I read most of
The Nest pretty quickly and then got bogged down at the end as this section was pretty anti-climatic. The best parts of the book were obviously the cockroach attacks, especially the mass child chomp on the beach which is a set-piece which will be hard to forget. However, the plotting/slash character interaction was a bit forced and lacked human conflict/tension.
I decided from there that I was going to read all the books recommended by the Paperbacks from Hell guys. After all why wade through stacks of poor books when somebody has already done for you? So I moved onto
When Darkness Love Us which took me a long time to read. Not because it wasn't any good but because I was very busy with work and too tired to read. This book is actually two novelettes. The titular story and Beauty Is... Both are unconventional horror stories but all the better for it. The first packs a real punch but ends so abruptly that I didn't realise I was reading the next one until two chapters in
The second is also a bit of a love story that is both moving and tragic.
I then moved on to
The Reaping, which conversely I read very quickly. It's the fourth Bernard Taylor book I've read in a year and definitely the weakest. It's still good but doesn't quite match the jaw dropping climaxes of the others, and unusually for Taylor chickens out from finishing on a downer ending.
Up next is
The Tribe by Bari Wood which I'm promised in the introduction will be an update of The Golem story. Just started it and already there are that staple of seventies and eighties novels... Nazis! Ah the nostalgia...
