Vicious

by Bryan W. Alaspa

IT WAS SUPPOSED TO BE A QUIET, RELAXING, WEEKEND GETAWAY...
The cabin is not deserted. It is the summer retreat of Jeremy Liden, an author who has just started to taste the fruits of success and the good life, which includes the summer cottage in Wisconsin. The same weekend Jeremy and his friends decide to get away from it all two dogs seek shelter beneath the summer house porch. Two dogs who have been trained to fight. Trained to Attack. Trained to kill.

What Jeremy and his friends find at the house is sheer, snarling terror, and as things get desperate, they begin to wonder if they will ever get out alive.

Nature made these dogs, but man made them VICIOUS.

Genres: Horror, Fiction

252 pages, Kindle Edition

First published September 29, 2012

About the author

I was born in the fine year of 1971 in Park Ridge, IL. I am a life long Chicago resident and I love the city. I spent a few years in St. Louis, as well. I knew I wanted to write from the time I sat down at my mom's electric typewriter in the 3rd grade. Now I do write. I write freelance and articles for online news sources. I write horror, thrillers and detective novels. I also write non-fiction in true crime and history genres. I publish my fiction myself as an indie publisher and write and have found an audience for my work among ebook fans. I publish for Kindle, Nook and other tablets and devices at Smashwords.com. My non-fiction is usually published in print, but that may soon change as ebooks become more and more of the norm.

Reviews

[Patrick Greene · Rating 5 out of 5]

My first exposure to Bryan Alaspa - as kind and decent a human being as there ever was - was this tense and taut primal thriller. The set-up is classic and well-used: a group of vacationers head to a cabin in the woods and are soon beset by predators of the most, well, vicious type -- voracious canines. There's no supernatural or crypid connection here, just a straightforward, bloody and violent man-against-nature yarn that is at times too realistic for comfort.

[Kristin (Blood,Sweat and Books) · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked up this book on Amazon one day on a whim with the intent of reviewing it as one of my Halloween reads. Long story short that didn't happen and the book was tucked away for another day. A month and a half later I was scouring my Kindle for something quick to read and Vicious caught my eye. Determined to not let the book go back on the TBR pile I sat down to read it. Here is my Review:

Demon and Delilah have had a very hard life raised as fighting dogs. Beat mercilessly by their human master Dillon and exploited for their skills all they've ever known is cruelty and pain. Demon who is Delilahs mate finally has enough and sets out to give Delilah a life of safety away from the pain and misery they've endured up til now.

Jeremy and Amelia are getting ready for a weekend in the country with friends Stephen and Veronica. This weekend was supposed to be fun, it was supposed to be stress free but unfortunately for all involved it turns out to be anything but.

Vicious by Bryan Alaspa might be the best Killer dogs book since Cujo and I don't say that lightly as Cujo is a classic. I had never read this Author before but I am definitely a Fan now. It is so rare that a book can make you root for the Predators yet still feel sympathetic to the victims plight as well. I found myself waffling between wanting to kill the dogs and hoping that in the end they were saved and the dogs rehabilitated and given the proper home they deserved.

I won't give away how this ends but I will say that the body count is high and their is plenty of blood and gore to go around. This book is not for the faint of heart and die hard animal lovers might want to pass this one by as it involves vicious acts by humans and animals alike.

The dogs Delilah and Demon are sympathetic characters and can't be blamed for how they react to the intrusion of Jeremy and his friends. Any caged and brutally tortured animal would react the same way when it comes to defending its territory. On the other side of the coin you have the innocent humans. You can really feel the struggle with the characters hoping they don't have to harm the dogs but in the end its you or them so what can one do.

I thoroughly enjoyed the conscious mind of the dog Demon. It was so interesting seeing his thought process versus that of the humans trapped inside the house. Demon reminded me of an old salted general planning war strategy on the battlefield. He was very fun to watch. Delilah on the other hand just wanted to be safe. I don't think she was vicious even with the cruelty she endured. I felt she just followed Demon's lead and could probably be rehabilitated given enough time. Delilah was a very sad,quiet dog in comparison but she loved Demon and understood the natural pecking order of a pack.

The human characters were interesting enough and the back story and dialogue provided set the pace for the novel but to me the dogs were really the stars of the show. I liked that Jeremy was an Author, it would of been interesting if the story turned out to be all in his head but sadly it didn't end that way. Would of been cool though.

Overall Vicious was a great, quick read. I highly recommend picking this one up and giving it a shot. I will be rating Vicious: A Novel Of Suspense ★★★★.

[Join the Penguin Resistance! · Rating 5 out of 5]

A riveting and graphic novel told just as deeply and intensely from the dogs’ point of view as from the humans’, “Vicious” captures reader’s interest and empathy immediately. Yes, the dogs are killers, but not necessarily because of their breed, not because they were “bad seeds,” but because of humans who abused and beat them until they know not much more than killing and death. Even so, though, the male, Demon, cares for his mate Delilah, and is very protective of her-which goes to prove the point that these are not “evil” dogs. He doesn’t go out looking for trouble, he doesn’t hunt humans, he’s simply defending the territory that he has been careful to mark-so from his viewpoint, the humans are at fault for not paying attention to his markings.

“Vicious” is well-written and absorbing, and the secondary plot threads (such as the failing marriage of Stephen and Victoria, the background information on Jeremy’s first marriage and dog, the sorry character of Demon & Delilah’s owner, and more) keep readers glued to the ongoing story. Although quite frequently violent, the violence is part of the context and not gratuitous. The author includes an additional, divergent, ending as well, for the preference of some readers. (This reviewer much preferred the second ending.)

[chucklesthescot · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ok, lets start with the good things. The book is well written and the author does a good job of building up the tension as you wonder where and when the dogs are going to attack. The action scenes are detailed and you can easily picture in your head what is going on. The style of writing is uncomplicated and the story flows pretty well. There are exciting bits, there are creepy tense bits and there are killer dogs. Sounds like a good plan for a horror book to me. Actually anything with teeth is a good plan...

I liked the plot itself and it was easy to imagine how you would respond to the situation if you were in it. I'm pretty sure that any plan that you or I came up with would be better than the very dumb things that these idiots were thinking up. I'm not going into details as it would ruin the whole plot but you really need to think through your plans before opening doors and windows or crap is going to happen! I'm all for the characters trying things and having the plans go wrong but these people were doing idiot things that would NEVER work and left me rolling my eyes when it went bad. I found that point a bit frustrating. I think if you are yelling at the book about 'that's stupid!' or 'what are you THINKING?'at least it means you are engaged with the book, which is better than not getting into it at all. So this did not in any way spoil the book.

So, plot niggles? I understand that the whole point of the book was to have them all trapped in the cabin so I can forgive the men not jumping back into the car where they are attacked to drive off for help while the girls barricade themselves inside. From a plot point of view there would be no story if that happened so that was ok. It was other plot things that didn't quite make sense. Every one of the four left their mobile phones and handbags in the car as they went to unlock the door to the cabin. Um, no...Every female I know who carries a phone or bag would instinctively lift those as they exited the car and THEN think about suitcases and bags of supplies. Every guy I know would shove the phone in a pocket and then grab the bags. We already know that cell phone coverage is spotty near the cabin so there was no need to have them leave the things in the car. It just isn't realistic for four young professionals to all leave their phones in the car! Minor issue though.

The characters were a bit of a mixture. I didn't have any great feelings one way or the other for Jeremy and Amelia. That might sound like a problem but in a short horror novel you don't need to love the characters to like the plot. I did like Veronica. She was smart without being snotty and she pretty much deserved a medal putting up with Stephen for so long. Seriously, Stephen was a complete arse in the opening chapters. He's divorcing his wife because she has changed her mind about giving up her career to have his kids-and the way he keeps calling her a deal breaking and saying she knew what was expected of her when they married makes her sound like a brood mare! And of course he would never give up his precious career if the roles were reserved. He forces her to go along on this holiday when she doesn't want to go, he annoys Jeremy all the way to the cabin by messing with the radio, moaning about the lack of facilities and lecturing Jeremy for being able to live without things like TIVO and GPS. He is a complete moron. The gardener is a foul mouthed idiot who moans about doing the job he is paid to do. The cop is a lazy git. The female cop is clueless how to do her job.

To be fair to the author, the characters totally changed when the crisis occured, as would happen when things go so badly wrong. Jeremy went from leader to making dumb mistakes while Veronica came up with ideas that were all shot down by the others. However it was Stephen who became the big brave hero which makes me forgive the author for those first chapters. I guess for him to be heroic we needed to dislike him first! So he redeems himself nicely.

One thing that did really annoy me was the alternative ending. The author chose to write a book with killer dogs, knowing that for the humans to win, the dogs had to be injured or killed. Then he puts in an afterword that apologizes for his story, his declarations that he loves dogs, and a rewritten ending which was really bad. It was as if he was forced to write the story and was now issuing a disclaimer. So why write it in the first place? I mean, it was made clear during the book that the dogs went bad because of human ill treatment-in fact it was mentioned every couple of pages and got a bit wearing after a while. We get all the main characters having sympathy for the dogs all the way through it to the point of me thinking, just let them eat you then! Why write it if you didn't want to write about dogs being hurt> That was just weird.

My other big thing was the 'oh I better shove in a sex scene somewhere'. WTF? There is a mauled dead body outside, two of you have been mauled by killer dogs minutes before, you are totally trapped-so lets have sex even though he is still bleeding over her??? Yes I'd feel dead horny in THAT situation. It added nothing to the story, it felt so out of place and it wasn't even a great sex scene. Pointless really.

Overall it was a decent short read with good horror moments if you can forgive it for a few shortcomings.

[Al · Rating 2 out of 5]

Vicious combines the on-the-edge-of-your-chair, what’s-going-to-happen-next intensity of a suspense novel with some horrifying events that would have obvious appeal to fans of the horror genre. There are also lessons to be learned, some intentional, others not. Intended is how early environment affects later behavior, in this instance animals, but you might extrapolate it to humans as well.

The unintentional lesson is that, just as you can’t judge a book by its cover, you also can’t judge a book by its provenance. Although I only review indie books, my definition of indie is broad, including both self-published books and those put out by small “indie” publishers. There is an assumption some readers have that self-published books are shoddily edited at best and much of the time any editing is done by the author. While undeniably true of some, many self-published authors put their books through a quality control process that may well be more extensive than one of the Big 6 publishers would. I know at least one author whose books run a gauntlet of three edits (at different places in the process), four rounds of proofreading, and a team of beta readers, before release.

The flip side is that just because a book has a publisher, doesn’t mean it was adequately edited and proofread. The assumption is that the publisher will provide the quality control and any polishing needed. In the case of Vicious, they didn’t. Although the proofreading didn’t exceed my threshold for these kind of errors, it was close, with several wrong, missing, and misspelled words, plus instances of multiple periods (full stops, if you prefer) at the end of a sentence and words with no spaces between them.

The bigger issues were some plot holes or inconsistencies, plus an annoying tendency to repeat the same words close together, both of which I’d have expected an editor to either fix or kick back to the author for rework

An example of an inconsistency is in one scene where a policeman sees a puddle of something that “was liquid and the smell told him it was blood.” Then within a few paragraphs we have this:

He could smell something in the air, but his brain was not, at first, able to process it. It was a sickly sweet smell that he knew was, at once, familiar, and entirely alien.

Of course this turns out to be blood. But we (and he) already knew that.

Repetition of words or entire phrases can sometimes be a good thing, giving the words a rhythm or emphasis that drives home an important point. Johnny Cochran’s repetition of the phrase, “if it doesn’t fit, you must acquit,” during his closing arguments in the O.J. Simpson trial, is one example. Repeating a word can sometimes act as glue, tying two thoughts near each other together (as when I say a word again in the next sentence).

However, more often repetition is, depending on the situation, either jarring or boring in the same way as a monotone speaking voice. In those instances, using another word (like using “say a word again” instead of “repeat” a couple sentences ago) or rewording, can fix the issue. A case in point is this sentence, “Jeremy Liden awoke to a bright, sunshine-filled morning and blinked his eyes as the rays pierced his eyes.” Doesn’t the double use of the word ‘eyes’ jar? Here, a simple rewording, by dropping ‘his eyes’ (what else is he going to be blinking?) fixes the problem. Another example are these three sentences in a row starting with “he” and some verb. “He stepped onto the stairs. He descended slowly, always prepared at any moment, to run back up. He saw nothing and heard nothing.” Changing the middle sentence to “Descending slowly, he was always prepared …” is one way this snippet might have been made a bit less monotone.

On the positive side, we all learn from lessons, even if they’re unintentional.

**Originally written for "Books and Pals" book blog. May have received a free review copy. **

[Heidi · Rating 3 out of 5]

I received this book for an honest review.

Although this isn't my usual choice of genre, I do believe strongly that more attention needs to be focused on illegal dog fighting and the ramifications it has on the animals. This in itself gave me the inclination to actually read it. This story does take it to the extreme with "Vicious" dog attacks you can see where the Author was coming from in making a point on how dogs bred and raised for dog fighting might react in a given situation like unexpected freedom and survival. I am not familiar with this breed of dog to actually know if they are capable of hunting and attacking like portrayed in this story, and in all seriousness I do not ever want to find out! Scared the living day lights out of me! Tomorrow my dogs are getting extra loving and extra treats!

The story was a bit slow to start and was overly descriptive in the initial meeting of the humans of the story. I felt that many of the pages describing the characteristics and personalities of Jeremy, Amelia, Stephen and Veronica dragged on and we were given a lot of information that we really didn't need. It made the chapters drag a bit and it wasn't until half way through the book that the action started to pick up and the book became more interesting and enthralling. I am not sure how I feel about the alternative ending as to me as a dog lover I am a firm believer of being humane. There needed to be closure in the story and the first ending gave the reader this the second left it open for more abuse and suffering on both the dogs part and for other humans. There aren't many stories that can leave me feeling unnerved but this one definitely hits you right in the gut. If you like thrillers that get your heart pumping, then definitely this book is a good read!

[Jacque · Rating 3 out of 5]

I received Vicious by Bryan W. Alaspa as an ARC for my honest opinion.
At the very beginning of the book there is a forward by the author that he doesn’t “believe that there are dogs that are born bad” and that “Men turns dog into mean dogs”. I highly agree with these two statements. With that said I have to say Vicious was a very well written harrowing tale. I immediately felt sorry for the animals from the very beginning, it’s kind of hard not to when you see how they were treated. Don’t get me wrong, I felt sorry for Jeremy and his friends, too, but the true stars of the story are the dogs. To be honest it took me 3 months to read this book and I never finished. It was just too much for me, the violence, all the gore and blood. This disturbingly violent story is definitely not for the faint of heart. If that is what you are into and can get pass the abuse of animals then this is the book for you.

[Lorraine Versini · Rating 4 out of 5]

I approached the book thinking "How can you write 190 odd pages on a dog attack?" I think I kind of expected it to be a lot of fluff around the story, you know, kind of following this pattern: reaaaaally long and slow start-attack-the end. But I was SO wrong!
Plenty of viciousness, plenty of gruesomeness, there's enough to lauch the story but we don't get lost in unnecessary details. But what surprised me was how the attacks were described, and how they were rather "entertaining." They weren't too repetitive, and there was quite a lot of action and gory details.
I liked the insight into the dog's mind, and how it played against the human's mind, and how the survival instinct eventually takes over.
Definitely kept me interested, it was a good read :)

[Barbara Mason · Rating 2 out of 5]

A story about the tenacious of two dogs who have been wronged. Their determination to stake out their own territory and defend it to the death. And there is plenty of that. So it is a fair horror story but has a few unlikely scenarios that can put one off the reading.
Needs some serious editing. There were a few instances where one main character was talking but the Author used the other characters name. Words were switched, ie : Knew, new etc.
The story line was a fairly good one and I would recommend it for light reading.[[ASIN:B00EWPT26M Vicious: A Novel of Suspense]]

[Amy Duckworth · Rating 4 out of 5]

gripping action and suspense but definitely not for the weak of stomach or heart. found it difficult to get through some parts because of the animals (how they were treated and the unfortunate instinctual violence they show). i felt for the humans too (the victims) because while they fought for self-preservation, they also felt compassion for the animals. if you decide to read this, please read the author's note at the beginning so you dont hate him afterward.

[Dave Pope · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not well edited at all, there are plenty of grammatical mistakes and more than a few huh??? moments throughout however it is entertaining. Very similar to a movie that I watched a while back called "The Pack" where a group of holiday makers was terrorized by a pack of dogs. Three stars because I love survival horror stories involving real life monsters (sharks, crocodiles, dogs etc). Purists out there who demand good editing and no plot holes may not enjoy this though.

[Joe · Rating 3 out of 5]

lots of action and gore. i used "cujo times 2" to describe it to a friend.

[M.L. Roos · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good story but needs editing. Too many mistakes and continuity errors that I kept concentrating on that rather than the story. But it does have potential

[Shekie Johnson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Killer dogs

This book kind of reminded me of Cujo. Two viscous dog attacking and killing people.. Dang it's kind of messed up that Veronica died.. I wasn't expecting that

[Brett Grossmann · Rating 3 out of 5]

A bit of a stretch to see two dogs fight off people as well as these two pups. That 4 adults didn't at least grab knives to fend off the animals was unbelievable.