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Hey Guys,
Joe here with an update on everything.

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Slenderman, Slenderman, Take This Child by Lee McGeorge

Yo guys!

It’s Joe here with my most special review for you all!

The Author of The Thing: Zero Day got in contact with me again to review his new book ‘ Slenderman, Slenderman, Take this child’.

It comes out early next year and as I received a manuscript version, I cannot wait to get my hands on a copy of the book to slide on my shelf!

Here’s a quick account of the book:

Young Jemima Collins, a young thirteen-year-old girl, is crushed when her mother dies in front of her eyes during a freak car accident.

Flying to Germany to hold a funeral for her mother, Jemima stays with her relatives and crazy Great-Uncle Tomaz, a famous horror novelist.

While staying at her relatives, Jemima finds something in the woods… A tall figure… telling her to take one of her Grandfathers books and to burn it…

Jemima, suffering with grief and frustration steals a book and returns to England, only to release a terrible fate onto her town.

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First of all a huge, huge thank you is sent to the author for sending me a manuscript copy of this book!

The author has told me that it is not the final version and that the final edition of the book will be slightly different, so things I say in this review may not be the same exact thoughts I or yourself have when reading the finished copy of this book.

While I’ve been at Uni, I’ve been poorly dabbling through books and trying to get myself into a regular reading pattern (which hasn’t seemed to have worked so far, but I’m still trying!)

Once this story arrived and once I started reading it, I couldn’t stop thinking about it. The way that the author has taken the urban myth of Slenderman and spun it into a dark, twisted, horrifying tale of manipulation, trust and murder has really changed the way I viewed the Slenderman story.

For those of you who do not know who Slenderman is here’s a quick and brief summary:

Slenderman, a tall, imposing figure who is dressed in a suit and is always surrounded by black smog, is an urban myth that started in Germany in the early 1600’s and has branched out globally after the popular and quite nerve-wrecking game ‘Slender: The Eight Pages’ that was released in 2012, since then Slenderman has become a house-hold topic that has had people talking about it for recent years.

It was rumoured to appear near parks that were situated next to forests or woods (Kind of like the German version of the Bogeyman) and tempt children into said woods to disappear without a trace.

People have blamed the Slenderman for real child disappearances, and there was also a brutal murder case founded a few years ago involving two girls who thought that Slenderman told them to kill someone. (Google the rest)

Anyways, now we know who Slenderman is, lets get back on with the review!

The story itself was a warped piece of work, yet enjoyable and so very intriguing.

I sincerely liked the way that the author can write about such a well-known story and immerse you in this new light that’s been shed on it, and make you want to believe that this is connected to the tale of Slenderman.

I enjoyed how the story was broken up, how new chapters would start with a excerpt of Great-Uncle Tomaz’s books as an intro to the chapter, which would explain certain things about Tomaz’s past or the past of other people – I liked this approach as it gave more background into the characters and the depth of the story itself become more intense and wider.

The story did creep me out at points, some points I genuinely had to stop reading take a quick breather and plough my way through it; the gritty-ness and darkened atmosphere that the author has poured into this book messes with your perception of the characters.

I remember reading sections twice because I couldn’t believe that a character could do or say such things.

The writing, to me, was very clever. It was simplistic, but yet it was very divulging and it shined on each character greatly, there was not a point where I felt the authors writing focused too much on one character.

The characters that the author created had their own individual traits and their own ‘identity’; what I mean by that is, that these characters didn’t really resemble your stereotypical main characters in a horror story.

The main young girl Jemima wasn’t a trickster who was possessed, the main cops were not heroes nor were they sincere or honest.

Each character had a light and a dark side, which was refreshing to see, rather than horror stories that have the classic ‘good’ guys and ‘evil’ villains.

My favourite character throughout this story would definitely have to have been Jemima.

Not because she’s the main focus of the book; but because her character was so complicated and so intense that it made reading the book more dark and more strange.

Jemima scared me at points honestly.

Overall, the entire book was really enjoyable and a really decent read, with dark scenes, shadowy characters and a distorted feel!

I would genuinely recommend this book to any Slenderman fan or any Horror fan, because either fan would enjoy it.

I want to, say once, again a massive thank you to the author for sending me this manuscript!

And a huge thanks to you guys, for sticking with me while I struggle my ass off at uni haha!

See you on the flip side guys!

Joe J

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Billy and the Cloneasaurus by Stephen Kozeniewski

Yo guys!

Joe here with a new review for you all!

Today I’m going to be reviewing ‘Billy and the Cloneasaurus’ by Stephen Kozeniewski.

Heres the blurb to get you intrigued:

Six billion identical clones make up the entire population of Earth, and William 790-6 (57th Iteration) is exactly like everybody else. In his one year of life he will toil in suburban mediocrity and spend as much cash as possible in order to please his corporate masters. When 790’s first birthday (and scheduled execution) finally rolls around, a freak accident spares his life.

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This book was a really good-weird-fun read!

I got this book from the author for an honest review.

This was possibly the weirdest book I’ve read and possibly will ever read, the author really does know how to make a really interesting story out of a strange concept!

After reading a-lot of his strange, irregular stories, it’s would’ve been safe to say ‘I’ve gotten used to his strange way of writing’ but this story took me by surprise.

William 790-6 is your regular every-day guy, he goes to work in Williomton (which is in Williamerica), he goes to the pub with his friends - who are also called William - and drinks olde Williame; he does everything within the rules and regulations, even when he goes to die, but yet; something happened that day which changed William 790-6’s life forever, he didn’t die - he survived his first birthday… No William's has ever done this in the history of Williams.

The story was very well written and it was so strange that I practically read every chapter twice.

I finished this book fairly quickly (apologies for late review - Uni has been draining) and I ended it with ‘what’ because of how quickly it ended.

To me the story worked well because it was a quick - get tot he point - story; this made it very enthralling and very paced due to the fact so much happened in a short space of time.

The main elements of the story that I didn’t really grasp was that it is called ‘Billy and the Cloneasaurus’ but yet we see pretty much a chapter with ‘Billy and the Cloneasaurus’, not to be a titular line concept, but I kind-of got a sense of misguidance. (I thought the story would be that the main William would create this dinosaur/clone through accidental science; slightly wrong, slightly right)

The story did make me laugh and it made me wonder, but it also made me scrunch my face up in confusion a few times - Though maybe that was what the author wanted from his audience, to figure out the weird and place it in to the wonderful.

The characters were cleverly designed. Every William was the same as every other William,  which was that they were mostly wooden characters.

By this I mean they were not rebellious, they followed each-other like sheep, they were all ‘designed’ a certain way and had the exact same traits.

But when William 790-6 came onto the scene, the authors writing really shined as it showed the dynamic change in 790-6’s character the moment he survived his first birthday, which was that he became slack to the rules and the way he allowed himself to manipulate his attitude and to manipulate his friends.

The other characters that appeared later in the book were pretty well created as-well - they had a simplistic back-story which made them mysterious and enjoyable… and I like that, I genuinely had a nice personal connection with William at some points within this book.

In all fairness, I really do like this author and this might seem like a genuine bias, I haven’t read a bad piece of work from him yet. Yes there are points in Billy and The Cloneasaurus that made me question what kind of book this was, or why the author had written that; but at the end of the book I found myself thinking how clever and witty this author was, which is pretty much why I enjoy his books as they make you question and think everything over, no other author has done that to me.

Overall - I enjoyed this book, it had a fulfilling storyline, the characters were implemented well and developed quite personally.

I urge you to read this authors work, if you don’t fancy this one then you can try one of these two books:

http://bookolio.blogspot.co.uk/2015/01/braineater-jones.html

http://bookolio.blogspot.co.uk/2015/05/the-ghoul-archipelago-by-stephen.html

As you will truly find a great author within these books of strange consequences and weird characters.

Again, thank you for sticking with me while uni steals me away from you guys.

You’re all awesome.

Thanks, see ya on the flip side guys.

Joe :)

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