A horror story with an evil wizard, an invading creature that could come from the Cthulhu Mythos and great atmosphere in parts.

This is a great gory horror, lacking a little on the psychological side and disturbingly graphic in places. Unfortunately like many horror stories, it does suffer a lack of likeable characters, and while you are meant to empathise with them for the horrific deaths they suffer, it’s hard when you were wishing worse on them the page before.

It’s well written, easy to follow, with good presentation, striking cover and no notable formatting problems.

This book, to me, falls somewhere between the Tommyknockers and the Guy N. Smith pulp horrors of the seventies – which should tell you not to expect a trite happy ending and also whether you are likely to want to read it.

One thing – and this is a serious spoiler – anyone familiar with a certain science fiction story from the seventies, about a mind-controlling scorpion from Mars called the Quincunx attacking an island expedition will find elements of this story very familiar. This however is horror, not hard sci-fi, and the plot progression and resolution are very different.

I’m giving this a three, but if you are into the horror of Stephen King and Shaun Hutson rather than Poe and Lovecraft give this a look, you’ll love it.