Customer Reviews

The Third Beast

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Someone gave me this book; it is ordinarily $0.99 on Kindle. This is one of about five books in my entire life that I started reading--and I could not go to sleep until I reached the end, which meant that I was still reading it at 2:00 AM. (And I had to go to work the next day.)

This was originally published on paper in 1995, and alas, some of its subtle social commentary is even more painfully accurate today than it was then. It won't spoil anything for me to tell you that in the first chapter or two, the protagonist is clearly disturbed by the general degradation of the society, and its return to a form of primitivism, such as the increasing focus on tattoos and body modifications, and he recounts a discussion with another faculty member about whether there might be an argument for censorship at the extremes of the media. The protagonist, being a proper liberal academic, argues of course not, while acknowledging that much of the garbage (think Jerry Springer) is provoking a degraded view of humanity. The person with whom he is arguing points out that, "Okay. You are going to have to live in a society filled with people that think this is normal."

The novel itself is, I would say, an attempt to do for zombie novels what Richard Matheson's I Am Legend did for vampire novels: take what is fundamentally a supernatural idea and recast it as science fiction, with a plausible, rationalistic explanation for what would otherwise be horror. And it does that extraordinarily well! The novel is first person, and the protagonist is a paleoanthropologist who finds the book he is writing about Homo erectus disturbingly similar to trends that he is beginning to see happening in his neighborhood near New Orleans--but he knows that this can't be happening!

This is a horror novel; there are parts that may be a bit too intense for sensitive readers.

A novel like this could defy being pegged as simply a horror story since there are elements of science fiction in it and it deals with an unspecified time in the near future. It was, however, written some years ago, before the pervasiveness of cell phones and laptop computers.

Most of the story takes place in a small town along the Mississippi River, opposite New Orleans. A series of strange, seemingly unconnected incidents in town have the Protagonist and his girlfriend perplexed. The disappearance of a child. The death of a man at the hands of a gang of youths. A report of a blood-thirsty creature living under a home. And especially, the complete indifference of the local police.

But the incidents are not isolated. They are part of a shocking regression of society; both physical devolution and moral degeneration that is occurring across the nation.

Needless to say, the author makes a very good case for firearms ownership.

Lots of action, plenty of setbacks for the protagonists. And, as in any good horror novel, enough (but not too much) gore to make you cringe.

I'd love to see Adkins pen a sequel that covers the time period near the end of the story. There's plenty of drama and plot still to be wrung from his premise.

I enjoyed The Third Beast immensely and as Clayton said in his review, once I started reading it, I had to finish reading it. Make sure you've got an afternoon or evening set aside.

Carl Stevens, a professor of paleoanthropology, takes a sabbatical to write a book about Homo Erectus, the precursor to modern man.
But Carl is in for a shock when the society around him starts to collapse. Things go from bad to worse. The phone, radio and television quit working. People are attacked on the street. Carl note that his attackers are starting to resemble Homo Erectus.
Carl goes all out. He arms himself with a shotgun, bandoleer,.45 automatic and a German Luger.
Armed to the teeth Carl must fight himself through a society descended into violent anarchy.This is a really good apocalyptic science fiction novel. I highly recommend.