JG FahertyBesprekingen

Good Book

Interesting Read!!!

Half a century ago, a young priest was called to the jungle to help with an exorcism. Though he was successful, the demon vowed to come back for Father Bonaventura someday.
30 years ago, a group of friends attempted a séance in a haunted dorm and woke a sleeping evil.
One year ago, little Abby Rawlings began suffering the torments of unseen forces. Unable to cope, her father calls for help, bringing in a group of paranormal experts who do not believe in demons but intend to either debunk these supernatural goings on or possibly clear the home of poltergeist activity.

A little slice of hell has come to the town of Hastings Mills and it's growing day by day. Before long the non believers will be forced to face the truth. Whatever is tormenting Abby is not confined to her and they can not handle this alone. Father Bonaventura has grown old and frail, but he may be the only hope.

There are a lot of characters to unpack and get to know here. It took me some time to get everyone straight. I did once have to flip back closer to the beginning to get the names of those who were present at the séance to make sure I was clear on the attendees, so pay attention there, it matters later on, these things are all connected.
I don't think I have been so freaked out since I read the story that inspired a head spinning Linda Blair to visit my nightmares in my teens. The earlier events in the book that introduce the characters and set the scene are chilling enough, but as the book progresses into full throttle hell on earth it makes those earlier incidents seem mild by comparison. This is a good vs evil story of epic proportions. The action just never lets up.


I received a complimentary copy for review.

There is so much going on in this novella. I read it once for the story. You have to do that because this one is going to rip you apart as you follow Fist from the shattering opening scene through one harrowing pivotal scene after another. I then read it again for all of the rest of the story. The symbolism. The literary references. The structure. The landscape as we progress becomes more surreal, the characters more symbolic and archetypal, as we drop from one level to the next and finally into the fire created by his own regret.

Choices. It is all about choices. How some choices, once made, can't be undone. We follow Fist as he carries his dead (both figuratively and literally like Faulkner's characters in As I Lay Dying) to their final resting place and himself to his revenge and, he hopes, redemption. Along the way he meets people that are not necessarily bad, just conflicted like himself. He also meets monsters, some human some not, a fascinating character ("The Artist") that I think of as a reflection of the novelist himself, and in the end, his own personal demon.

Emotionally wringing, this book will take its toll on you. From its devastating first few pages to what is the most gut wrenching final sentence that I have read in a long time. It will leave you shaken and numb. This novella is what dark fiction is all about.

This book would probably appeal to a younger audience, both for its prose level and the simplicity of the story. Basically a run and chase monster story with little character development or real scares along the way although I probably would have liked it as a kid.

I also read The Cold Spot by this author which was slightly better. 3.5 stars but suffered from the same problems.

3.5 stars.

Slightly better than "He Waits" although it suffers from the same problems. Once again, I feel that this book was written for a younger audience, based on the prose level, simple plot structure, and characterization. We do get a feel for the protagonist Clay Daniels and his motivation, but the outcast teenager who acquires a supernatural buddy(ies)/protector has been done so much better elsewhere with "Dweller" by Jeff Strand being pretty much the gold standard.

This novella does have an original ending that gave it an extra half point. Like I said in my review of "He Waits"--I probably would have really liked this one if I had read it when I was younger.

This story is a huge homage to H.P. Lovecraft. The setting is in Innsmouth...so the tale includes Arkahm, the Miskatonic River & the University.... Definitely Lovecraft's stomping ground.

The Basics: Henry Gilman has lived under the stigma of atrocities committed by his father. His father was a doctor who descended into madness after Henry's mother died of cancer. His ultimate goal was to cure cancer, but the things he did in his madness were depraved and horrific. Henry does his best to make a life out of the tatters left behind after his father is put away in the asylum.....but given that he is in Innsmouth....well we all know a happily-ever-after is just not going to happen. Cue the undead, a monster lurking under the city, and other very Lovecraftian horrors. Turns out in order to save the one he loves, Henry might just have to share in his father's madness......

I enjoyed the first half of this novel better than the second half. There is a point where things switch gears a bit....and it just jarred me out of the story a bit too much. All in all, an enjoyable homage to Lovecraft. Very much in the horror genre. I loved the setting and the way the tale has a very Lovecraftian feel to it. Very dark and atmospheric.

All in all, a good horror story. I enjoyed it. This is the second book by JG Faherty that I've read. I will definitely be reading more of his writing!

**I voluntarily read a review copy of this book from Flame Tree Press. All opinions expressed are entirely my own.**

Eddie Ryder might have been a snitch....but he didn't deserve to be burned to death by the Hell Riders. The members of the biker gang were once his friends, but now he wants to kill them all. But...being dead and all....he has to learn how to go from just floating around to handing out justice. Violent justice.

As I read this book, I could see this being a really fun, slightly cheesy, late night horror movie. I would watch it! I was even doing the casting in my head...... For Eddie, I would cast Austin Amelio (played Dwight on The Walking Dead). I even heard the dialoge in his voice as I read. :)

Although the plot was really nothing new, I thoroughly enjoyed this book. There are a few rough scenes involving adult situations (rape, sodomy, violent murder) and some rough language, so this book is not for the faint of heart (or kids). Those scenes are not all that graphic....but the subject matter is there. Be aware. If that type of violence in horror stories is not for you.....skip this one.

Quick read. Entertaining plot. Interesting take on the ghost-seeks-revenge storyline. This is the first book by this author that I have read, but he has written many, many horror novels and stories. I will definitely be reading more of them!

**I voluntarily read a review copy of this book from Flame Tree Press. All opinions expressed are entirely my own.**

I won this novella during an online Meet the Author event put on by the publisher Darkfuse.

The story starts off with our protagonist named Fist drunkenly making his way home late at night. During his walk home he is musing about the state of his life and marriage. Fist used to be a boxer, (hence the nickname), but gave it up at the height of his career to become the father he believes his family wanted and needed-a man with a stable job, bringing home a paycheck,and home every night. The idea of what a man(and his family) loses when he gives up who and what he IS soon becomes a moot point as Fist walks into his bedroom and his life changes forever.

What follows is one of the most gut-wrenching scenes I have ever read.

I don't want to spoil the story, so I will just say that this is one novella that is going to stick with you. At times, it is actually difficult to continue reading because the pain of Fist is just too much to bear. I'm not ashamed to say that this novella made me cry, it was THAT powerful.

This is another effective work by Mr. Thompson and one you won't soon forget. I know I won't.

Admittedly, I'm a sucker for a kick ass cover and this is definitely one of them. When I saw Mr. Faherty offering a paperback ARC of this on Twitter I jumped on the chance!

Eddie Ryder has had a rough family life. His dad is gone, his mom is dying and his smart little brother is trying to stay in school so that he can better himself. Formerly a member of the Hell Riders Motorcycle Club, but now trying to go straight and support his family, no one recognizes the changes in him-changes for the better. All that ends one night after his auto repair shop burns down with him in it. Inexplicably, he, (and his motorcycle, Diablo!), come back to life. Will he get revenge on those responsible? Will his family be able to keep their heads above water now that he's gone? You'll have to read this to find out!

At first, I could not have been more on board with this story. I love me a good revenge tale and this is definitely one. My problems with this novel came about a little over halfway through, when things began to get repetitive. It's my understanding that Eddie became more and more insane as time went on and as he kept doing what he was doing. {I'm trying not to spoil too much.} But at a certain point it went way over the top and was no longer believable. {As much as a story about a reincarnated man and his motorcycle can be believable, that is.}

I loved Eddie's family and wanted to spend more time with his brother and mom, and I did get my wish towards the end of the book, but it wasn't as much time as I wanted.

I was not expecting a literary masterpiece here, but I did expect a tighter story with less repetition than this. All of that said, this was fun, and for the most part, I enjoyed my time with Eddie and Diablo, flying thunderously around the town of Hell Creek!

*Thank you to the author for the beautiful paperback you signed for me, in exchange for my honest feedback. This is it.*

A non-stop wave of escalating terror and destruction, with often a thin veil between the 'good' guys and the 'bad'. Lots of action, lots of twists and turns. Refreshingly different.

I received my copy through NetGalley.

I received The Burning Time from Librarything for free, In return for an honest review.

Reverend Cyrus Christian is the vessel of evil. When he comes to the town of Hasting Mills, he rings an incredible heat wave which causes the citizen's to be easily aggravated and short tempered. His evil presence emanates through town causing normally good, kind people to do outrageous things in fits of rage.
John Root is on the side of good. He has been searching for the being inside the Reverend for many years. This "trickster", as John calls it, has destroyed Johns hometown and killed many members of John's family
This is the typical battle of good vs. evil, God vs. Devil, Heaven vs. Hell that has been done many times before. J.G. Faherty does it flawlessly. He grabs your attention from the moment Cyrus, John, and a young man named Billy enter town.
There were a couple of times in my version of ebook (it may have been updated and fixed by now) that the Reverend's name was inverted (Christian Cyrus instead of Cyrus Christian). Overall, I was thrilled and enthralled by this book. If you enjoyed The Burning Time, then check out Cemetary Club also by J.G. Faherty.

Chapter by chapter the book became annoying and cliche. I just had to do a big eye roll at one chapter in which the officers get a call that a new comer into town was seen taking a boy to his hotel room and coming out 20 mins later. What is their first thought of this? "Do you think he's the one who has been killing all those young ladies?" (not an actual quote). WTF? He wasn't even in town when the first murder happened! AND, why would you suspect him of killing girls (teens and older it seems) over the fact that he took a child to his hotel. Shouldn't your first thought be...child molestation? After the run in with the police, the next day our character finds that everyone in town thinks he's a child molester or the murderer of all those teen girls. So what does he do? When a beautiful teen girl comes in asking him out of 20 plus men from her small town, to help with her car he says yes. When she offer's him a ride he jumps on in with the whole world watching knowing that no one will be around when she drops him off. And when she comes up dead he's just shocked by it all. Ummm...they have already told you they suspect you of the killings of teenage girls...why are you driving around in the car of a teenage girl...*sigh*...and it continues...all for the sake of moving the plot along that is. This book is filled with little things of this sort.

The good part is that the general idea is really good and the writing style is not bad at all. Just so many eye rolls throughout the whole mess.

Review copy

A marriage that's falling apart, an apparent suicide, and a haunting that turns out to be so much more. Death Do Us Part by JG Faherty is a thrill ride from start to finish. A complex of the lengths one will go to for love and what the dead will do for revenge. This is one of those stories that just reaches out from the pages, grabs you by the collar, and shakes and shakes until you collapse from exhaustion.

Art Stanhope has just asked his wife, Catherine, for a divorce. Next thing you know she's driving into a river ending her life, apparently by suicide. The reader knows there's more to the story, but the who and why are saved until the very end, with numerous twists along the way.

As a novella, Death Do Us Part is a quick read. The pacing is close to perfect and the overall idea is fresh and enjoyable.

Death Do Us Part is available now as an e-book from Samhain Horror.

Recommended.

JG Faherty is a life-long resident of New York's haunted Hudson Valley. He's been a finalist for both the Bram Stoker Award and the ITW Thriller Award. He's the author of six novels, including his most recent, The Cure. as well as eight novellas and more than 50 short stories.

Review copy

In May of 2015 Samhain Publishing released four new novellas exploring things that go bump in the night, the things that scared us as kids, and in many cases still frighten us as adults. Now, those four stories are available in a single volume called. Childhood Fears.

NIGHTMARE IN GREASEPAINT by L.L. Soares and G. Daniel Gunn. L.L. Soares is the Bram Stoker Award-winning author of the novel Life Rage. G. Daniel Gunn is the author of the novel Destroyer of Worlds and the pseudonym for Daniel G. Keohane, a Bram Stoker nominated author in his own right. Nightmare in Greasepaint does not disappoint. The start of the story is more psychological horror with a house bringing back memories of what had happened to the protagonist as a child and what he had done, but as the story develops the tension builds, much like the climb to the top of a super-coaster and then reaches incredible speeds as you plummet back to earth. A quick and satisfying read.

THE BEAR WHO WOULDN'T LEAVE by J.H. Moncrieff. J.H. Moncrieff has been a professional writer all of her adult life with a number of those years spent as a journalist tracking down snipers and canoeing through crocodile-infested waters. The Bear Who Wouldn't Leave preys on our childhood fears and manages to juggle the three possible scenarios in a way that kept me guessing to the very end. Is it really Edgar, the teddy bear, doing all these bad things, is it Josh's step-father making it look like Edgar, or is there something wrong with Josh himself. Although the idea of an evil teddy is not terribly new, and at times you could easily predict what might come next, the result still hits you in the face like a ton of bricks.

SCARECROWS by Christine Hayton. Introduction to Edgar Allen Poe at age twelve, hooked Christine Hayton on the horror genre and her attraction to the macabre continues to this day. Scarecrows was yet another enjoyable story in this quartet of novellas. "Cathy isn't in her bed and I can't find her anywhere." As a parent I find those words alone to be fear inducing. Although the story is told moving back and forth over a period of years in the late '60's, each chapter heading came with a note to let the reader know where they were in that scene. Scarecrows has a solid twist and proves that truth is stranger than fiction.

WINTERWOOD by JG Faherty. JG is a Bram Stoker Award and ITW Thriller Award finalist. He's the author of five novels, seven novellas, and more than 50 short stories. Winterwood unleashes the monsters. Krampus, the Holly King, the Wild Hunt, and Gryla (the Holly King's wicked bride, the mother of the Yule Lads and the evil sister of Mother Earth. A witch with a fondness for children.

Overall Childhood Fears is a solid read and accomplishes its goal in examining the things that scared us in our childhood and beyond. The book is available now from Samhain Publishing in both paperback and e-book formats.

Recommended.

Review copy

Opening line..."She was born with the power to cure. Now she's developed the power to kill." I'm in.

Leah Degarmo is a veterinarian with the power to cure with just a touch, but her gift comes with a dark side: whatever she takes in she has to pass on, or suffer it herself.

I've read a number of stories recently where the principal character has interesting powers and I don't mind telling you they have all been among my favorites.

The Cure is certainly a page turner and I couldn't wait to see what was going to happen next. As the story grew and the pressures on our heroine mounted, so did her talents, what starts out as a simple way to help pets and their owners turns into something much more terrifying.

When her secret gets out and into the hands of some very bad people that's when it really hits the fan, but by the story's end when things seem to be calming down, they are actually much worse than ever.

With just a small suspension of disbelief, the plausibility of everything else is rather simple and there is an overall feeling of helplessness throughout. Every time you think you've seen the worst that could happen, something even worse happens. Fun.

I get the feeling the end is not really the end, although I have not seen any word on plans for a sequel, there is plenty left to be explored.

The Cure is available in paperback and ebook formats from Samhain Horror through their website and Amazon.com.

Recommended.

I loved this book! the action was there, as was the suspense. Faherty is a master storyteller, his writing makes it easy for the reader to picture the scenery and the characters with vivid clarity. I eagerly await the next volumes of this series. Highly recommended.

I got this book from the Early Reviewers for an honest review.

This book is pretty good for a mythos tale. If you like Lovecraft, this book is for you. I thought it was great how the town went nuts and turned on each other. The author really knows his lore!

As an enormous fan of Lovecraft's works, it was the promise of his eldritch horrors which drew me to this book. All told, I enjoyed this book tremendously even though I was initially afraid of another author using Lovecraft's memorable concepts. Would definitely recommend this to anyone who liked Lovecraft.

-PT

This is a pretty good strangers-come-to-small-town horror story with Cthulhu trappings.

Two strangers come to town: one a preacher, one a jack-of-all trades kind of guy. As is usual in these stories, one of these guys is the bad guy, the other is the hero. I like those kind of stories.

One thing I've learned in a lot of strangers-come-to-small-town stories is that sometimes it's the small town that's horrifying and terrible to strangers rather than the other way around! In this story it spirals even more quickly into a horrible mess when a Cthulhu cultist starts making trouble.

Journalstone doesn't disappoint with their horror fare, and Faherty tells a strange horror story that fits right in the weird/dark tales genre.½

It took me quite awhile to actually pick up and begin to read this. However, once I actually did start I was hooked on the characters and story almost immediately. Well written and well plotted, this book is good for anybody looking for a creepy book with tons of atmosphere.

This review was written for LibraryThing Early Reviewers.
Fans of Lovecraft should especially enjoy this story of good versus evil. Fans of mythology in general may have to overlook a few annoyances (as mentioned by several other reviewers: The Trickster is not inherently Evil despite the conflation among some Western cultures. Western Christianity, I'm looking at you.) Beware if you're not a fan of gore; This isn't "splatterpunk," but it's certainly more than Lovecraft himself would have ever dreamed of including.

Faherty does a great job with the characterisation of his two Strangers. Some of the other characters are a bit two-dimensional (or, in some cases, one-dimensional), but those are mostly background characters, so I can forgive it. The horror is truly horrifying, with the townspeople slowly descending into insanity. The magic is satisfying, if a bit on the convenient side at times. Romance... well, let's just say that's not Faherty's strong suit. But we'll let that slide since the relationships otherwise are strong, especially that between the hero and the young boy.½

Not the best read. I started this book many times and never finished it. Just couldn't get inyo it.½

Although the story is as old as time itself--good vs. evil--I enjoyed the plot and the characters and I was pulled along through the tale quite easily. THere were times my anxiety level was quite high, because it just felt like evil was winning. I would have to put it down and walk away. And that's a successful story.

There were moments of lag, but not many and I just suspended my disbelief with a few elements and took the ride. (I think the town was won over a bit too quickly, but evil's powers are impressive.)

I would recommend this book. I'm quite happy to have it next to my Stephen King collection in my bookcase.