With a title like Orgy of the Blood Parasites you know you aren't going to be reading a tale of quiet, brooding horror. Written under his pen name 'Jack Yeovil', Orgy of the Blood Parasites is author, film critic and journalist Kim Newman just cutting loose.

A mistakenly created virus escapes its lab and starts infecting college students causing random mutations. UCC, the corporation funding the research, calls in its private army to keep a lid on things. Orgy of the Blood Parasites reads like a cross between George Romero's The Crazies and early David Cronenberg 'body horror' movies like Shivers or Rabid (in fact, the book's title is a reference to the original title of Shivers). It is filled with scenes of gun-carrying men in white hazard suits clashing with wildly mutated students.

The book was obviously written to be read in a couple of sittings. It is short and punchy with no chapter breaks. Instead, every two or three pages it switches between its multiple characters. I wasn't able to devour the book in big chunks and therefore had a little trouble keeping track of who was who. That was me rather than the book though.

It was a lot of fun to read. On the one hand, it's Kim Newman having fun with total over-the-top gross out. But it's still Kim Newman, so it is pretty well-written and filled with off-handed references to sometimes obscure pop culture. It is schlock, but its schlock by a man who's made a study of it. Ridiculously entertaining. ( )