I'm a completionist. I'd read all of Scott Nicholson's Pinnacle-era books aside from this one, so I figured I'd finally cross this one off my list. What took me so long? Well, I don't like vampires. I've only ever liked two bloodsucker stories in my life: 'Salem's Lot and 30 Days of Night. Sorry, this one didn't make the list.

I've never come across a single line of text that ruined an entire book for me, but this one did:

"Lane, who had scrambled to his hands and knees beneath the creature and was posed like a bottom in a gay porn flick, let out a grunt."

It was jarring, and I didn't know how to take it. What am I suppose to glean from that simile? That gay sex makes one vulnerable? That two men having intercourse is a scary thing? Was it supposed to be a bit of tension-cutting comic relief? If so, I didn't find it funny. My main point is this: you could cut every bit about gay porn and the sentence would be just as strong, if not stronger. Just saying the guy was on his hands and knees was plenty. It took me out of the moment. I almost quit the book. If that sentence hadn't been so far into the novel, I would have, but by the time it dropped, I was invested in the story. I still can't think of one good reason for that simile. If you can think of one, please, comment below. (Oh, and I wasn't disgusted by the idea of two men fucking. It just didn't work in context. Had it said "like a woman taking it doggy style" I still would have felt the need to put it down. After all, the monster is not trying to fuck this guy.)

Scott Nicholson is a guilty pleasure of mine. I found him around the time I found Bentley Little, and only picked up my first Nicholson book because Little had written the blurb on the cover. Scott Nicholson is not the next Stephen King, nor does Nicholson even pretend to write literary horror. He's a genre writer. I happen to like genre writers. Bentley Little, Richard Laymon, Edward Lee, Brian Keene, and Scott Nicholson all fall into that category, and you know that, going into their books, you're in for some big dumb gory fun. You just have to shut off your brain and enjoy the ride. (I can hear it now, "Then why didn't you just shut off your brain during that gay porn sentence?" Because I didn't. That's how much that sentence took me out of the story. It made me think when I didn't want to."

With this book, I was mostly bored up until halfway through. There was a lot of exposition, mainly having to do with a fictional outdoorsy company, and the writing felt as if Nicholson was just going through the motions, mistaking world-building for character development. When the action did start, it was fast and furious. One of the cooler scenes has to do with one of the monsters gliding out of the fog. I saw the scene clearly in my mind, and was more than a little creeped out. 

The final 80 pages of this book made this a worthwhile read. Nicholson's choice of survivors tickled me. It took a huge amount of balls to keep a certain someone alive, and I respect that. 

Also, I don't think Nicholson has ever heard the term "Pocket Rocket", so I will hold back my judgment. I will say this: a Pocket Rocket is not a piece of camping equipment. Ladies, can I get an Amen?

In summation: I don't regret reading this, but it'll probably disappear from my memory in a few weeks. Nothing to write home to mother about, unless Mom likes awkward similes. I do, however, recommended The Harvest or The Manor (the latter is now Creative Spirit), both of which are fine Nicholson books. The Red Church, The Home, and The Farm are decent but not spectacular, yet they're both better than They Hunger. 

Fuck Dean Koontz. Fuck him with a rusty fish hook then dunk him in a kiddie pool filled with rubbing alcohol before lighting the whole thing on fire. 

Those were my first thoughts after finishing this cash grab. After reading the absolute shit that was Wilderness (the first purchase I ever requested a refund for on Amazon), I told myself I wouldn't be suckered into Koontz and Bantam's short story scams. But I thought, "It's Odd Thomas. They wouldn't purposely mislead me where one of Koontz's most cherished characters is concerned!" The hell I preached. 

I spent $0.99 for two pages. Two. Fucking. Pages. The first page and the last page. Everything in between is filler so that Bantam could charge us for this commercial disguised as a short story. All 30 pages in between is generic thriller crap. You can smell the triviality coming off it. It's the kind of stench you can see. 

I was hoping for a story about Odd and Stormy, you know, what the packaging promises:

Here, read the synopsis:

Amid the dizzying rides, tantalizing games of chance, and fanciful attractions of a state fair, two teenage sweethearts on the cusp of life and love’s pleasures find their way to a shadowy carnival tent brimming with curiosities. There, from the bizarre and enthralling Gypsy Mummy, a mechanized merchant of dreams and prognosticator of tomorrows, the young couple learns what fate promises for them. But fate, for Odd Thomas and Stormy Llewellyn, is something altogether different: full of dark corners, sharp edges, and things no seer or soothsayer could ever anticipate.
 
And for Odd Thomas, a gallant fry cook from a sleepy California desert town, the future beckons—to listen to unquiet spirits, pursue unsettling mysteries, and learn shocking truths . . . for a purpose far greater than himself.

Two pages of carnival, folks. All the rest is Stormy and Odd running around after a ghost with cleaver in his neck. They find the guy's house. Unshackle some women. Call in the authorities. Then, and ONLY then, do they head to the carnival. I wanna break something. This is even worse than the misleading, broken synopsis for The City. 

This is how I think the meeting with Dean and Bantam went:

Dean: So I got about two pages of the story you requested. 

Bantam: The fuck? We can't sell two pages! Can't you give us something with, at the very least, a murder in it?

Dean: I'd be phoning it in, but yeah, I can do that. Are you sure people will want to read it?

Bantam: We'll disguise it as backstory; tell everyone that the short reveals the story of the day Odd and Stormy got that ticket that Odd carries with him throughout the series.

Dean: Okay, so two pages of story, and about, what? Thirty pages of filler? Sound about right?

Bantam: This is why you sell millions of books, Dean. You know how to bow to commands. 

END SCENE

In summation: I retract my previous statement. Fuck both Dean Koontz and his publisher. Even if it didn't go down like I stated above, Dean still wrote it, and Bantam still published it. And guess what? I'm returning it. This is only my third refund request ever. 

Baal is Rosemary's Baby and The Omen and Megido all rolled up in one burrito. The best parts about the novel are the opening and final acts, basically the first and last fifty pages of the book. I was successfully dragged into a character drama concerning a couple trying to cope with a pregnancy after the wife is raped and brutalized. Then the book changed, drastically, and I quickly lost interest in what seemed to be a religious thriller with supernatural undertones. Then it changed again, morphing into an end of days scenario before wrapping up with a strong action-packed finale. 

While Baal is well-written, I could almost feel McCammon's growing pains. He seemed to want so much out of this book, but couldn't quite settle on one coherent theme. What's the worst part about humanity? Our sex drive? Our tendency to lean toward violent resolutions over peaceful ones? The Kardashians? I keed, I keed... 

In summation: Only read Baal if you're a completionist. And please, please, for Tom Cruise's sake, do not make this the first McCammon book you read.

I started reading Aloha From Hell on February 15th of this year. Here it is, September 20th, and I've just now finished it. What began as a read on my Kindle changed to the hardcover edition in July when I found it at the library. I made it to about page 100 before I had to take the book back so someone else could tear their fucking hair out. Finally, I downloaded the audio book, because MacLeod Andrews can make Cannibal Corpse lyrics sound like Catholic hymns. And whataya know? I actually finished this mother-humping book. Amen, and pass the maledictions!

Oh, how I loved the first two books in this series. The witty sarcasm, the foul-mouthed humor, action that explodes on the page... What in the name of Tom Cruise's bleached asshole happened here? Sure, Stark is just as sarcastic as ever, but the humor was like listening to an obese comedian tell his hundredth fat joke of the night. It was funny the first 99 times, but now it's just kinda sad. Doesn't he have any other material, for Cruise's sake?

Aloha From Hell drones on about religious bullshit and other godly mythos as Kadrey tries to figure out who God is and what purpose the deity will serve in his Sandman Slim urban fantasy series. As far as action is concerned, we get an anti-climactic exorcism, three or four gladius battles that seem ripped from the Sword Fighting Playbook of 1940, Stark driving a Ferrari Testarossa out of Hell and into a war with Heaven ( literally pause the audio because I was laughing so hard at the mid-life-crisis-fantasy-porn), and a finale on par with the ending of the Richard Donner's Superman. Other than that, we receive roughly two billion conversations. There's so much dialogue in this book, I though I was reading a script. And, for the most part, the cast  are not talking about anything worth a fuck. No! We get page after page of hellions whining about why Hell sucks, bad guys spouting off exposition, and good guys complaining about having to be good guys. By the time I was done with this (and I never thought I'd say this, but...), I was chomping at the bit for some of Peter Straub or Stephen King's infamous walls of text, wherein we get paragraphs that last two or three pages without a single shred of dialogue. I was actually tired of hearing people talk. More than once I thought, "Shut the fuck up and get on with the goddamn story, you mouthy pricks!"

This book is packed full of filler. It's bursting at the seams, really. I mean, for fuck's sake, it takes Stark until the 54% mark to get to Hell. The book's story doesn't even really start until halfway through the goddamn book! All the bullshit before he goes to Hell is superfluous. Wanna know how I know? Because I forgot everything that happened during the first section of the book and was not even close to lost at the end. I got the full picture, and I can't even remember the first fifty percent!

Oh, and Jack the Ripper's appearance was pointless. So very cliched and pointless. What about H. H. Holmes or Albert Fish, or someone who hasn't popped up half a trillion times in books about Hell. 

See also: Hell being a twisted version of Los Angeles... FUCKING GODDAMN SQUIRREL-MOLESTING MOTHERFUCKING CHRIST ON A TAMPAX YACHT, KADREY, SHOW SOME ORIGINALITY!

(*takes a deep breath* Sorry, about that. Now back to our regularly scheduled review)

I almost rage-quit this pile of dumpster leavings five times since February, but friends kept telling me, "The fourth book is SOOOOO worth the trouble." You guys better be right, or I'm going to burn this book and use the flames to light your pubes on fire. 

Now, with all this cussing and fussing, I bet you're asking yourself how in the name of Tom Cruise's waxed weasel hole did it garner three stars from me? Well, the answer is this: There are parts in this book that I liked quite a bit. All the emotional stuff was handled expertly, and I even teared when Alice tells Stark how she really died. I got another sentimental boner while Stark was ranting about how God was just another deadbeat dad in his life. Any scene that was designed to tug at my heartstrings worked like a bodybuilder bench pressing bags of cotton. And that's what I don't understand, Mr. Kadrey. This is urban fantasy, not literary fiction, so why the huge emphasis on emotional content here? Some of your prose herein is fucking gorgeous, but when it comes to action and plot progression, Aloha From Hell eats all the ass with pancake syrup and sprinkles on top. Had the fight sequences been up to par with the tear-jerking shit, and the dialogue edited down a couple dozen pages, I believe this would have been the best book in the series. Because, Kadrey,dude, you had some important shit to say, it's just that most of it got buried under a metric-fuck-tonne of bloated text.

In summation: I don't know if reading this volume was worth it yet, so I cannot recommend Aloha From Hell, nor can I tell you to stay the fuck away from it. I will tackle that after reading the next book in the series, which, strangely enough, is a novella. Devil in the Dollhouse (book 3.5)  comes before Devil Said Bang (Book 4), so to the Dollhouse I turn. It best not suck, Kadrey. Best not!

Three balls sucked out of five.