Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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4.0 out of 5 stars
Man-Made Monsters, October 15, 2007
I like this book because it's accessible for readers of all ages. As a teen I really enjoyed this kind of writing. Grim short stories laced with humor and paranoia developed in fantastic settings...the light at the end of Mad Marv's tunnel is invariably a train coming at you. This author would do well cultivating an audience of younger readers as the same kids Harry Potter provokes would embrace these twisted tales. I'd like to see more titles from this press. As artistry shifts from the Murdoch overrun mainstream houses to specialized, integrity motivated publishers, it's enterprises like Crypto-American Press that will ensure the continued proliferation of exceptional dark satire. Man-Made Monsters is a great way to spend the weekend, like watching consecutive episodes of Tales from the Darkside/Twilight Zone. Grab a copy, you won't regret it.
Also recommended: Night Visions anthology series
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4.0 out of 5 stars
Man-Made Monsters, July 14, 2007
Man Made Monsters is comprised of nine short stories, each depicting a tale about a monster, murderer, or brutal event. Some of these stories like Sins of the Mother include a seemingly normal person that is involved in really extraordinary events. The unexpected twist in this story is particularly good.
Other stories like the Recipes for Disaster explain a myth of a particular monster and details how one would go about creating this creature. This section is fascinating, creepy, and entertaining in itself. However, these chapters go on to describe events that occurred after characters actually tried to make this monster. Usually, the consequences are dire and more then the monster creator expected.
Man Made Monsters has a good variety of creative original stories with plots ranging from intelligent and ironic to downright gory. Many of the tales have unexpected twists at the end that keep the reader guessing until the last page or two. Other tales have somewhat expected endings and the reader often finds him or herself feeling almost like the characters have it coming after being so stupid with such a lack of forethought.
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2.0 out of 5 stars
Monsters, monsters everywhere and not a creeping shiver to be had., April 3, 2007
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.
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