Books tagged with: gore

Angel of Death is a contemporary fantasy / horror novel by author J Robert King. The Angel of Death for Chicago overseas a an area that stretches from lake county Indiana to Milwaukee, a vast sprawl of a metropolis. His task is to ensure that each person's death matches their lives as closely as pos...

I remember reading the short story "Red Reign" about 20 years ago, written by Newman and published in the Mammoth Book of Vampires. This short story formed the basis for the novel and it's been on my list of books to read for some time. The imminent re-release of the sequel "The Bloody Red Baron" ha...

Autumn was originally self published and given away by the author ten years ago, since then it has been read by hundreds of thousands of people and even turned into a film starring David Carradine and Dexter Fletcher. It's now published by those fantastic people over at Gollancz and I must say that...

Carrying on right from where we left the survivors back in Autumn: The City, Purification takes us further down the Zombie survival road. Pretty much imprisoned within the underground Army base this small group sit and wait while on the surface the crowd of shuffling corpses is growing in size every...

Autumn - The City is the follow up to the sensational zombie novel Autumn, promising the same power and subtle horror of the first. It takes a lot of guts to start a story again right from the beginning but told from a different perspective - a brave move that could have gone horribly wrong. Instead...

There are odd things happening in a near deserted coastal village. Strangers are appearing, asking questions about the towns recluse while dogs are dissapearing and a local hunter discovers a naked human footprint in the snow. With the onset of deep winter things are about to get a lot worse. Having...

There have been thousands of years of conflict between humans and parahumans, a war that's been happening in secret has finally reached an uneasy truce. But now this peace is threatened by the awakening of an unspeakable evil, a sadistic serial killer who is slaughtering teenage shapeshifters and ri...

I’m already a fan of Landy’s previous work, Demon Road shows some of the same great dialogue and riveting narrative that made his Skulduggery Pleasant series such a great read. But his latest offering is definitely darker in tone and content, with murderous demon parents, twisted witches, and even t...

Dorothy The Darker Side of Oz by Scott Stanford is a modern, dark interpretation of the classic "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz" (originally written by L. Frank Baum). Having seen the original film a number of times (not a fan but the family are) and not actually having read the book, my interpretation...

Fool Moon is the second book in the Dresden Files by Jim Butcher and once again we meet up with Chicago's only professional wizard and one of only a dozen of his power in the country. Since we left Harry business has been pretty non-existant and he's been unable to find any kind of work at all munda...

Harbinger of the Storm is the second volume in the Obsidian and Blood series of novels by Aliette de Bodard, and follows on from the events in Servant of the Underworld, both published by Angry Robot Books. One and a half years have passed since the events in Servant of the Underworld and the Empero...

Kells Legend is the first volume in the Clockwork Vampires Chronicles and has been written by Andy Remic. Without warning came the vast albino army, the army of iron, invading Falanor from the north. To have any hope of survival a small band set off to warn the King. The band leaves quickly and with...

Meet Thaddeus Blaklok, mercenary, demonist and down right violent thug-for-hire who uses his fists the way most people use punctuation. He is dragged out of semi-retirement to "retreive" a very mysterious key for his equally mysterious benefactors. He isn't the only one after the artefact however an...

San Francisco Homicide detective Bryan Clauser thinks he may be losing his mind. What other explanation could there be for the dreams he keeps having, dreams where he witnesses some really gruesome murders that also happen to be actually carried out all over the city. As he and his partner Pookie Ch...

We are once again re-united with one of the few survivors in a world infested with the undead. Gus is a little more dishevelled than the last time we saw him, more bruised and a bit more reckless too as his daily existence of waking up, getting drunk and preparing for the inevitable zombie horde beg...

There is much to like about Joe Abercrombie, particularly when he returns to his darker writing, as published by Gollancz. One of the founders of the ‘grimdark’ movement, Abercrombie’s gritty brand of fantasy delivers real consequences and hard bitten characters in all the different adventures he ha...

Soul Stealers is the sequel to the Andy Remic Epic novel - Kell's Legend, and the second volume in the Clockwork Vampire Chronicles. The indomniable Kell is still being hunted by the evil clockwork vampires and to make matters worse, he is now being tracked by two beautiful but deadly female vampire...

Swan Song is a classic horror novel by Robert R McCammon. Having seen endless recommendations for this book in the alt.books.stephen-king newsgroup, every time somebody asked for something similar to The Stand by Stephen King, I fearlessly grabbed it when I found a cheap used copy at my local book p...

Way before be became a household name with his Songs of Ice and Fire series, George RR Martin wrote a number of stand-out novels and Armageddon Rag is often seen as one the most off-the-wall if not his finest early works. Nominated for the Locus and World Fantasy awards it failed to gain any notable...

Those good fellows over at Titan books have released a brand new edition of the best-selling sequel to Anno Dracula, complete with an additional novella. Continuing the alternative history tale where the vampire hunter Van Helsing was defeated by Dracula, bringing Vampirism into the open and for a t...

On the bloody battlefield littered with the dead and dying, two figures step cautiously through the viscera, the blood, guts and many feasting crows. These two appear ill-matched; one a slight and nimble figure, the other a hulking brute. You may be forgiven for thinking that perhaps they are there...

The Curse of Kali is the 10th volume in the Jason Dark series by Guido Henkel. The intrepid Inspector Lestrade needs all the help he can get after a the decapitated corpse of a rich writer is found in the hands of a statue of the Hindu goddess Kali. Not even sure if he's looking for a human killer o...

I must admit that I am developing a bit of a soft spot for Zombie novels, I love the way that each I have read recently has something different to offer, from the pseudo first person account of World War Z to the subtle and gradual style of David Moody's Autumn, even though they are all descended fr...

The world has ended and the few who remain are faced with a struggle to survive, not only with a lack of food and heat (not to mention any real form of civilisation) but also against the hordes of shambling undead who look to rip, tear, kill and eat not to mention the possibility of an even more dan...

The Executioners Heart is the fourth novel in the Newbury and Hobbes series and follows on from the events of The Immorality Engine - although you don't need to have read that or any of the previous books to enjoy The Executioners Heart. The Queen's agents Sir Maurice Newbury and Miss Veronica Hobbe...

The Kings Justice is one of two new stories released this month from one of the veterans of the Fantasy scene - Stephen Donaldson. It's a tale of an enigmatic figure known only as Black who goes in search of evil deeds. He has powers that help him route out evil, not least the ability to manipulate...

All over the World, Miracles are taking place, on a wintery highway in Quebec a man crashes his car and survives, in New York a homeless person is run over by a bus and lives. In Tokyo, a teenager jumps off a high rise building and fails in taking her own life. While many see these marvels as a posi...

The Return man is a post-apocalyptic Zombie novel that manages to offer a few surprises and original ideas in this rapidly expanded sub-genre. The story goes that a mass "outbreak" divides America in two, on the east the untouched survivors remain safe while the west has become truly wild - a ravage...

The Sad Tale of the Brothers Grossbart is a dark fantasy novel, the debut of Jesse Bullington. The year is 1364 and in the plague infested, devil-haunted darkness of Medieval Europe most of the population struggle to survive, living in abject poverty while the opulent few enjoy a life of luxury. The...

Tome of the Undergates is the first volume in the Aeons' Gate fantasy series by Sam Sykes. Lenk is in theory the leader of a band of "adventurers", in practice he struggle's to keep control over the unruly misfits - with Gariath the dargon man seeing humans as little more than prey, only happy in a...

Viking Dead is a dark fantasy novel by Toby Venables, part of the "Tomb of the Dead" collection published by Abaddon Books. Bjolf, son of Earling is the captain and leader of the Viking raiding ship "Raven" who after reluctantly fleeing from a raid gone wrong find themselves sailing into very strang...

Vivisepulture is an ebook collection of weird tales from some seriously talented authors, edited by the singular Andy Remic. (According to the online dictionary Vivisepulture is the act of burying someone alive by the way and you get some odd articles looking that one up on Google I can tell you!)....

He-Dog and Balless are mad, brutal, unpredictable mercenaries, and those are their good points. The remains of this ragtag group also includes the suicidal, one-eyed ex-champion archer Borus and the disfigured but deadly Chop . When they accept a mission that no-one else would touch, they travel the...

Witchfinder - Dawn of the Demontide is a young adult fantasy horror novel written by William Hussey. Jake is a fairly typical teenager, although admittedly a bit of a loner and spends much of his time reading horror comics, he is quite bright and bored at the school he attends. He has a massive know...

Brains, Brains, BRAINS!, you just have to love those lurching, decaying animated corpses. The living dead make a great enemy and here we have wall-to-wall flesh eating monsters, ghouls and things that go bite in the night, brought to (un)life by some of the best horror and fantasy writers in the wor...

Blackmore is a vastly under-appreciated author. His Mountain Man novels are a superb example of a post-apocalyptic / zombie series. 131 days does for heroic, gladiatorial fantasy what Mountain Man did for Zombies, a charged, fast-paced story that has confidence, style and plenty of GrimDark. Every y...

There is a surprising amount of Fantasy that is essentially an epic game of magical rock, paper, scissors. Various mages, witches and Gods all fighting each other with differing powers. They are strong against one power, but weak against another. The balance of the world rests on all these powers ca...

Heroic Fantasy doesn't always get the credit it deserves, but when done well can be powerful, energetic and immersive fiction.  Sky in the Deep is one of the best examples of recent times and an equal to Gemmell's past stories. The story follows Eelyn, a member of the Aska clan. She's been raised as...

Once a noble lord, after a failure on the field of battle, Silas Bershad "The Flawless" was stripped of all titles and forced into the life of a dragonslayer, moving from one perilous hunt to the next. Stalking dragons and collecting their valuable oil, his only escape seems to be death. But death h...

I love 2000AD, it is a fantastic serial comic that is filled with some of my favourite characters. Judge Dredd is omnipresent, but there are other characters that I picture when I think of opening a new issue; ABC Warriors, Rogue Trooper and of course, Slaine. Slaine felt a little different as it wa...

There are authors that you love because you can pick up one of their books and know what you are going to get, like putting on your favourite pair of comfortable slippers again. There is also that rarer breed of author that you love, maybe even a little bit more. Those authors that will not be pigeo...

I love Fantasy and read enough to know that there are so many layers to the genre; from high to low, from Tolkien, through the Golden Age to modern darker fantasy. The genre twists and turns through the ages. A lot of modern Fantasy is shorter and darker, and I miss a stonking big slice of High Fant...

What is Fantasy if it is not epic battles against elves and orcs? Fans of the genre know that it can be a lot of other things than just that. Some of the best modern fantasy that I have read have been smaller stories set in fantasy worlds. How about a Die Hard-like experience set in a castle where a...