased with this novel. Everything about it was fun: the story, the humor, the deaths. It had the perfect combination of horror, comedy, and seriousness.

The story takes place in a small, normal town in New Mexico. Normal until a full grown forest pops up and takes over the entire town in one day. A forest that is populated with monsters and ghosts and too many creatures to describe. Flash forward a few years and the forest has been converted into a tourist attraction with tram rides through the center of the forest. A special Halloween tour is about to take place and this ride is going to be more disastrous than anybody realizes.

The mix of characters was very easy to picture in my head. And the vocal performance by Joe Hempel really helped to differentiate each one. The story had a wide selection of characters so it was not obvious as to who would be killed and who wouldn't. And there were than a few times where I was actively laughing out loud. One more thing that I don't know if Strand and Moore were doing this on purpose or not, but it seemed to me that they kept stopping chapters semi-abruptly, leaving a character in a near impossible spot. In my mind, I pictured it as either Strand or Moore saying "Ha, let's see how you write your way out of this one." as they pass the story to the other. I'm not sure if that was real or not but it felt like it. To me, it made the experience even better. ( )

Welcome to Disneyland!

This novel is either bizarro fiction, a novel written on a methamphetamine nightmare, or it's a flip off for all the horror fans who've enjoyed too much of a good thing, namely blood, gore, and more blood.

The trick is to have us first CARE for the victims or possible heroes first. Failing that, we need to have a really compelling reason to hate them and want to see them die horrible, nasty, brutish deaths... EVENTUALLY.

In this case, we're given no foreplay.

It's just a carnival sideshow with super-silly demon antics with the most tired sacrifice plot ever devised, a million monsters in a magical forest, and cartoonish (if blood-soaked military action had a cartoon industry) fight scenes.

The reactions of the characters in this book are less than satisfying. What should have come across as sarcastic cardboard cut-outs actually felt less like we were supposed to laugh WITH them and felt more like the novel was laughing AT us.

*sigh*

Not happy. The novel itself was written competently enough if you leave out the purpose of empathizing with anyone... but overall, the effect was depressing. ( )