cover image Stronghold

Stronghold

Maynard Sims. Samhain, $16 trade paper (288p) ISBN 978-1-61921-350-0

Sims’s slaughterfest is a brutal revenge fantasy against the ultrarich. Debra Grant, terrified after a man breaks into her home and assaults her, prepares to move with her boyfriend from Los Angeles to Safe Haven, a new living complex on a previously uninhabited island. Real estate developer Oliver Redmond blithely completes work on Safe Haven even after several workers disappear, simply sealing up the entrance to the cave that his staff claims contains monsters. After an earth tremor rereleases the wolflike Gray Ones, tenants and guards become victims, while Redmond tries desperately to hide what is going on. Sims (The Eighth Witch) inspires terror with killings that blend raw animal savagery and an intelligent sense of planning; one victim is instantly torn to a pulp and eaten, while another is displayed with his severed head carefully placed backward on his neck. But he weakens the book by switching too often to the Gray Ones’ point of view, as the vagueness of their personalities, emotions, and relationships makes them neither understandable enough to evoke empathy nor inhuman enough to be really creepy. (July)