Publisher: Forsaken
Publication Date: 17th July 2015
Pages: 316
MY REVIEW:
A copy of Gristle
and Bone was sent to Confessions of a Reviewer by the author Duncan Ralston in
exchange for an honest review. This is said review. This book is published by
Shadow Work Publishing / CreateSpace.
I have never read
anything by Duncan Ralston before. I always find that short story collections
are a great way to introduce yourself to someone new. They give you a bit of
variety of the writing style of the author. You can see very quickly where they
intend to take their writing, and ultimately whether you see anything you are
going to like. All of those factors made Gristle and Bone an attractive review
proposition.
These are my
thoughts on the seven stories included in the collection.
BABY TEETH
Candace McMurray and her husband Joel have just found out
they cannot have children. This causes them to drift apart as this sort of
situation often does. It’s heart breaking for both of them and neither knows
how to deal with it.
One night, while sleeping Candace suffers a bite that
looks like it could have been caused by a baby?
The next day, while working at home and trying not to
think about the bite, she hears noises upstairs. Something has trashed a
bedroom. It looks like it’s hiding in the attic. Candace goes to investigate.
She should have called someone else to look.
An excellent way to start a collection of short horror
stories and an excellent introduction to the writing style of Mr Ralston as I
had hoped.
What starts as a heart breaking tale of something that
happens to millions of people all over the world quickly turns into something
horrific and brutal and sickening.
Totally unexpected. Totally frightening. Totally gross.
★★★★★ For general.
★★★★★ For horror / terror.
BEWARE OF THE DOG
Dean Vogel has returned to his home town of Dark Pines
after being disgracefully discharged from the army. A condition of his
discharge is he must live with his parents and he must go to the local shrink
who he knows from his past as “Uncle Tim”.
Can they together unlock the secrets of Dean’s past to
discover why he is the way he is? Is this all connected to the childhood
bullies, one of which Dean left horribly disfigured.
What’s the story with his childhood crush, Catherine? She
may hold more answers to the questions than Dean Knows.
Duncan Ralston can certainly write. The ease with which
you fall into the characters in this story proves that. To have you feeling as
if you know everything about someone in a short space of time is no easy feat.
A negative for me in this one is it took a while to build
to the horror / terror element of the story, but when it got there it came out
of absolutely nowhere.
Great killer twist. Just dragged a bit to get there for
me. I would have liked more detail on the horror side of things.
★★★ For General.
★★ For horror / terror.
VIRAL
Tara Wells is a reporter. She has the mundane job of
writing the music column. She spots a video clip of a girl that has gone
missing. The video has gone viral due to the fact that the girl in the video
appears to disappear before the viewer’s eyes.
Many people think it is fake including Tara’s boss but
none the less the girl has gone missing for real. Tara eventually talks her
boss into letting her investigate it for the paper. When Tara searches the
girl’s house for clues, she discovers more than she probably wanted.
This is really good. A story of something bizarre that
seems to happen but no one can believe it due to the technology of today
allowing people to stage elaborate hoaxes for fun. Something in Tara convinces
her that what she is witnessing is true and drives her to investigate it for
herself.
This leaves you wondering the whole way through. I must
admit to thinking it was all going to be some bizarre joke played by kids but
it turns out to be much much more.
Again perfect pacing keeps you glued to this story. I
felt on edge almost the entire time waiting with baited breath to find out what
was going on.
★★★★ For general.
★★★ For horror / terror.
ARTIFACT (#37)
Brothers Ian and
Kevin run a very lucrative porn business with two of their friends, called
Filthy Lessons. They basically fool people into believing they pick random
girls up, “teach them a lesson” in the back of their van, and dump them back
out on the street. All of the girls are in fact paid “talent” and know exactly
what is happening. Ian then picks them up where they were dropped off and
leaves them home safely.
Apart from #37,
Amber. She didn’t want to play and was dumped out of the van early. Ian didn’t
get to pick her up. Instead she was picked up by a psycho, raped and murdered.
They have now
picked up Zara. She is #201. Something doesn’t seem right though. Her eyes keep
changing colour. It’s as if she is possessed.
Really liked this
one. Not going to give anything away on the story but it’s grittier. There is
blood and guts, gorey descriptions of murder and mutilation, and to top it all
off, touches of the supernatural and horror elements. This certainly was a
delectable tale of terror.
★★★★★ For general.
★★★★ For horror / terror.
// END USER
Mason gets woken early one morning when he gets an email.
The email is from himself. He knows it can’t be real and someone must have
hacked his account and be messing with him. When he is on the way to work the
train is delayed by someone jumping in front of a train.
When mason gets to work the emails continue, including
one with a video attached. A video of the alleged jumper although it doesn’t
look like an accident.
Mason continues to get bombarded with emails and videos.
When he leaves work early and goes home, things take a bizarre twist and
threaten not just Mason but the entire world.
This is freaky. This genuinely scared me. I doubt what
happens in this story is possible but hey, technology is a wonderful scary
thing. I consider myself a bit of a tech head and this type of scenario is what
nightmares are made of.
One man battling something that no one would believe,
struggling to believe it himself and figure out a way to save himself and
ultimately the world. This story had so much potential to be much longer. I
would love to see it expanded.
★★★★★ For general.
★★★★★ For horror / terror.
FAT OF THE LAND
David and June have gone to Monte Verde to attend a
friend’s wedding. When they ask the hotel receptionist for advice on a good
restaurant, she directs them to Ambrosia.
When they get there for their meal they are impressed by the
general ambience and even more impressed by the delicious food. On the way back
to the hotel however, David becomes very ill, throwing up everywhere in the
car.
The dramas continue the next day at the wedding when one
of the grooms fails to turn up. June returns to Ambrosia to take some
professional pictures of the restaurant. What she discovers there is both
astounding and equally horrific. Will the missing groom turn up or has he
already left for dinner?
Duncan Ralston is a story teller, of that there is no
doubt. I always say one of the hardest things about short stories is to have
the ability to suck your reader in from the first sentence. He does that very
easily with this story. It has a certain atmosphere about it. You just know
something horrific is going to happen. When it does, I can’t say it was totally
a surprise to me but its delivery was perfect. I mean this as a compliment but
the final scenes were almost like something from a Scooby Doo movie. Everything
would have been fine if it hadn’t been for those pesky kids.
★★★★★ For general.
★★★★ For horror / terror.
SCAVENGERS
Jim and Leanne own a restaurant in the small town of Knee
High. When Jim empties the trash in the dumpster every night he has to battle
through all kinds of scavengers desperate for a scrap of something he is
throwing out.
One night he witnesses a human form crawling down the
wall, head first, heading for the dumpster. He recognises the lady but not the
form she is currently in. Putting aside his fear he decides he must kill this
beast before she kills him or anyone else. When he discovers there are more of
these “lurkers” he must come up with a plan to kill them all together.
In an unlikely alliance he enlists the help of his wife
Leanne to try and rid Knee High of the scavenger scourge.
This is what it’s all about. This is why I read horror /
dark fiction. This takes us back to the good old days of horror in the ‘80’s. It’s
good versus an ancient evil that lurks in every town that none of the residents
know about. This stinks of Laymon at his best.
This is how you tell a horror story or a story of terror
and keep your audience hooked from the first paragraph to the very last. Bravo
Mr Ralston. The best story in the book.
★★★★★ For general.
★★★★★ For horror / terror.
So there you have it. My take on Gristle and Bone. All in
all this is a very good collection. The surprise for me was really the horror
or terror as it might be called. Each story is very different in its make up
with styles that are nothing like each other but at the same time the level of
horror / terror is high.
The terror element is scary for varying reasons. It’s not
make you jump out of your seat terror. It’s slow build up terror. Terror that
seeps under your skin and scares you without you even realising that you are
scared until you finish reading.
Duncan Ralston has certainly proved to me he can write.
Even though this is a short story collection, a few of the stories are quite
long which I for one was delighted to see. Too often I come across a collection
that has ten stories in it and it’s done by one hundred pages. You get your money’s
worth with this one.
He has a knack of absorbing you in the story very quickly.
You feel at ease with what you are reading after only a couple of pages and the
rest just flows very easily across the pages.
To summarise: A collection of stories that will have you
glued to them form the first words. They will scare you for different reasons.
They will turn your stomach. They will make you wonder “where the hell did that
come from”. Most of all they will give you a few hours of enjoyable story
telling. An art that isn’t easy to do.
Overall general rating:
★★★★.5 Almost perfect.
★★★★.5 Almost perfect.
Overall horror / terror rating:
★★★★ Terror in so many different ways.
★★★★ Terror in so many different ways.
You can buy Gristle and Bone: 7 Delectable Tales of
Terror here:
Book Synopsis:
A young couple discovers the secret of a tourist town's
prosperity may lie in its sinfully delicious cuisine. Gonzo pornographers learn
a brutal lesson following a tragedy they caused when life imitated
"art." Disgraced soldier Dean Vogel returns to his hometown and
confronts the bullies, and a traumatic event, from his past. A reporter
uncovers what really happened to the latest internet sensation, a troubled girl
who disappeared on camera. When successful restaurant owners Jim and Leanne
Taymor confess to a grisly series of small town murders, their neighbour learns
the gruesome truth that led them to kill.
Gristle & Bone includes the novella, Scavengers, plus
4 novelettes, and 2 short stories.
Cannibalism, monsters, vengeful spirits, the
apocalypse--chock-full of blood, mayhem, psychological horror, and good old
fashioned gross-outs, Gristle & Bone is a tasty treat for horror fans!
Duncan Ralston was born in Toronto, and spent his teens
in a small town. As a "grown-up," Duncan lives with his girlfriend
and their dog in Toronto, where he writes about the things that frighten and
disturb him. In addition to his twisted short stories found in GRISTLE &
BONE and THE BLACK ROOM MANUSCRIPTS, his debut novel, SALVAGE, will haunt
various booksellers in September.
"Ralston's work is easy to read. His style adapts
neatly to suit the story he is crafting, and the stories have an ebb and flow
that make you want to complete reading." - The Bookie Monster Review of
GRISTLE & BONE
You can see more of Duncan at his website.
Duncan’s author page is here.
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