Customer Reviews

Slab

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The Slab is the freshest thing I've read in years. With a touch of the subtlety of F.Paul Wilson, some of the strangeness of Dean Koontz, Jeff Mariotte has captured the minds and actions of "real feel" people in a not so normal situation.

Staged in Salton Sea California, this book gives the reader the real feel of this desert isolation and it's quirky residents. Combining a mix of characters that includes a greedy real estate broker, a socially inept but morally strong sheriff, his corrupt deputy, and a cast of outcast characters that mix so well together that the reader feels right at home inside the heads of most of them. The book is a trip!

Written with a supernatural undertone, the pieces of this puzzle flow so well together that as I read, I was not at all disappointed with the prospect of this excellent suspense thriller ending with "more than human" powers being exerted. What starts as a thriller, ends with a supernatural event.

If you like F Paul Wilson you will love The Slab. I did!

The Slab gives Jeff Marriotte' Desperado and Angel, etc., fans a chance to see what he can do when writing prose in a universe of his own creation. There's a lot going on in this book -- some good, some evil, most weird and magical. A young woman is on the run from a group of twisted hunters. People living in the middle of nowhere are in danger of losing their homes, their lives, and maybe the rest of humanity along with them. The great artwork complements Marriotte's descriptives nicely.

I've been a fan of Jeff's DESPERADOES series and always like Tommy's art so it's no surprise this combination works so well. Three thumbs up!

Veteran author gives us a mash-up of a monster novel, a serial killer book, a creepy rednecks story and a murder mystery all in one, set in the surreal envrionment of the Salton Sea and the desert. Interesting characters, lots of tension and a solid, creepy resolution. Well done.

I absolutely LOVED this story! It was one of those on the edge of your chair, locking your doors and windows at night type of reads!! Reading this book has made me definitly want to read more from the author. And I will never be able to think about "Dove Hunting" in the same way again! If you want to know what I'm talking about you HAVE to get this book!! This is a must read for all horror/thriller lovers :)

I came across Jeff Mariotte in the "Meet our Authors" forum here on Amazon. One of his blurbs caught my interest and The Slab was on sale so I bought it. That was 48 hours ago and I am done. (Two work days, might I add, so I could only read on my lunch hour and at night). I just could not put the book down. His writing style is relatively terse and his characters are well written, both of which contribute to the fast pace. I found myself really rooting for some of the characters and downright hating others...to me this indicates good writing. This was a roaringly good read and I will searching for more of the same. My only complaint is I wish it could've been longer.
Thanks Mr. Mariotte!!

This was an interesting plot to begin with. An ancient evil diety trapped in a cave. The different individual storylines keeps the reader absorbed.I recommend the story and would read it again.

If you are tired of the same old thing and want to try something new, pick up The Slab. I truly enjoyed the characterization and scene-setting, and was lost in the story, racing through to find out how it would all come together.

I love intertwining plots. I love great female characters, as well as male characters! There were certain scenes where the intended victim of serial rapists/murderers fought back, where I felt like I was on the edge of my seat watching a well-done movie.

There are a lot of great characters to root for in this book, but no perfect people. Everyone is a shade of gray, out on the Slab.

There's just SO much to love about this book. I wrote a lot more about it on Goodreads, but between that site and this one, I still don't think I've done it justice. I would say that if you like The Stand by Stephen King, you should read The Slab. It will fill you with that same satisfying feeling of watching several intense threads come together.

Here's what I posted to Goodreads about it:

There is so much going on in this book besides just this, though. The first thing that truly struck me was how awesome it was to have not one, but two female characters that were young, capable, and confident in their survival skills. You truly are rooting for Lucy & Penny in their respective storylines, and they're not treated like token females. I found their reactions to situations very realistic, and Lucy, in particularly, was inspiring. I was excited to see how she would escape from captivity and relished her individual "wins."

Having said that, The Slab is a book about good and evil, and there are no Luke Skywalkers or Princess Leias anywhere to be found. Most of the characters were neither totally good nor totally bad. The further they swung to "the dark side," the more they were corrupted, naturally, but there were no saints in this book, either, and that was lovely. It made the characters so real.

I was intrigued upon reading the final pages & doing a little googling, that The Slab is based on a location also heavily depicted in the movie Into the Wild. I'd seen Jeff's Slab photos on his website, but hadn't made that connection, until I visited SlabCity's website. I'd already recognized the location mentally, so finding confirmation of that online is a testament to Jeff's scene-setting, as well.

If you lived through the aftermath of 9/11, you'll recognize the tense confusion of the period immediately following. If you've loved someone with Alzheimer's, you'll appreciate the full-fledged characterization of someone dealing with its limitations on a day-to-day basis. If you've ever lost a loved one and grieved deeply, and if you've ever had a change of heart about what's right and what's wrong, this book will hit you where you live--and take you on a thrill ride through space and time (and a cave filled with man-eating mushrooms), each in good time.

It was a little slow for me to get into in the beginning, due to the number of different characters. That's just the nature of a story like this, though. I personally like stories like this--not unlike The Stand, but with a much more compact pace. Ultimately, this a wild fantasy thriller with horror as its middle name, in my opinion. And it's totally worth the read. Give it a download and tell me what you thought.

Overall, The Slab appealed to me on multiple levels.

First of course, is the fact that I would consider this a supernatural thriller, something which is right/write up my alley (see what I did there?). There are also elements of literary suspense in the story of the men gathered for their annual "dove hunt," a plotline which has echoes from several similar stories (The Most Dangerous Game and Deathwatch come to mind, the latter which was also set in the desert), but Marriotte definitely makes it his own.

[However, similar to what I hope to do with my longer fiction, there is more than just brain candy genre storytelling (not that there's anything wrong with that) in this book. There are bigger questions addressed in this novel, questions revolving around the setting. But more on that shortly.]

Also, Marriotte introduces the reader to a fair amount of seemingly unrelated characters (or at best peripherally related) early on, dedicating separate sections to their point of view, and successfully weaving them together without losing the reader. This is something that has always impressed me with storytelling in general, and I was pleased to see Marriote pull it off.

Speaking of this interesting cast of characters, something else that appealed to me is the idea of a community living off the grid in The Middle of Nowhere, California (more specifically, not far from the Salton Sea) in something of a self-chosen shanty town of campers and RV's in various states of splendor or sorrow (seemingly more of the latter). As someone who bought a slide-in camper for my truck many moons ago and sold off everything that wouldn't fit inside, I can understand the draw to this simpler, less consumer driven lifestyle.

But these aren't just a bunch of hippies. What kind of horror novel would that be? And I believe most horror writers have a good bit of paranoia and suspicion of anyone keeping tabs on us, so the desire of many of the The Slab residents to exist "off the grid," self-reliant (and as untraceable by any government agencies as possible) also has a certain allure.

There is also the fact that the novel takes place during the tense time in our country following 9/11/2001. And on this one, let me say that Jeff Marriotte has some cajones. He makes some statements in this book which was published just two short years after said event which still would not be very popular today. And while he does toe the line and do his best at presenting the more mainstream opinions of the time as fairly as possible, I don't believe you have to know Jeff's politics to figure out which way he leans.

However, I was admittedly already familiar with some of Jeff's ideologies before picking up The Slab, so perhaps I was reading into it a little more than I should have. Thoughts? I would love to know if anyone else picked up on this.
If I'm not imagining these undertones, and if they came through loud and clear to other readers, I think this would be the only detriment of the book. It wasn't for me, as I agree with many of the statements made by both the sheriff's office lieutenant, Ken Butler, and activist, Penny (two of the three aforementioned veterans), but I could see how some people might get their hackles up.

Otherwise, with the exception of a couple of nitpicky plot points that I struggled a little with (but which didn't detract significantly from my enjoyment and which I won't go into here unless requested in the comments section), I found The Slab to be an entertaining, thought-provoking and gripping read.

p.s.- You'll just have to read it to find out about the mushrooms.