An ongoing feature here at Kendall Reviews will be Videodrone. This feature will highlight some of Ben’s incredibly entertaining video reviews which are intelligently written and often packed with humour & innuendo. I hope you enjoy Ben’s work as much as I do.
Ben Walker presents…Videodrone
Coyote Songs: Gabino Iglesias
In Gabino Iglesias’ second novel, ghosts and old gods guide the hands of those caught up in a violent struggle to save the soul of the American southwest. A man tasked with shuttling children over the border believes the Virgin Mary is guiding him towards final justice. A woman offers colonizer blood to the Mother of Chaos. A boy joins corpse destroyers to seek vengeance for the death of his father. These stories intertwine with those of a vengeful spirit and a hungry creature to paint a timely, compelling, pulpy portrait of revenge, family, and hope.
You can buy Coyote Songs from Amazon UK & Amazon US
It Devours!: Joseph Fink & Jeffrey Cranor
Nilanjana Sikdar is an outsider to the town of Night Vale. Working for Carlos, the town’s top scientist, she relies on fact and logic as her guiding principles. But all of that is put into question when Carlos gives her a special assignment investigating a mysterious rumbling in the desert wasteland outside of town. This investigation leads her to the Joyous Congregation of the Smiling God, and to Darryl, one of its most committed members. Caught between her beliefs in the ultimate power of science and her growing attraction to Darryl, she begins to suspect the Congregation is planning a ritual that could threaten the lives of everyone in town. Nilanjana and Darryl must search for common ground between their very different world views as they are faced with the Congregation’s darkest and most terrible secret.
You can buy It Devours! from Amazon UK & Amazon US
Shanti: Alessandro Manzetti
The orphan sisters, Justine and Juliette, are entrusted to the care of the Sainte Marie College headed by Madame Desroches, a transgender matron of the infamous and dystopian neighborhood Paris South 5, the Hyper-Bronx of the French capital. The two sisters will become prey and predators of a brutal and hopeless world, where everybody wants to become a citizen of the mythical Shanti, the Holy City. Shanti is an artificial paradise, the last chance of a decent living following the apocalypse due to the radioactive meteor Uxor77. Now the Earth is characterized only by the annihilation of animal protein, the spread of cannibalism and brutal sexual deviances.
The destinies of the two girls take shape in an apocalyptic Paris, with its red-light districts and the fashionable restaurants of human flesh, and then in the desert, among the subhuman menageries of the barren, desperate Mesoamerican Republic.
Flamingo is a wicked creature that has survived the time to become the queen of Shanti, the Eldorado of Sex, whose heretic and sadist court, pulls the strings of everybody’s fate. But the New France’s criminal underworld as well as a powerful and cruel organization that control technology, the world markets of new synthetic drugs and the clandestine trade in human flesh, want to get their hands on the Holy City.
Justine and Juliette become involved in different games of power; one will become predator, the other prey, always looking for faith, in spite of everything. What fate awaits them? Shanti is written as an homage to the famed sisters of the Marquis de Sade’s infamous novel Justine, as a futurization of that famous, heretic masterpiece.
You can buy Shanti: The Sadist Heaven from Amazon UK & Amazon US
What The Hell Did I Just Read: David Wong
From the writer of the cult sensation John Dies at the End comes another terrifying and hilarious tale of almost Armageddon at the hands of two hopeless heroes.
It s the story “They” don t want you to read. Though, to be fair, “They” are probably right about this one. No, don’t put the book back on the shelf it is now your duty to purchase it to prevent others from reading it. Yes, it works with ebooks, too; I don t have time to explain how.
While investigating a fairly straightforward case of a shape-shifting interdimensional child predator, Dave, John, and Amy realized there might actually be something weird going on. Together, they navigate a diabolically convoluted maze of illusions, lies, and their own incompetence in an attempt to uncover a terrible truth that they like you would be better off not knowing.
Your first impulse will be to think that a story this gruesome and, to be frank, stupid cannot possibly be true. That is precisely the reaction “They” are hoping for.
You can buy What The Hell Did I Just Read from Amazon UK & Amazon US
Hellrider: J.G. Faherty
When Eddie Ryder is burned alive by fellow members of the Hell Riders motorcycle gang for ratting on them, he vows revenge with his dying breath. He returns as a ghost, with his custom motorcycle Diablo by his side. After he finds out he can possess people, he launches a campaign of vengeance that leaves plenty of bodies in its wake and the police in a state of confusion. Spouting fire and lightning from his fingers and screaming heavy metal lyrics as he rides the sky above the town of Hell Creek, he brings destruction down on all those who wronged him, his power growing with every death. Only Eddie s younger brother, Carson, and the police chief s daughter, Ellie, understand what s really happening, and now they have to stop him before he destroys the whole town.
You can buy Hellrider from Amazon UK & Amazon US
Cannibal Nuns From Outer Space: Duncan P. Bradshaw
With an encyclopaedic knowledge of cake, and exclusive access to the church’s stockpile of holy weapons, the Order of the Crimson Rosary are on the frontline in the eternal war between good and evil. Whether it’s repelling demonic possession, judging the authenticity of supposed miracles or having the final say on the colour of bunting at church fetes, the organisation’s members sacrifice their own freedom to keep the world safe.
Father Flynn, the top operative in the UK, has been responsible for a number of recent high profile gaffs. Given an ultimatum, he must choose between returning to his old job of preserving the last microfiche machine in the church’s library, or submit himself for rehabilitation.
Yet evil doesn’t take a ticket and wait in line, as the dreaded cannibal nuns from outer space land to begin their annual harvest. Can Flynn get himself sober enough to repel their evil machinations? Or will another idyllic British village become the nun’s latest buffet?
One thing’s for certain, to beat them, Father Flynn is going to have to kick the habit.
You can buy Cannibal Nuns From Outer Space from Amazon UK & Amazon US
Ben Walker
Ben got a taste for terror after sneaking downstairs to watch The Thing from behind the sofa at age 9. He’s a big fan of extreme & bizarre horror and well as more psychological frights, and most things in between. When he’s not reading, he’s writing, and when he’s not writing he’s on twitter @BensNotWriting or reviewing books on his YouTube channel, BLURB.
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