REVIEW: Rich Hawkins - King Carrion - Review #2

Genre: Horror

Publisher: Sinister Horror Company

Publication Date: 17^th Sept 2016

Pages: 132

REVIEWED BY ALEX

A copy of King Carrion was sent to Confessions of a Reviewer by the publishers, Sinister Horror Company in exchange for an honest review. This is said review.

Getting back into the spirit of posting multiple reviews for the same books, Confessions gives you the second review of King Carrion by Rich Hawkins.

Tonight’s review is brought to you by Alex Kimmell:

If you’re a fan of horror fiction, chances are pretty good that you’ve read at least a couple of books about vampires and zombies. You’ve seen the movies, television shows and maybe even flipped through the overabundance of comic books out there. You are familiar with the end of the world tropes where all of us humans are scraped from the face of the Earth like so many crumbs from a plate of chocolate chip cookies. As the saying goes, there is nothing new under the sun, or even the moon.

However, there are a certain, special few who divert from these well-worn, shadowed paths just enough to impress new footprints in the muddy diversion of a fresh trail.

Rich Hawkins is one such tour guide on the terrifying journey through his new book, King Carrion. Relentless in pace, the nightmare begins on page one and refuses to let up until the final sentence. Small town horror yarns with demonic hordes descending over the population have obviously been spun before. But with his unique vision angling a finely focused lens through the devastating and often heart-breaking circumstance, Hawkins commands your attention with never ceasing action.

Personally, I have grown weary with the tsunami of hangers on riding the coattails of The Walking Dead, World War Z and other Hollywood-ized apocalyptic fictions. The majority of genre books lately are regurgitations of the same trope patterns. Reading King Carrion has given me hope that there are still new stories to tell if the authors are brave enough.

Being an avid reader of horror fiction, out of habit I took the book to bed with me for some night reading. Big mistake. Not many things frighten me to the point of losing sleep. King Carrion crawled down the stairs with me in the middle of the night, peered over my shoulder in the bathroom mirror and traced its icy fingers up and down my spine. Every shadow hid dagger teeth, fire red eyes and ancient tattered bandages.

Unlike what I expected, this is an extremely atypical vampire legend. Hawkins’ creatures are not romanticized in any way, shape or form. King Carrion is a uniquely crafted monster who is brutal in physical violence in amounts equal to his emotional depredation. Sifting through the gory blood and viscera, there is a vast amount of heart in this story. Love plays perhaps the largest role in its cast, heartbreak painting agonizing strokes across the canvass of our protagonist’s journey. We eagerly follow him from the beginning, wholly understanding his skilfully implied history. At once distant and intimate, we know the story without needing details fogged over by the past.

Once the real meat of the book is chewed, that emotional context is not simply washed down by the gore and removed from the plate. Every morsel is flavored by it. It is the underlying taste of every swallow. The entire meal is elevated to a new level. The violence is made all the more brutal. The inhumanity more depraved. After all, if there is no emotional investment, why bother to continue reading something so powerfully unnerving?

This is my first reading of a book by Mr. Hawkins and it will most certainly not be the last. Fortunately, he has several others available and I eagerly anticipate what lies between their covers. If anything is similar to King Carrion, I know I’ll have to prepare myself for the brutal rides ahead of me.

If you are looking for something to keep you hiding under the covers with all the lights on, a book with familiar monsters made fresh and new, a story that will make your heart race as well as break, King Carrion is a great read. He may not be a name you have heard mentioned much, but don’t be surprised if Rich Hawkins starts becoming all too familiar very soon.

General rating:

★★★★★

Reviewed by Alex Kimmell

If you would like to help support Confessions of a Reviewer, then please consider using the links below to buy King Carrion or any other books from Rich. This not only supports me but also lets me know how many people actually like to buy books after reading my reviews.

Thanks.

Amazon US

Amazon UK

Book Synopsis:

In a town in southern England, people are going missing.

Mason, a homeless ex-con, arrives in the town to beg his wife for a second chance and atone for past mistakes.

A vampire god once worshipped by ancient Britons has awoken from hibernation and plans to turn Great Britain into a vampire isle. But first, people of the town must be converted, and the gospel spread.

Within a week, the town is quarantined by the military, and the nights belong to the undead.

There will be no escape for the survivors.

CONFESSIONS REVIEWS RICH HAWKINS

Fallen Soldier

Scavengers

Rich Hawkins hails from deep in the West Country, where a childhood of science fiction and horror films set him on the path to writing his own stories. He credits his love of horror and all things weird to his first viewing of John Carpenter's THE THING. His debut novel THE LAST PLAGUE was nominated for a British Fantasy Award for Best Horror Novel in 2015. The sequel, THE LAST OUTPOST, was released in the autumn of 2015.

The final novel in the trilogy, THE LAST SOLDIER, was released in March 2016.

And for more about Rich, visit his site or find him on social media:

Website – Facebook – Twitter – Goodreads - Amazon Page

REVIEW: Rich Hawkins - King Carrion

Genre: Horror

Publisher: Sinister Horror Company

Publication Date: 17^th Sept 2016

Pages: 132

REVIEWED BY CHAD

A copy of King Carrion was sent to Confessions of a Reviewer by the publishers, Sinister Horror Company in exchange for an honest review. This is said review.

As a child of the eighties, I was born and raised on what I consider to be one of the golden ages of horror fiction. Franchises were born here, franchises that, to this day we find ourselves unable to escape from. And while there are any number of instances where we, as a culture have lost our way, there is one specific area which I particularly lament where we seem to have gone wrong.

I speak specifically of vampires.

A lot of this is likely going to seem directed at Twilightand to be sure, much of it for me came from that particular franchise. If that’s your thing, all the power to you but for me, it was way too far of a stone’s throw from the classic films I grew up with. Vampires used to be cool, they were dangerous and gritty. Vampires were a force to be reckoned with in the fictional landscape.

Then things began to change and it was almost like vampires started to become too precious. The intensity of the genre seemed to lessen and with the exception of a few standout films, vampire fiction seemed to become very bland and for a long time now, I have been waiting for a beam of light to show us the way through this long vampiric nightmare we seem to exist within.

Enter King Carrion, by Rich Hawkins, stage left.

The story of the book is to the point and efficient. The main character, Mason, is returning to his home town after an incarceration to try and beg himself back into the life of his ex-wife, trying to atone for his crime. He quickly discovers that something is wrong. An ancient vampire God has descended on the town, intent on making Great Britain his own.

This.

This is what I have been missing for all this time. These are the vampires I grew up with, this is the horror genre I grew up with. It was a breath of fresh air in a world of emotionally available vampires. These vampires hit hard and fast, with just the right amount of gore that I have come to expect.

The book is paced quite well and for me, King Carrionoften has the feel of Salem’s Lot, if it were to be clarified down to its essential base self. Hawkins wastes no time taking the reader straight into the heart of the story and uses a ton of great description to plunge us into this beautifully bleak environment.

The quality of the writing here is top rate. Hawkins’ aptitude for physical description comes through clearly in this book and the action of the story does a great job moving things along. There was no point where I felt things were dragging and pretty much throughout the book, I didn’t want to put it down. This is one that I definitely could have taken down in one reading if the time had been there. His characters feel genuine and their struggles seem real. He does a good job making their situation sympathetic very quickly.

Hawkins also does what I think is essential to any proper monster story in that he takes the essence of the vampires but also adds some personal twists of his own. It felt like he paid tribute to the legacy of the monster while also putting something out there that was uniquely his.

If I had any gripe about the story, it would be a minor one and to be fair, this is a hard bridge to cross for any author and there are just some times when it works better than others. But for me it was the point in the story where, after having his first encounter with the vampires, Mason decides to return to the scene to investigate. For me, I always find myself in horror movies and books asking why the character is bothering at all when I would probably be trying to get the hell out of there. Why go back? So in the context of this book, I think I would have liked it if that decision had been a little more fleshed out so that his motivations were a little clearer. As I said though, very minor issue for me.

I don’t know if Hawkins has any plans for a follow-up to this book but if there is a chance, I would definitely be on the lookout for it as I believe there could be more story to tell here.

For anyone out there who is of a similar disposition to me, who loves their horror delivered with some grit and some bleakness to it, this book would be an excellent choice for you. And maybe, with small steps like this, we can start to bring ourselves back into the light and away from the sanitized versions of these great fictional characters we have today.

Say it with me.

Vampires can be cool again.

General rating:

★★★★★

Reviewed by Chad Clark

If you would like to help support Confessions of a Reviewer, then please consider using the links below to buy King Carrion or any other books from Rich. This not only supports me but also lets me know how many people actually like to buy books after reading my reviews.

Thanks.

Amazon US

Amazon UK

Book Synopsis:

In a town in southern England, people are going missing.

Mason, a homeless ex-con, arrives in the town to beg his wife for a second chance and atone for past mistakes.

A vampire god once worshipped by ancient Britons has awoken from hibernation and plans to turn Great Britain into a vampire isle. But first, people of the town must be converted, and the gospel spread.

Within a week, the town is quarantined by the military, and the nights belong to the undead.

There will be no escape for the survivors.

CONFESSIONS REVIEWS RICH HAWKINS

Fallen Soldier

Scavengers

Rich Hawkins hails from deep in the West Country, where a childhood of science fiction and horror films set him on the path to writing his own stories. He credits his love of horror and all things weird to his first viewing of John Carpenter's THE THING. His debut novel THE LAST PLAGUE was nominated for a British Fantasy Award for Best Horror Novel in 2015. The sequel, THE LAST OUTPOST, was released in the autumn of 2015.

The final novel in the trilogy, THE LAST SOLDIER, was released in March 2016.

And for more about Rich, visit his site or find him on social media:

Website – Facebook – Twitter – Goodreads - Amazon Page

REVIEW: Rich Hawkins - Scavengers

Genre: Horror

Publisher: Self Published

Publication Date: 24^th July 2016

Pages: 85

REVIEWED BY NEV

A copy of Scavengerswas sent to Confessions of a Reviewer by the author, Rich Hawkins, in exchange for an honest review. This is said review. This book is self-published.

So after my recent confession a couple of months ago that I had never read anything by Rich Hawkins, here I am again, reviewing something by Rich Hawkins! To be honest, when this one landed on my lap it was a no brainer. I have some of Rich’s earlier stuff still to read but thought that now I have started, I have to keep up to date with the new stuff.

I had seen this one being promoted around the social media sites but had no idea what it was about. I didn’t even read the synopsis before I picked it up. I opened it to read the opening couple of chapters just to see what it was like. I ended up staying up late into the night. Was that for a good or bad reason?

Let’s find out.

Ray and Shell are married. They are about to embark on a week long holiday to Devon with Shell’s bosses, Tim and Jules and their young daughter Molly. Shell can’t wait. It looks like this could be something to do with the long awaited promotion she has been chasing. Ray is dreading it. He has only met Tim and Jules once before but can’t remember much about them. This is not his idea of fun.

On the journey to Tim and Jules’ holiday home they come across a car abandoned in the middle of a country road. When Tim and Ray go to investigate, they come across the children. The children live in the woods. They have escaped, and they want to have some fun.

These are not the type of children who want to play tag!

You have more or less been introduced to the characters in the synopsis. Ray and Shell seem like a typical couple. Married and chugging along nicely. Ray could be more successful at his writing and Shell is hoping for bigger and better things in her career. They seem happy enough but this holiday is putting a strain on things. Tim and Jules seem to be nice enough. They are doing this to reward Shell for her hard work. They really don’t hit it off that well with Ray. They seem to cast scorn on his chosen career and he seems to resent the fact that they are successful.

The other characters in this one are people I cannot tell you about for fear of giving away the story. You know there are children involved. You know they are not very nice. Where they came from and how they developed is something that you just need to read about. Suffice to say that the adults in their lives are a mixture of misguided individuals and an overzealous leader that also has misguided beliefs and intentions. This is a great mix for something purely evil.

You have probably picked up on the plot as well. People going on holiday come across an abandoned car, something comes out of the woods, people from the car need to run away very, very fast. That is a very simplistic way of putting it but you get the general idea.

There are a couple of things that make this different from the normal sort of story you would read with this plot scenario. The first one is the location. This isn’t set in some remote back-end-of-nowhere hillbilly town in the middle of nowheresville, America. This is set in scenic Devon, England. A place where many of us go to on our holidays. A place with some of the nicest ice cream in the world. An idyllic part of the country that thousands travel to every year for rest and relaxation, not to come across one of the most horrific situations they are ever likely to witness.

The second is the reason for the horror. Now, I obviously cannot go into this for fear of spoiling things again, but it is not your normal run of the mill clan of inbreds, living undisturbed in the woods for centuries. There is a definite reason for the children being how they are. It is both very frightening and very sad at the same time. Believable? I think it surely is, the way Rich Hawkins has written this story.

There is no huge backdrop to what exactly happened. No prolonged passages describing the run up to the main event in the story. It doesn’t need it. In a few pages you know exactly what is happening and get a true sense of the problems our character’s face, and the horror that has been unleashed. Again, misguided beliefs often produce the opposite effect than was intended.

Rich Hawkins is a genius. I don’t think I can put it any other way. I have now put in place a strict regime of self-flagellation for failing to pick his stuff up before this. I am disgusted and ashamed of myself.

His writing is so easy that you can’t help but fall into the rhythm of the story from the first couple of pages. You feel a part of the story almost immediately. I have been trying to figure out who his style reminds me of. There are a few American authors that I could say he writes like. This story certainly has more of an American feel to it than something that is happening in England. I don’t make this comparison very often but the ease of which he guides you into the story and keeps you hooked, no matter what happens, reminds me a lot of the early writing of James Herbert. He takes what looks like a totally innocent scenario and completely flips it on its head and by the time you have finished reading it, you are knackered.

One other thing that I must quickly mention as well. Rich Hawkins is the master of cliff hangers in this book. You flip a page and think, ha I have come to the end of this chapter and that is good because the wife is shouting at me for reading so long. Then you read the very last sentence of that chapter. You have no choice. You must turn the page! Whatever the wife wants can wait!

To summarise: this is a story that is both scary and hugely enjoyable at the same time. It has horror and fear and tension and monsters of the human kind and an evil that knows no bounds. It has blood and guts and plenty of reading-with-one-eye-closed moments. This, my friends, is how to write.

General rating:

★★★★★ couldn't be any less.

Horror rating:

★★★★★ nor could this.

If you would like to help support Confessions of a Reviewer, then please consider using the links below to buy Scavengers or any other books from Rich. This not only supports me but also lets me know how many people actually like to buy books after reading my reviews.

Thanks.

Amazon US

Amazon UK

Book Synopsis:

The children play in the woods. The children hunt in the woods.

They kill in the woods.

When Ray and his wife join another couple for a week in the countryside, they expect nothing more than a few days of relaxation, fine drink and good food. Instead they discover a terrible secret that threatens to destroy them all.

They will run and hide - and fight if they have to - but the fields will be covered in blood and screams will echo through the trees.

The SCAVENGERS are here.

A visceral, non-stop tale of horror from British Fantasy Award-nominated author Rich Hawkins.

CONFESSIONS REVIEWS RICH HAWKINS

Fallen Soldier

Rich Hawkins hails from deep in the West Country, where a childhood of science fiction and horror films set him on the path to writing his own stories. He credits his love of horror and all things weird to his first viewing of John Carpenter's THE THING. His debut novel THE LAST PLAGUE was nominated for a British Fantasy Award for Best Horror Novel in 2015. The sequel, THE LAST OUTPOST, was released in the autumn of 2015.

The final novel in the trilogy, THE LAST SOLDIER, was released in March 2016.

And for more about Rich, visit his site or find him on social media:

Website – Facebook – Twitter – Goodreads – Amazon Page

REVIEW: Rich Hawkins - Fallen Soldier

Genre: Horror

Publisher: Self Published

Publication Date: 3^rd June 2016

Pages: 21

MY REVIEW:

A copy of the Fallen Soldier was sent to Confessions of a Reviewer by the author, Rich Hawkins, in exchange for an honest review. This is said review. This book is self-published.

OK so it’s time for the boss man of Confessions to confess!

I have never read Rich Hawkins before. I know. I am ashamed and have suitably punished myself by not allowing myself any cake for thirty minutes. It was tough, but I did it.

Funny, we had a discussion about this when Rich said on Facebook he feels awkward approaching reviewers to pick his stuff up. I made the comment that some of us are so busy we can’t read for our own selfish pleasure because we get so many submissions. That is the reason I have never read Rich before. So he asked about Fallen Soldier and I was now obliged to read him.

This is what I thought.

Joseph has just returned from the trenches in France. His life has been totally changed forever from what he has seen, and had to endure.

When he returns home, he is startled by his father’s appearance and even more worried by the absence of his mother. When he finally sees her, he soon discovers that the horrors he witnessed during the Great War are nothing compared to the horrors in his father’s cellar.

Characters wise is a simple one in this one. You have Joseph, his father, his mother and a, well, thing. Joseph is a lost soul. He is so traumatised from the war that he has virtually given up. In today’s world he would probably be diagnosed as a manic depressive with PTSD. His father is equally as traumatised and the reasons for that soon become clear. His mother has undergone a complete transformation. And the thing? Eugh.

The plot is simple. Joseph comes home from the war, his mother has been attacked by something and changed. He wants revenge. Thus starts a chase against time for Joseph to find a beast and destroy it before it attacks again.

Been done before I hear you say? Well, yes it probably has been done before in a few novels you have read. Do you think it can be done in a twenty-one-page short story though, and still be effective? If you write like Rich Hawkins, then yes it can sir.

I often say that short stories are a perfect way to introduce yourself to a new writer. If you are stupid enough, like me, never to have read Rich Hawkins before then pick this up. I don’t think you will be stupid for very long and, like me, will be picking up more of his stuff very quickly.

The writing style in this is superb. Perfect short story writing. Full of short, punchy sentences that get you to the point extremely effectively without dragging out information and back story that you don’t need to know. Within two pages you know everything you need to about Joseph. You know his character and his history and how the war has affected him. You can empathise and sympathise with him in no time. I know some books that I have read that take two hundred pages to achieve the same thing.

You know what is going to happen. You know how it is going to happen but Mr Hawkins’ writing style builds the tension, and the horror, perfectly. You know the direction you’re going, you just don’t know what route you are taking and that makes it scarier. You know when you smack a spider with a paper but you aren’t sure if it’s dead or not? This is how you will feel reading Fallen Soldier. You know the way sometimes if you are a passenger in a car you feel yourself pressing on the brake for the driver? This short story will have your legs moving because you want to run away. Very fast.

Sometimes when I read a short story of twenty pages or so I panic and think how can I write a six-hundred-word review on that? This word is number seven hundred. That should tell you how good this story is.

To summarise: do yourself a favour and just buy it. If you have read him before you know what to expect. If you haven’t read him before, I guarantee you will read more now.

General rating:

★★★★★ crackin stuff.

Horror rating:

★★★★★ scary as owt.

If you would like to help support Confessions of a Reviewer, then please consider using the links below to buy Fallen Soldier or any other books from Rich. This not only supports me but also lets me know how many people actually like to buy books after reading my reviews.

Thanks.

Amazon US

Amazon UK

Book Synopsis:

Joseph Hobbs returns from the battlefields of the Great War to find his family home in disrepair and his mother transformed into a bloodthirsty monster. Wanting revenge, he has no choice but to venture into the nearby woods to find the creature that infected her. But will he survive an encounter with such an evil creature? And if he does, will it be at the cost of his humanity?

"A chillingly bleak tale." - Daniel Marc Chant, author or Mr. Robespierre.

Rich Hawkins hails from deep in the West Country, where a childhood of science fiction and horror films set him on the path to writing his own stories. He credits his love of horror and all things weird to his first viewing of John Carpenter's THE THING. His debut novel THE LAST PLAGUE was nominated for a British Fantasy Award for Best Horror Novel in 2015. The sequel, THE LAST OUTPOST, was released in the autumn of 2015.

The final novel in the trilogy, THE LAST SOLDIER, was released in March 2016.

And for more about Rich, visit his site or find him on social media:

Website – Facebook – Twitter – Goodreads – Amazon Page