Customer Reviews

The Unnatural

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

 

 

In Los Angeles, the woman barely survived the assault that apparently relates to sewage based on the gook on her when she suddenly screams in horror and dies in the emergency room. As a counselor for battered women, psychiatrist Dr. Julie Charmaine wants to know what was so terrorizing that the woman relived it in her dreams and dropped dead on the replay. While Julie wonders what happened, Vicki Zambisi, who has had several operations to repair her deformed skull, breaks into a boarded-up hotel to retrieve a memento that might disclose the secret illegal experiments conducted by the highly regarded mad cryogenic research scientist Dr. Wesley Kovacs. She is fortunate to elude the sewage slasher.

Vicki meets Julie who has a device that creates visual images of what people are dreaming about that she would like to use on her. Vicki has doubts, but soon other women undergo the horrible assaults in the old abandoned hotel. Could Dr. Kovacs be the killer or is it something sinister beyond what the two women and a LAPD detective can imagine?

This is an exciting slasher medical thriller that is fun to read sort of like a Roger Corman movie. The story line combines the serial killer with a science fiction cautionary tale about the boundaries of medicine. Julie is a delightful, brilliant and energetic heroine while much of the rest of the cast either are victims or enable the audience to understand the protagonist better. Alan Nayes provides readers with an enjoyable tale that hooks the reader from the first page and keeps their interest until all the questions are answered.
Harriet Klausner

Nayes has a knack of writing books involving weird human experiments. I guess that stands to reason since he is an MD. Don't know if I'd want him to be my doc, but I certainly enjoy his books. The Unnatural has a similar feel to Relic by Preston and Child. A "monster" emerging from the sewers, ripping people apart, a weird smell, and so on. The identity of the killer is not really kept hidden through the book, so there is no surprise there. Even the nature of the killer is not really hidden, so the "spoiler" on one of the other reviews isn't even that much of a shock. But be forewarned, there are some - yes - stomach turning twists in store for the reader that makes it to the end. Of the two books of Nayes that I have read, Gargoyles and the Unnatural, I think I enjoyed this one the best. The plot is complicated. The science in it is almost far reaching enough to be ridiculous, yet has enough fact in it to be plausible. I can almost see this book becoming a series featuring further adventures of Julie, the main character.

A page turner. I myself am in the medical field and loved every minute of this thriller. It has been years since I read it so I only remember the feel of it and how anxious I was at the time for Nayes to write more of the same. At that time he had only two books out. This book is far underrated. Thumbs Up!

If I could give half stars, this one would be a 3.5. I'm rating up because I did enjoy the plot line.

Mr. Nayes did a great job with his writing style on this book. The knowledge that he showed in his writing was excellent, but for me it was personally over my head. I found myself skipping through a lot of the technical and medical references.

I did enjoy the storyline - and thought it was very creative. The characters were good - and there was enough depth to give some good insight on them and make them appealing.

Someone who is very much into medical mystery's, enjoys and understands the medical references made in this book would probably find this a 5 star book.

I do enjoy Mr. Nayes stories and will continue to read them as they are released.

I came across this book at the library. I thought it was a type of medical, sci-fi book. It was not! Spoilers........







Women are being attacked and the police thinks it's someone that's living in the sewer. More like something living in the sewer. Vicki, one of the main characters, works with a crazy doctor that likes to experiment. She helps him with one of his experiments. Ben. She becomes Bens friend, She helps him read and after time they fall in love. Awwwww. They start having sex on a regular basis, while Dr. What-ever-his-name films it. After a short time something happens to Ben and Vicki leaves. She comes back 20 years later to get Ben's body, I guess to bury it, I don't know. If I didn't mention it, When Vicki Returns after 20 years that's when the attacks start. Of course you find out that Ben has been committing the crimes. They eventualy kill him. I read this book feeling sorry for Ben and Vicki.
At least until you realise Ben is a monkey. You read right, a MONKEY, or more accurately an orangutan. I can't even begin to descrbe how revolted I was. The author even described the first time they were intimate. Nice huh. What the author should have done was give the readers a heads-up and let I us Know he was righting a book about beastility, that way anyone who doesn't want to read, or even bring it into their homes can leave it on the shelf!