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Taug
The end of humanity begins in Utah. An American scientist isolates human consciousness at a secret military installation and inadvertently releases a creature hell-bent on shaking the heavens. At the center of the storm a defender called Taug struggles to save humanity from a fate beyond reckoning.
- GenresHorror
431 pages, Kindle Edition
First published February 1, 2001
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26 people want to read
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
November 24, 2016
In his debut novel Taug, author Matthew House introduces us to a cast of very different characters - a young couple with a disturbing family legacy, a grieving father seeking revenge, an Indian Shaman with a line to another realm, and a scientist on the verge of a miraculous (and potentially catastrophic) breakthrough - and throws them all into the middle of a cosmic conflict between the Necronites - horned, blue, near-angelic titans whose job is to ferry the souls of the recently departed from our world to the next. When the Necronite called Saville goes rogue and attempts to steal the souls' energy for himself and challenge the very power of God himself, his fellow Necronite Taug has bring his human allies into play to thwart Saville's plans, which could spell the end of all life on Earth.
The good: Taug has just about everything I look for in a novel - strong, memorable characters, interesting concepts, well-choreographed action, and zombies...lots and lots of zombies. It's rare to find a self-published author that takes the time to really build a story the way House does here. He takes the time to introduce and develop his key characters, establishes his main events and concepts in a way that they all join together, and has a good grasp of the pacing necessary to keep readers engaged. That, and it's just a lot of fun to read about giant blue angel-types battling it out against a backdrop of zombies, plague carriers, shamans and the A-Bomb.
The not-so-good: There were numerous spelling, grammar/word usage (or words missing entirely) errors throughout the book that should have been caught by an editor. I understand this was an older self-published book that has been "resurrected" for the Kindle age, but this would have been an ideal time for the author (or better yet, a good copy editor) to take a fresh look at the book and clean up the errors. It's a minor gripe, but it does interrupt the flow of the story, which is never a good thing. The only other issue I had was with the dialogue. The main villain's style of speaking seems straight out of a comic book, and the Necronites' manner of speech seems a bit too modern for a bunch of centuries-old near-angelic beings.
Those issues aside, I was pleasantly surprised by Taug. If you can overlook the editing needs, it's a very enjoyable and entertaining read, and one that offers a bit more conceptually than the average novel. It's a solid 4-star story, but the editing knocks it down a notch. Still, if you're a fan of supernatural horror stories, Taug is well worth checking out. I'd also recommend Joseph Devon's Probability Angels, another creative self-published book that deals with angelic agents and the undead.
The good: Taug has just about everything I look for in a novel - strong, memorable characters, interesting concepts, well-choreographed action, and zombies...lots and lots of zombies. It's rare to find a self-published author that takes the time to really build a story the way House does here. He takes the time to introduce and develop his key characters, establishes his main events and concepts in a way that they all join together, and has a good grasp of the pacing necessary to keep readers engaged. That, and it's just a lot of fun to read about giant blue angel-types battling it out against a backdrop of zombies, plague carriers, shamans and the A-Bomb.
The not-so-good: There were numerous spelling, grammar/word usage (or words missing entirely) errors throughout the book that should have been caught by an editor. I understand this was an older self-published book that has been "resurrected" for the Kindle age, but this would have been an ideal time for the author (or better yet, a good copy editor) to take a fresh look at the book and clean up the errors. It's a minor gripe, but it does interrupt the flow of the story, which is never a good thing. The only other issue I had was with the dialogue. The main villain's style of speaking seems straight out of a comic book, and the Necronites' manner of speech seems a bit too modern for a bunch of centuries-old near-angelic beings.
Those issues aside, I was pleasantly surprised by Taug. If you can overlook the editing needs, it's a very enjoyable and entertaining read, and one that offers a bit more conceptually than the average novel. It's a solid 4-star story, but the editing knocks it down a notch. Still, if you're a fan of supernatural horror stories, Taug is well worth checking out. I'd also recommend Joseph Devon's Probability Angels, another creative self-published book that deals with angelic agents and the undead.
Displaying 1 of 1 review