Floating Dragon by Peter Straub

Rating: 4.5

Floating Dragon is a very hard book to describe so I'll just insert the blurb here:

Two monstrous evils.

This quiet suburban town of Hampstead is threatened by two horrors.

One is natural. The hideous, unstoppable creation of man's power gone mad.

The other is not natural at all. And it makes the first look like a child's play.

I enjoyed the book overall. It was a little hard to get into though. The beginning felt very unfocused and there were so many characters and places that it was hard to keep things straight. Once the story got rolling though it was very interesting. There are scenes in this book that are very memorable and creepy. I really liked how the effects of the man-made virus were so various and unpredictable. It did different things to different people and that made the story entertaining. I especially liked the man who painted his whole house (including the windows and roof) hot pink. The effects on many of the other people weren't so benign. If you are up for a long tale of the mysterious, bizarre and chilling, that takes some concentration then I would recommend Floating Dragon.

The Twilight Zone by Rod Serling

Rating: 5.0

I've always been a fan of The Twilight Zone with it's twisted and often dark tales. This book contains nineteen fantastic stories written by the brilliant Rod Serling. The course many of these stories takes leads to man being the true monster. I suspect some of this may be due to it being the early '60's. I think these are the scariest stories of all though. My favorite tales in this book revolve around what man does to himself and others. Take for instance The Monsters are Due on Maple Street. It's a story about how quickly neighbors and friends turn on each other when they think disaster has struck. Prejudice shows where it didn't before. Or another of my favorites, The Shelter. In this tale the neighborhood doctor pleads with his friends and neighbors to build a bomb shelter in case the worst should happen. They blow him off and spend their free time playing cards and having barbecues. When the worst threatens to happen, the friends and neighbors turn into animals trying to get into the doctors shelter. These are the kinds of stories that give me chills. There is balance though with tales of magic and wonder, like The Night of the Meek. In this story, a burnt out old store Santa finds a burlap bag that turns out to be much more than that. His wish comes true and he is able to bring happiness to the poor people down at the mission and the children who have nothing. I could go on and on about these stories, they all were fun to read, but I'll stop here. In this collection, "Rod Serling continues to leave us spellbound with his imaginative and unsettling tales."

Off Season by Jack Ketchum

Rating: 5.0

Off Season is a gruesome look at what happens when a small group of tourists meet with a band of cannibals in the Maine woods. And when cannibals are involved, you know it's going to be pretty grisly.

A group of six young people are relaxing in a rented cabin in the woods of Maine. Along come a sinister family of cannibals who live in these woods. They reside in a cabin and live like animals. The cannibals snatch one the tourist women and roast her like a pig and that's when the gory action starts. The rest of tourists try to barricade themselves inside the cabin...but that only works for a time. While this action is going down, a small town sheriff is in slow pursuit of the cannibals. The big finale, with the sheriff, the cannibals and the remaining tourists, is in the cannibal cave and is very....memorable.

I love this story. Being hunted down by a pack of cannibals is just plain creepy. The children cannibals with their little mouths working and their little teeth chomping especially got under my skin. But in a good way. I enjoy a good scare and this book definitely fits that bill. "Horror critic Winter calls the book one of 'remarkable elegance,' and indeed it's drum tight. Equally impressively, Ketchum uses the devastation of a group of tourists by a band of cannibals not to pander, as so many horror writers after him have done, but to explore with intelligence (and ferocity) the nature of evil and of the human spirit that can resist it."

No Humans Involved by Kelley Armstrong

Rating: 5.0

Another fun book from Kelley Armstrong. Part of her Women of the Otherworld series, No Humans Involved stars the intriguing necromancer Jaime Vegas. Some of the characters from previous books are back as well.

Jaimie has some big challenges in this story. She discovers the trapped ghosts of six murdered children in the garden behind the house where she is working on a t.v. show. As she digs for some answers to who killed them, with the help of werewolf alpha Jeremy, she uncovers a horrendous case of child sacrifice by a small cult of witch wannabes. Things turn threatening for Jaime when this cult discovers they have been found out.

I really enjoy this series. Armstrong adds just the right amount of action, humor and romance. It makes for great entertainment! Her characters of the Otherworld are captivating. "Armstrong deftly juggles such creatures as werewolves, witches, demons and ghosts with real-life issues." This series is a ton of fun....but don't take my word for it. : )

Watchers by Dean Koontz

Rating: 5.0

I first read this years ago, when I was a teenager. It was one of my first Koontz books. I loved it then and I still love it today. The dialogue seemed cornier than I remember it being but that's okay. I still loved it.

I really enjoyed this story. Two different animals are caged in the same government laboratory. They have been genetically altered. One is an extraordinary dog who I totally fall in love with.
The other is a monster who was made to be a weapon. They escape and are on the loose when the story begins. The human stars of the story are Travis and Nora. They end up finding the dog and learning it's capabilities. They also learn that this other thing....this monster....is after the dog and is capable of tracking it down and killing it and anything near to it. There are other things going on in the story that I won't go into, but it really keeps you on the edge of your seat as the monster gets closer and closer.

This is the Koontz book that pulls on my heartstrings the most. The dog is amazing, and I of course root for the dog's safety and to be able to stay with his new family. The monster, or the Outsider as it's called in the book, has blood lust in it's genes and makes the reader want to hate it. But it's really sad when we learn more about it. He hates himself for what he is. He's extremely lonely. He didn't ask to be this monster. Everybody loves the adorable dog who is almost human but is disgusted to even look at the hideous thing that the Outsider is. I feel sorry for it and that just makes the book all the more affecting to me. Great story! The Cincinnati Post calls it "A suspenseful page-turner...Koontz gives us characters we can care about...and enough tension to satisfy any thrill-seeker."

The Only War We Had by Michael Lee Lanning

Rating: 4.0

My dad loaned me this book of his and I'm glad he did. It's worth a read if you are interested in what an infantryman's day to day life was like in Vietnam. Michael Lee Lanning wrote this book based on his journal he kept while in Vietnam. This book covers his first six months over there on a day by day basis. It's slow at times and full of action at other times but it's the honesty I appreciated the most. The synopsis says it best: "Michael Lee Lanning's journal of his first tour of duty in Vietnam provides an unvarnished daily account of life in the field-the blood, fear, camaraderie, and tedium of combat and maneuver. Fleshed out with narrative and detail years later, the pages of this memorable book, first published in 1987, show an eager young recruit growing before the reader's eyes into a proud but bloodied combat veteran."

The Gerson Therapy by Charlotte Gerson and Morton Walker, D.P.M.

Rating: 4.0

The Gerson Therapy is a nutritional program that jump starts your body's healing processes. I watched a couple of intriguing documentaries on the subject and so went out to buy this book to learn more. Everything about this therapy makes sense, but for the average person who is not sick it may be a bit extreme to follow the Gerson Therapy as a lifestyle. It's a bit daunting to say the least. It requires massive amounts of juicing (once every hour) and coffee enemas. There is a lot of evidence that this can help the body cure itself of cancer and disease by flooding it with nutrients but it would be a hard regimen to follow. I guess if you had cancer though, it would be worth the effort to follow this therapy. The book starts with a short history of Dr. Max Gerson, who started healing people with this therapy in the '30's and '40's. It then outlines how the therapy works and how to adapt it to your particular condition. This book could be of interest to either people who are sick and want to heal themselves naturally or healthy people who are interested in the topic of health.