Starvation Assembly

by Jack Night

Blackwood County has long been a place of strangeness and legends. Grace knows this. It is a place where her nearest neighbors are bootleggers and moonshiners. A place where decades of trash and secrets are disposed of in a hole that never fills up, and where creatures rumored to have once been children stalk the forests at night.

When Grace encounters a strange girl in the woods she finds herself plunged into the darkest heart of the mysteries and legends she's grown up with. A Blackwood where the truth is far worse than the myth.

Genres: Horror

156 pages, Paperback

First published January 30, 2015

Reviews

[Angela · Rating 4 out of 5]

A quick and intriguing sci-fi horror

“Home. Where my family and I live. Where we have always lived. Long before your kind we’re here.”

“Starvation Assembly” by Jack Night gets 3.5 out of 5 stars!

This book popped up as a recommendation on Amazon. I had never heard of the author, but the cover caught my attention as well as the synopsis. I’m always intrigued by “backwoods folklore” and it’s woven right into this short story.

This story is told through a multi-narrative and dual timeline format with each chapter told by the perspective of a specific character. The writing was engaging, fast-paced and easy to follow. There are some reviews that didn’t agree with some of the characters descriptions and actions, but (in my opinion) it helped the depiction of the area and it’s people. Unfortunately, this is a real part of history in some areas and can be disgustingly heartbreaking but it solidified many aspects of the story as well as the mindset and actions.

There are a few things that could have been better executed. The sinkholes and phosphorescent markings were not completely explained considering one of the homes was still present and dilapidated but marked in the previous timeline. The ending was anti-climatic and felt rushed to conclude both timelines. Lastly, “The Melonheads” are folklore and differ base on region, but I felt this history wasn’t portrayed well with lack of more information to accompany the sci-fi twist. It felt like there were too many local legends / rumors but nothing solidified their story, not even in the ending. Overall, this is a quick and intriguing read with dark aspects for a decent sci-fi horror.

Rating rounded up. Please visit my GoodReads profile or website for more reviews. Thank you!

[Nathaniel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Edit: The author commented and made some things clear. Here was my original review. I have some things added below to make up for some of the misunderstanding.
Buckle in for this fun, spicy review because I have some things to say about this book.
Jack Night did quite a few things in this book that made me mad. Here's the thing, this book was a ton of fun! His writing was really easy to follow and very fast-paced, his characters were described well and had solid personalities, and the plot was so intriguing. Yet two of the characters really got on my nerves and I really hate some of the things said in this book.
So in one chapter, 'boys will be boys' was used two times to make it ok that:
1. The teenagers were checking out their cousin
2. The uncle was peeking into his nieces room as she changed.
But boys will be boys so that is just to be expected and they weren't in the wrong and the uncle is fine because he took her in and fed her so he deserves some sort of reward. That's literally what the book said. Umm, no thank you. The author never said anything past this or made it clear that this wasn't acceptable and that just struck me in the wrong way. I'm fine with behaviour like this being portrayed in books as long as the author makes sure that their audience knows that THIS IS NOT OK.
The other character was a disgusting step father. Literally all we got from him was abusive vibes. Again, nothing was done and the mom went along with it. Jack Night spent too much time describing the sounds that the daughter heard through the wall. Umm, please just don't do that. We don't need it.
I really don't know why this book had to be the way it was because it could've easily gotten a four star review without some of this garbage.

Added stuff:
There were a couple things I wanted to talk about that this author did really well.
1. I loved the relationships between people because he did show a wide variety of toxic and good relationships. Many authors only write one or the other and it was nice to see a good, realistic mixture of both relationships.
2. I think he's a fantastic writer. As I mentioned in my comment below, this is the type of stuff that I love to write and seeing someone publish it really inspires me. He has a great flow with his plot and he knows how to write engaging dialogue.
3. The suspense was great. Even though the reveal was pretty basic, he played around with it until it became something really exciting and fun. I love how he ended up bringing people together and the ending was done so well. I do recommend this book for fellow sci-fi/novella fans. It's quick but still has good content.

[Megan Hex · Rating 3 out of 5]

Quick read, didn’t realize it was a novella! I liked the story a lot; I wish there had been some more editing, which detracted from it some for me. Aside from that, I enjoyed it and it had a good unexpected twist.

[Langel Catan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Disappointed.
Good at first but became very hard to follow and slowly it fell apart.
Neat idea just poor execution as it moved forward.
It’s like a bad x-files episode.

[Robin Dilks · Rating 5 out of 5]

A complete scare fest. Jack Night delivers again with this frightening novella. It was worth the read and I highly recommend it.
If you ant more about Jack Night or his upcoming books please follow the link.

http://www.scout1881.com/

[Barbara A Pawling · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fun, fast paced

Good reading, fast and easy to understand. Read it in a few hours. Second book I've read by the author and am going to read his other book