On the surface Man-Made Monsters by Mad Marv is a terrifying collection of short stories with a horror/conspiracy theme. It has all of the elements fans of the genre would expect: blood, guts, and utter mayhem. It’s funny at times and positively frightening at others. One thing that separates this book from the herd is the sense that the words on the page are real. The reader is given an exclusive view of sickening events that seem like they’ve really happened. As the stories unfold, the eerie feeling builds into full-blown fear. The title says it all. The five main stories have a common thread: Monsters are real and they are created by man’s hand. Science and technology running amok have negative consequences. In Mad Marv’s world, genetically engineered beasts stalk the city streets, remote-controlled zombie armies threaten to devour, and super-viral strains turn people into disfigured bloodsuckers. Men can be brought back from the grave and women can be programmed to kill. The unsettling part of all this is that Mad Marv’s world is ours, too. Contributing to what makes this book so devilishly fun are the chapters called Recipe for Disaster. These vignettes, sprinkled throughout the book, give recipes for monster making at home. For anyone who has ever wanted to create a golem or incubate a homunculus, the instructions are here. These recipes are detailed and backed by historic precedence, while offering contemporary cautionary tales. Alchemy gave birth to science. The magicians of the Renaissance are no different from the pharmaceutical companies of today. Mad Marv’s writing style is punchy and to the point. Like a knife in the back, he assaults the reader. He doesn’t bore you with lengthy descriptions of weather or setting, but he might make you puke with the details of brains splattering on a wall. While he’s not verbose, he does manage to weave intricate tales. His stories are full of plot twists and bone-jarring revelations. There is a decided anti-establishment tone to his writing. Throughout this book he challenges the scientific community and the military/industrial complex. Man-Made Monsters is everything horror fans could want. The stories are violently disturbing yet have a sarcastically amusing undertone—somewhat like watching clowns being decapitated. Most of all it’s a compelling series of stories that entertains throughout and gives the reader something to think about.
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2.0 out of 5 stars
Monsters, monsters everywhere and not a creeping shiver to be had.,
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This review is from: Man-Made Monsters (Paperback)
With a little history, a little folklore and a lot of imagination, Mad Marv compiled a list of stories and man made monsters to shock and amaze. He thoughtfully includes a few recipes, spells, and tips for making some of the more fantastic and recognizable monsters, but that is where the appeal stalls.In "Overtime," John wakes up on a slab as he is about to be reamed by a mortician bent on a little last minute necrophilia. He kills the mortician, steals his clothes and hides inside a white coffin that is taken to a viewing room where his wife, his friends and family, and his enemy, Craig, who also works for the same newspaper, file by to view his body, each with a parting comment. After the funeral, John sets out to solve his own murder, aided by the man who successfully brought him back from the dead for a few short hours. The premise is fascinating and whets the appetite, but the fare is bland, a cardboard entrée with little taste and no believability. Mad Marv includes four recipes for disaster. The disasters are golems, homunculi, manikins, and zombies and each is based on folklore and fantastical histories that leave little to the imagination. These bright flashes in the darkness are seasoned with a bit of humor that falls flat. The "Sins of the Mother" is a singularly boring tale that is unbelievable and heavy-handed on the subject of abortion. The characters are flat and without one single redeeming feature. The characters' motivations are either nonexistent or tacked as an after thought and provide little grounding or sense of reality, even for schizophrenics, serial killers, and preaching mad men who wear aluminum hats and survive burning buildings intact. Of all the characters in the book, the least appetizing is "The Hypno-Chondriac," a singular waste of time and ink in a story of futility and drugs and phantasm that wanders off into the woods, never to be heard from again. This is followed by "Narcolepsy," which has less to do with the disease and more to do with another rage-fueled romp, this time into the seamier side of the drug trade, complete with South American drug lords and expatriate doctors who play fast and loose with human lives and technology in the name of science and power. The retired Special Forces father, who couldn't deal with his son and sent him to military school to make something of himself, is a stereotypical martinet who suddenly finds his heart and love for his wayward son, only to give him up to be reanimated, in order to make him a good soldier who follows orders without question and never complains. Fatherly love is less important to the retired master sergeant than a career as commander-in-chief of a zombie army that puts him back into the action. The last item on this horrific menu is "Mosquito," about a young man from the Midwest brought up on a farm who wants to make a difference in the world. Larry finds his idealism put to the test on an isolated, near prehistoric island spat up by a volcano. This time the black operations side of a worldwide organization patterned after the Peace Corps wants control of a deadly virus that kills indiscriminately and instantaneously. In every story there is a glimmer of terror and a slick horrific feel that quickly succumbs to one-dimensional characters who spout tired bromides in melodramatic fashion. The characters lack depth and reality and the narrator's voice is an ever present whine that over shadows what could have been a good collection of tales for a cold, dark night by a camp fire.
3.0 out of 5 stars
New Small Horror Press,
By
This review is from: Man-Made Monsters (Paperback)
This book is weird. Interesting. Informative.The ideas behind the stories are fantastic. Great action-horror stuff. Neat ideas concerning conspiracy and science and the terrible concoctions made by the marriage of the two. The writing takes some getting used to. These stories aren't written in a mass-market, standard storyline style. It almost seems like the writer was thinking of telling them around a campfire. There is little or no character development, like in campfire stories. The action happens rapidly, with the setting changing sometimes from paragraph to paragraph. Once I got past the unusual style, I enjoyed the book. The main reason I bought the book from is because this is the first work from a brand new small horror publisher. We must support those folks. Buy Man Made Monsters and give it a shot. You'll definitely enjoy the Recipes for Disaster, smaller pieces in between the stories, which detail monster making throughout history (golems and such), along with a short fiction piece concerning the monster. The writing is at its best here, and the humor as well.
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