A 'Did Not Finish'... 'Video Night' – Adam Cesare (Black T-Shirt Books)


If you've visited the blog this week, you've probably gathered that it hasn't been the best week for getting books read. Not a bad week for watching 'Doctor Who' but books? I've read a couple of bits but nowhere near what I wanted to. Work demands have gone and stepped up a gear, recently, while everything else isn't letting up either. It's all do-able but doesn't leave me a lot of time for reading so if a book doesn't hit the spot quickly then I'm not going to stick with it for long. More often than not it's not the book's fault, I just need something off it that perhaps it's not built for. Which leads me onto 'Video Night' and this post... Have some blurb...

Who better to repel a body-snatching alien invasion than a group of teenage horror nerds?

Billy and Tom are best friends, but each knows that at the end of the school year they'll be moving in different directions. But why not go out with a bang and throw one last video night? They can invite some girls over, order a pizza, then maybe try and fight the alien infection that's taken hold over their suburban town.

It's The Breakfast Club meets The Night of the Creeps in this slime-drenched '80s horror romp.

On paper, 'Video Night' has everything that I'm currently looking for in a horror book. A little slice of nostalgia served with a generous helping of particularly icky body horror. I don't ask for a lot and 'Video Night' gave me just what I was after, no complaints there and if this is what you're after then you could do a lot worse than give this book a go.

So far so good then but where it fell down for me was that basically, the build-up overstayed it's welcome. That's not the book's fault to be fair, reading time is at a real premium for me and I needed things to move quicker than they were. Nine times out of ten, I love a little build-up and general world building and I can see why Cesare took that approach here. The atmosphere is great, I just needed things to be happening as well and that's why I put the book down in the end.

There's a lot to recommend it though, just not for where I am at the moment. And there was enough there to make me finally order 'Clown In A Cornfield'. I'll just make sure that I'm in the right mood (and I have plenty of time to read it) when I do pick it up.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

‘The Long and Hungry Road’ – Adrian Tchaikovsky (Black Library)

Image
After not finishing ‘Witchbringer’ (not the book’s fault, I still think it could be worth your time), I thought I’d change pace a little and go for a short, sharp burst of something instead. Something that would blow a few cobwebs away and wake me up a bit :o) Now in my experience, there’s nothing shorter and sharper than a Warhammer short story so that was the direction of my reading taken care of. And as far as the focus went… I’ve read a few Warhammer tales, in my time, but I’ve never read a tale that looks at the events of the 41st Millennium through the eyes of the rapacious Tyranids. So when I saw ‘The Long and Hungry Road’ on Amazon, it pretty much chose itself. To face a Tyranid invasion is a waking nightmare. The skies darken with spores, your mind echoes with alien screeches, and countless weapon-organisms descend upon you with razor teeth and claws. How much greater would your horror be, to realise that the hive ship above thinks nothing of your fate – that it crushes you
Read more

'Mad God' (2021)

Image
It's that time again where Youtube throws me a 'Shudder' advert and I think to myself, 'I'm paying five quid a month for this, I really should watch something, lets give it a go...'   This time round, 'It' was the film 'Mad God' and the trailer was this mad batshit crazy shot of stop-motion horror that was over before I'd had a chance to get my head round it; leaving me pretty unsettled but with no clear idea just why that was... That's all I need sometimes, I was in... It's almost an hour later and, damn, that was grim, bleak and... What the hell just happened? A corroded diving bell descends amidst a ruined city and the Assassin emerges from it to explore a labyrinth of bizarre landscapes inhabited by freakish denizens. That is about all I can tell you about 'Mad God' and that's only because I had a quick look on IMDB and that was all IMDB could tell me... 'Mad God' is any number of things but it's not
Read more

‘Worms of the Earth’ – Robert E. Howard.

Image
Page Count: 27 Pages I have a copy of this on my shelf and the plan was to pick it up for a read on the way into work this morning. Well, that was the plan but I was half asleep, leaving the house, and totally forgot… No matter though, that’s what the Kindle app is for (although if I’d been a little more awake, I’d have read it off Project Gutenberg instead, you can find ‘Worms of the Earth’ Here ). 99p later and my ‘commute reading’ was secured 😉 I always seem to fall into the trap of just reading ‘Conan’ stuff whenever I fancy reading a little Howard. Not that that’s a bad thing, it’s just that there’s a lot of his other stories out there that are more than worth your time when you come across them. ‘Worms of the Earth’ is very much one of those tales but you knew that already, didn’t you? You didn’t? You should do something about that, take it from me… After witnessing one of his subjects die at the hands of Roman governor Titus Sulla, Bran Mak Morn vows vengeance on Sulla but at w
Read more