THEM by James Watts
Publisher: Hellbound Books
Published: March 9, 2018
Pages: 290
Synopsis:
Ray Sanders returns home from Florida to bury his mother. Soon, the supernatural evidence behind his mother’s demise begins to surface in the form of dreams and mysterious happenings. During all of the madness, Sanders must face his destiny and vanquish the generations-old evil that has plagued his family since the 1800’s… In 1854, Louis Sanders, with the help of Elias Atkins, dug a well to provide water to the family farm. What they did not anticipate was the water to be infested with Odomulites – ancient sins. These malevolent beings – were trapped in our world on their way to the spirit world – formed a pact of protection with both Sanders and Atkins; the families would serve as guardians of the Odomulite nests and in return, a blind eye would be cast when the Odomulites took host bodies to inhabit and feed upon. It was this pact, which in 2016 would propel Sanders and Julie Fontaine – a young woman with a special connection to the Spirit World – into the heart of the last active nest to rid the town of its insidious Odomulite population.
My Thoughts:
I love how the author presents THEM to the reader. The prologue piqued my interest. The lady running through the night is the best kind of starter scene to get the reader engaged and hooked. I immediately wanted to know what she was running from. The author didn’t let me down. A family secret going back generations is unearthed and Ray must face the terror head on.
The decades old pact between the Odomulites and the Sanders and Atkins families make for an interesting dynamic. The Sanders and Atkins families must protect the Odomulites, and turn away when they have to take host bodies. These otherworldly monstrosities scared the daylights out of me. Think Invasion of the Bodysnatchers, but much more grittier and sinister. The ancient monstrosities are about to wreak havoc on an unsuspecting small town.
The small town Alabama atmosphere is great. The characters are well written and relatable. The dialogue gives it that authentic feel. The pacing of the story is excellent. The vivid scenes bring the story to life. There are some scenes I can’t unsee. The host bodies grossed me out in the best ways. I’m gagging just thinking about it. The author wraps the story up with a satisfying conclusion, too.
THEM was a great reading experience. Read it with some popcorn, so you don’t bite your finger nails. I look forward to reading the author’s future work.
Every seven years, a boy disappears from Camp Waukeelo.
Who will be next?
It doesn’t take long for a little boy to disappear. Joey Proctor can’t swim, but that doesn’t stop camp counselor Alex Mason from leaving him out on a raft in the middle of the lake in a fit of rage. Alex only meant to scare the kid, teach him a lesson. He didn’t mean to forget about him. But now Joey is gone… and his body is never found.
More than twenty years later, Alex is a success. The proof is there for anyone to see, in the millions of dollars he makes, his lavish house, his beautiful wife and daughters. And no one knows what happened that summer at camp. At least, no one should know. But it looks like Joey Proctor may be back to take his revenge…
Description
As this ingenious new novella, More Walls Broken, begins, a trio of academics have just entered a deserted California cemetery late at night, bringing with them a number of arcane devices aimed at achieving an equally arcane purpose. What follows is the sort of dizzying, mind-expanding entertainment that only the always reliable, always astonishing Tim Powers could have written.
These three men, professors in the “Consciousness Research” department at Cal Tech University, have come together to perform a seemingly impossible task. Their goal: to open a door between the world of the living and the world of the dead, and to capture the ghost of the recently deceased scientist Armand Vitrielli. For their own desperate reasons, they hope to avail themselves of the secrets Vitrielli left behind at the time of his death. Their experiment, naturally, fails to come off exactly as planned. A door between the worlds does, in fact, open, letting in something—someone—completely unexpected, and setting in motion a chain of events that will reverberate throughout the narrative.
Intricate, intelligent, and always thoroughly absorbing, More Walls Broken mixes fantasy and quantum physics in utterly unique fashion. The result is a brilliantly imagined account of multiple realities and unintended consequences that is pure dazzle, pure storytelling, pure—and unmistakable—Tim Powers. In book after book, story after story, Powers has set the standard for literate imaginative fiction. With this essential, beautifully realized novella, he has done it once again.
In the darkest days of the American Revolution, Francis Marion and his band of militia freedom fighters kept hope alive for the patriot cause during the critical British “southern campaign.” Employing insurgent guerrilla tactics that became commonplace in later centuries, Marion and his brigade inflicted enemy losses that were individually small but cumulatively a large drain on British resources and morale.
Although many will remember the stirring adventures of the “Swamp Fox” from the Walt Disney television series of the late 1950s and the fictionalized Marion character played by Mel Gibson in the 2000 film The Patriot, the real Francis Marion bore little resemblance to either of those caricatures. But his exploits were no less heroic as he succeeded, against all odds, in repeatedly foiling the highly trained, better-equipped forces arrayed against him.
In this action-packed biography we meet many colorful characters from the Revolution: Banastre Tarleton, the British cavalry officer who relentlessly pursued Marion over twenty-six miles of swamp, only to call off the chase and declare (per legend) that “the Devil himself could not catch this damned old fox,” giving Marion his famous nickname; Thomas Sumter, the bold but rash patriot militia leader whom Marion detested; Lord Cornwallis, the imperious British commander who ordered the hanging of rebels and the destruction of their plantations; “Light-Horse Harry” Lee, the urbane young Continental cavalryman who helped Marion topple critical British outposts in South Carolina; but most of all Francis Marion himself, “the Washington of the South,” a man of ruthless determination yet humane character, motivated by what his peers called “the purest patriotism.”
In The Swamp Fox, the first major biography of Marion in more than forty years, John Oller compiles striking evidence and brings together much recent learning to provide a fresh look both at Marion, the man, and how he helped save the American Revolution.
An occultist attempting to capture the physical embodiment of Death to bargain for eternal life traps her younger brother Dream instead. After his seventy-year imprisonment and eventual escape, Dream, also known as Morpheus, goes on a quest for his lost objects of power to reclaim his reign. From there, one of the greatest series in the history of the graphic novel genre begins…
New York Times best-selling author Neil Gaiman’s transcendent series The Sandman is often hailed as the definitive Vertigo title and one of the finest achievements in comics storytelling. Gaiman created an unforgettable tale of the forces that exist beyond life and death by weaving ancient mythology, folklore and fairy tales with his own distinct narrative vision.
This graphic novel–a perfect jumping-on points for any reader–includes the introductions of Morpheus, Lucifer and The Endless, all intricate parts of this enduring series that is still as relevant today as ever.
Includes issues #1-8 of the original series with completely new coloring, approved by the author.