Windwalkers

by R. Michael Burns

When a nightmarish blizzard drives college students Nick Bookman and Robin Kelley to take shelter in a small-town Minnesota church, they are forced to confront the intimate secret that is tearing their friendship apart. The appearance of another storm refugee, Alicia Morgan, an attractive high school senior and self-described witch, arouses Nick's interest and threatens to strain the old friends' relationship past the shattering point. Then one of the men trapped in the church disappears in the deep of the night, and his young daughter stumbles in from the storm babbling about monsters. Only Alicia recognizes the creature from the child's tale -- a wendigo, an ancient spirit that embodies the hunger for human flesh. Soon there is no doubt -- the windwalkers are on the hunt, and the refugees discover that they must fight not only with the menace that haunts the storm, but their own darkest desires. If they cannot control their hungers, their hungers will consume them. Only the strongest hearts among the strange band of storm refugees have any hope of surviving the long blizzard night....

Genres: Horror

286 pages, Paperback

First published August 28, 2012

Reviews

[Bandit · Rating 1 out of 5]

I love a good Wendigo story. I'll even settle for a decent one. This sadly was neither. And sad indeed, because it had potential, it was actually quite easy to see how it might have been a fun creature feature/survival type of story, but the mindnumbingly tedious character writing just killed any chance of enjoyment this book might have offered. I suppose Burns was trying to do character development, which is admirable and a solid concept, get the reader to care about the characters and the reader will care about seeing what happens to them, but for some reason he put together the most uninteresting, uncompelling (which isn't quite a word, sorry), bland cast of characters I've had to endure in a book in a long time. The main ones are two college age guys, whose longtime friendship has finally culminated in a sexual encounter and that relationship and its subsequent addition of a female angle creates for the most tedious bisexual love triangle. And that triangle gets an inordinate, disproportional amount of attention that pretty much singlehandedly kills the book. Without it, it might have been decent, not great, but decent B movie style entertainment. A Wendigo story deserves better. Your time probably does too. Try Algernon Blackwood's version of the story, fifth of the length, immeasurably better quality. Caveat emptor.

[Marvin · Rating 2 out of 5]

I feel a little bad for a writer who decides to take on the Wendigo. After all, he's going to be compared to Algernon Blackwood who wrote the definite Wendigo story appropriately titled The Wendigo. It has never been surpassed and probably never will.

But I have to give R. Michael Burns credit for trying. He takes on the mythical atmosphere of the Wendigo and gives it a epic Stephen King touch. I really wished this worked but it doesn't. It starts interestingly enough. A group of people are stranded in a blizzard. We are introduced to the main characters, noticeably a pair of college boys with sexual identity issues and a Wiccan teenager. Stir in a mixture of stereotypical supporting roles and a bunch of spear carriers and you have a plot that doesn't really get off the ground even after our monsters show up. It just feels too set up, too formulaic, too...if you pardon the pun...cold. I wanted to like it but it just doesn't passed the "do I care?" test. Two and a half stars.

[Miguel Gervais · Rating 5 out of 5]

Scary.

No, I mean it.... SCARY!

I worked in hospitals and have seen my share of blood and gore. That's not scary.

Windwalkers.... now THAT's scary.

People fighting for their sanity and survival is what makes for a true horror-fest. Notice I didn't say "characters"? People.

People are who we see torn apart and splattered mentally and physically over 286 agonizingly tense and well-written pages. This is much better than a mere bloody gore-fest.

Scary stuff. More please!

[Gail Moshier · Rating 5 out of 5]

Scarry!!

This is the scariest book I have ever read!!!!!!! I would not recommend reading it. It's the stuff nightmares are made of!!!! And I will probably have bad dreams!!!

[Fred Conrad · Rating 3 out of 5]

I don't know what went wrong. It started out really well, and if somebody would cut out all the redundant non-action pages and pages and pages during the second half or last third, I think you'd really have something. Or maybe just delete every thought the Nick character has, that would just about be the same thing. Everyone else was fine.

[Tracy · Rating 2 out of 5]

The book starts off with all the great elements of a good horror story but become too unbelievable and far-fetched. The monsters are too hard to imagine and the story loses credibility. By the end of the book I just wanted it to be over and I had grown tired of the characters.

[Tammy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fun read, but in need of some editing. Way too long.

[Eric · Rating 2 out of 5]

I like horror movies and I like horror video games, but this book, although horror, was just so graphic and the things occurring just so awful, reading it just made me depressed.

[Leslie Wiederspan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pretty good horror novel! Lots of blood and gore, so those with a weak stomach should probably not read this.