The Gauntlet

by Bryan Smith

On a cold winter’s night a pair of runaway lovers stop to refuel their car in a remote Pennsylvania town hours away from any major population center. The town has gone to rot after the death of its main industry, and the remaining citizens are kept in line by a powerful few who refuse to let the dwindling community die, no matter what the cost. The rare wayward travelers who come to the town are rarely ever allowed to leave, as the lovers discover when they are forced to play a deadly game of kill or be killed. A game called The Gauntlet.

Includes the never previously published bonus story “The Night People".

Originally published as part of Beleth Station.

Genres: Horror, Splatterpunk

161 pages, Kindle Edition

Published June 19, 2023

About the author

Bryan Smith is the Splatterpunk Award-winning author of more than forty horror and crime books, including 68 Kill, the cult classic Depraved and its sequels, as well as The Killing Kind, Slowly We Rot, The Freakshow, and many more. Bestselling horror author Brian Keene called Slowly We Rot, "The best zombie novel I've ever read."

68 Kill was adapted into a motion picture directed by Trent Haaga and starring Matthew Gray Gubler of the long-running CBS series Criminal Minds. 68 Kill won the Midnighters Award at the SXSW film festival in 2017 and was released to wide acclaim, including positive reviews in The New York Times and Bloody Disgusting.

Bryan also co-scripted an original Harley Quinn story for the House of Horrors anthology from DC Comics. He has worked with renowned horror publishers in both the mass market and small press spheres, including Leisure Books, Samhain Publishing, Grindhouse Press, Death’s Head Press, and more. His works are available wherever books are sold, with select titles also available in German and Italian.

Reviews

[Peter Topside · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars. This wasn't a bad premise. You have this uneventful little nothing town run by a cult-like organization. They take any outsiders and put them through this series of awful Saw-like circumstances called the gauntlet. It tests the participants limits, bringing them to the brink of death, and in some cases beyond that point. So my main critiques here were that the story had too many characters, and it seemed to get lost in the violence, sacrificing parts of the plot. I think that Krista and Nick were the most interesting of the group and almost wished the story just stayed with them alone, as they both battled this ugly group of people. This would have also solved some of the clunkier parts of the story where it jumped around too much to cover all the characters. I also got a bit thrown off by the ending, which I didn't love, too. But there was lots of violence and action, and some good psychological terror involved, all resulting in a pretty good outing from Bryan Smith.

[Mique Watson · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this when it was part of Beleth Station & I’m glad I can count it as 2 books now 😂

[Todd Condit · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.75
Solid outing from Smith but I felt this should have been a bit longer with the amount of characters and plotlines it had. It felt a bit too rushed. That being said, the premise is dope, and there's lots of blood and gore.

[Uptown Horror Reviews · Rating 2 out of 5]

Am I just dumb? Or does the book never actually explain why they run the Gauntlet?

I checked out about 80% of the way through, so I might have missed it 🤔

[Kadlin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not bad

Spying artificial lighting of some kind from within as he neared the cafeteria’s double doors, he doused the lighter flame and felt despair give way to tentative excitement. There was a good chance she was in there, perhaps sitting in a circle with her friends around a portable camping lantern. He peeked through the glass window of one of the doors and there she was.

[Jeff French · Rating 2 out of 5]

In the early 2000s, horror movie makers seemed to think that movies involving torture and extreme gore were scary. They weren't. Fortunately that trend has died, and most directors realize story and atmosphere are what really make good horror. The Gauntlet falls into the trap of describing torture scenes in prolific detail, but there isn't much of a story here to make reading those passages worthwhile. Characters are paper thin as well. Oddly enough, I was reading American Psycho at the same time and while that is even a more gruesome experience, I can't make the same complaint. American Psycho has a lot to say, and the author balances the extreme scenes with some great humour. The Gauntlet was a disappointment, but clocking in at less than 200 pages, it didn't waste much of my time.