In the desert town of Cromay, New Mexico, resident Mike Fradella returns home from a day of work and an evening of unwinding downing three beers. A tree meets his return coming up from his porch. At first, he considers this nothing more than a prank done by the local teenagers but there is still something unsettling about this. He calls the sheriff and upon his arrival, things start becoming weird as trees spring from the ground. As these trees appear all over the small town, the body count goes up.

Fast forward a few years later, A Haunted Forest Touring company offers a chance on Halloween to view the forest inside rather than around. Those lucky to manage to get their hands on a ticket will get a once-in-a-lifetime experience of the forest and its monsters up close and personal. But this tour is doomed from the start. Forced out of their tram, the group finds itself dwindling as the forest inhabitants decide to make them a tasty meal.

Honestly, I was surprised that I was able to devour this book so quickly. I won't lie when I say the entire storyline was filled with gruesome deaths, monsters both from the gates of hell to creatures right out of nightmares, and on the edge of your chair as survivors struggle to stay alive inside of being picked off by the monsters.

This was a unique take on the horror genre. I have read a lot of horror books in my past but I am going to say this one will stand out against all the others. The tale is unique. The deaths are filled with gore. The ending was not something I was expecting. Nevertheless, it was a bit satisfying but a bit anti-climactic.

Final Thought:
If you are looking for a tale of horror, then definitely pick this book up. It will be the perfect Halloween read. ( )

Wow! This was an action packed blood and gore infested horror romp!

A little backstory:

Come one, come all and take a ride into the haunted forest where you will see amazing creatures the likes of what you have never seen before!

There are trams on tracks that take tourists through a haunted forest with all kinds of oddball creatures and the tourists are hoping to get glimpses of the creatures that are roaming through the forest!



However, with any maiden voyage though comes unexpected problems that are unforeseeable and when one of the trams comes to a stop to view the creatures the last thing expected would be that the tram would lose power, but that is what happens and when the power goes out, so does the chance of escape. When another tram rams into the powerless tram it brings about a horrific crash which that is when things get interesting as now the tourists are considered a prime meal for the creatures out in the forest.

What happened to the tram? What happens to the tourists? Do they escape the clutches of the creatures? What kind of creatures are roaming the haunted forest? No spoilers here as you will just have to read the book!

There are quite a few characters within this story which I am not going into detail with each one, but I will say that I really loved most of the characters as they tried to fight their way to survival against the creatures.

There is lots of blood and gore throughout the story which starts practically right away in the first chapter and doesn't let up till the end of the book!

The story just flows along with the fast paced action but when the trams crash and the tourists are sitting ducks is when the story goes into overdrive. From that point on the story stays in overdrive with constant blood and gore action to the point that I could literally not put the book down as I wanted to stay awake to see what would happen next!

This book was awesome and it is a perfect read for Halloween! Giving this book five "gory" stars!

Highly recommend to all horror fans! ( )

3 1/2 stars.

The good: full of the humor that you expect from Strand. This is my first experience with James A. Moore but I will definitely read other books by him now. Characters are interesting. Main Bad guy is really pretty bad--as are a few of the humans, and snarkiness abounds. Entertaining with never a dull moment.

The bad: Just too much. Of everything. Too many monsters. Too many characters going in too many directions. Too much mayhem. One third of the way in I was hoping that the action would slow down so that the plot could develop. No suspense because the action never stops. No scares because there are monsters everywhere you look. I think if we had less characters and if the story developed slower it would have been better. If we are talking about Strand's lighter books, I like the Andrew Mayhem series and Benjamin's Parasite better because they had more focus.

To see the more serious side of Strand I would recommend Dweller, which is just amazing. ( )

Fast moving gore packed romp through a haunted forest. ( )

I was well pleased with this novel. Everything about it was fun: the story, the humor, the deaths. It had the perfect combination of horror, comedy, and seriousness.

The story takes place in a small, normal town in New Mexico. Normal until a full grown forest pops up and takes over the entire town in one day. A forest that is populated with monsters and ghosts and too many creatures to describe. Flash forward a few years and the forest has been converted into a tourist attraction with tram rides through the center of the forest. A special Halloween tour is about to take place and this ride is going to be more disastrous than anybody realizes.

The mix of characters was very easy to picture in my head. And the vocal performance by Joe Hempel really helped to differentiate each one. The story had a wide selection of characters so it was not obvious as to who would be killed and who wouldn't. And there were than a few times where I was actively laughing out loud. One more thing that I don't know if Strand and Moore were doing this on purpose or not, but it seemed to me that they kept stopping chapters semi-abruptly, leaving a character in a near impossible spot. In my mind, I pictured it as either Strand or Moore saying "Ha, let's see how you write your way out of this one." as they pass the story to the other. I'm not sure if that was real or not but it felt like it. To me, it made the experience even better. ( )