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Stomping Grounds
What do a giant hummingbird, a vast, city-sized, energy-guzzling blob and a sentient planetoid have in common?
They all want to mess up your day, in a BIG way.
Think you’ve read every giant monster story there is to read? Think again. How about a colossal, rampaging giraffe? How about THIRTY of them? Beavers are pretty cute, eh? Not when they’re snapping your boat in two and gnawing your legs off.
How about a little frog? How about a bloody massive frog, straight from the pits of Hell?
A vast, bloodthirsty bug tears through the streets and a mountainous rhinoceros creature answers the prayers of a desperate man.
These abominations fight tooth and claw for your attention along with giant hounds, kangaroos, wasps and sea creatures. Then there’s ancient Mayan monsters, Lovecraftian terrors from beyond the realms of sanity and insidious beasts of every shape conjured up by human meddling.
Oh, and did we mention the platypus?
So here they are, seventeen stories, seventeen monsters, all here to
delight and disgust you as they return to their Stomping Grounds!
They all want to mess up your day, in a BIG way.
Think you’ve read every giant monster story there is to read? Think again. How about a colossal, rampaging giraffe? How about THIRTY of them? Beavers are pretty cute, eh? Not when they’re snapping your boat in two and gnawing your legs off.
How about a little frog? How about a bloody massive frog, straight from the pits of Hell?
A vast, bloodthirsty bug tears through the streets and a mountainous rhinoceros creature answers the prayers of a desperate man.
These abominations fight tooth and claw for your attention along with giant hounds, kangaroos, wasps and sea creatures. Then there’s ancient Mayan monsters, Lovecraftian terrors from beyond the realms of sanity and insidious beasts of every shape conjured up by human meddling.
Oh, and did we mention the platypus?
So here they are, seventeen stories, seventeen monsters, all here to
delight and disgust you as they return to their Stomping Grounds!
321 pages, Kindle Edition
First published December 25, 2014
1 person is currently reading
17 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
March 15, 2015
I am a horror movie loving child of the 50s. In the days of nuclear doom and the cold war, the movie scare of the decade was mutant monsters. From the 50s to the early 60s, I couldn’t get enough of them. Speaking of them, THEM!, the giant ant spectacular, was the Citizen Kane of big monster films. Yet even the bad ones were fun. Ranging from giant tarantulas to 50 foot colossal men, they were a jolting escape from the real scares of nuclear war. Dying from a nuclear blast …no fun. But fighting giant rabbits in Night of the Lepus or Killer Shrews in Attack of the Killer Shrew? Cool! Who cared if most of the films were terrible? The camp was half the fun.
Stomping Grounds (Short Sharp Shocks #2) goes back to that time of mutant scaries. Its seventeen stories are all about monsters attacking the poor humans in one way or another. Even those that are not all about giant mutants, there are a couple Lovecraftian influenced tales wedged in, still harbor a fondness for the big and campy. Most have a tongue in cheek quality and could be classified as “Monster Slapstick”. The best ones are enjoyable and fun.
I just wish there were more that were enjoyable and fun. Overall the quality is uneven fringing on Four Wheel Drive only territory. Some read like a good idea underdeveloped and others just never take off. The good ones stick to the humorous idea of mutants. One of the exceptions is “Juggernaut” by JC Henderson which comes off as a rowdy parody of Lovecraftian terrors. Christine Morgan in “The Humming” deserves credit for tackling a hummingbird as a giant monster. It didn’t scare me but I did giggle. From there on, it is a bit of a drought until you come to Amy Braun’s “Bring Back the Hound”, a creative tale in which Hermes and Charon venture to capture an escaped Cerberus and deliver him back to Hades. It may be the best of the lot.
But my favorites were still the ones that seem to feed off the 50s monster movies and celebrate the silliness. “Avanc” by DJ Tyrer catches the idea of radiated 50s style terror well and adds a nice moral: Don’t frack near a nuclear plant. Peter Mesling’s “On the Strangest Sea” has a Captain Ahab leviathan ring to it. But the weirdest, almost “Bizarro” story is “Blood Run” where our nearly suicidal heroes tackles a herd (“tower”?) of 30 foot giraffes. It is a bit of a blood fest that will leave you laughing and gagging at the same time.
I really wish there were more tales that caught my fancy. Over all it was not really that entertaining due to so many misses. It is a cute idea but not one that was fulfilled in the final project. Unfortunately, despite a few cute stories, I would have to give this collection a miss rather than a hit.
Stomping Grounds (Short Sharp Shocks #2) goes back to that time of mutant scaries. Its seventeen stories are all about monsters attacking the poor humans in one way or another. Even those that are not all about giant mutants, there are a couple Lovecraftian influenced tales wedged in, still harbor a fondness for the big and campy. Most have a tongue in cheek quality and could be classified as “Monster Slapstick”. The best ones are enjoyable and fun.
I just wish there were more that were enjoyable and fun. Overall the quality is uneven fringing on Four Wheel Drive only territory. Some read like a good idea underdeveloped and others just never take off. The good ones stick to the humorous idea of mutants. One of the exceptions is “Juggernaut” by JC Henderson which comes off as a rowdy parody of Lovecraftian terrors. Christine Morgan in “The Humming” deserves credit for tackling a hummingbird as a giant monster. It didn’t scare me but I did giggle. From there on, it is a bit of a drought until you come to Amy Braun’s “Bring Back the Hound”, a creative tale in which Hermes and Charon venture to capture an escaped Cerberus and deliver him back to Hades. It may be the best of the lot.
But my favorites were still the ones that seem to feed off the 50s monster movies and celebrate the silliness. “Avanc” by DJ Tyrer catches the idea of radiated 50s style terror well and adds a nice moral: Don’t frack near a nuclear plant. Peter Mesling’s “On the Strangest Sea” has a Captain Ahab leviathan ring to it. But the weirdest, almost “Bizarro” story is “Blood Run” where our nearly suicidal heroes tackles a herd (“tower”?) of 30 foot giraffes. It is a bit of a blood fest that will leave you laughing and gagging at the same time.
I really wish there were more tales that caught my fancy. Over all it was not really that entertaining due to so many misses. It is a cute idea but not one that was fulfilled in the final project. Unfortunately, despite a few cute stories, I would have to give this collection a miss rather than a hit.
February 4, 2016
Great collection of monsters and mayhem! I couldn't believe the amount of heart and dedication that went into these stories! The variety was welcome and exciting, some of the stories creepy and serious while others were darkly hilarious. Definitely worth picking up if you love monster stories.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews