Feuertod

by Tim Curran

Sei leise. Ganz leise.
Kein Geräusch.
Sie sehen dich nämlich nicht. Aber sie können dich hören.

Eine glühende Höllenbrunst aus radioaktivem Staub hat sie auf unsere Welt geführt. Sie brennen dir das Fleisch von den Knochen, sobald sie dich berühren.

Hörst du sie? Sie kommen, gierig auf alles, was sich bewegt … und atmet.
Sei leise. Ganz leise.
Wehe, du schreist ...


Michael Patrick Hicks: »Eine erdrückende, unaufhaltsame Bedrohung bis zum feurigen, apokalyptischen Finale.«

Genres: Horror, Science Fiction

Kindle Edition

First published January 11, 2015

About the author

Tim Curran lives in Michigan and is the author of the novels Skin Medicine, Hive, Dead Sea, Resurrection, The Devil Next Door, and Biohazard, as well as the novella The Corpse King. His short stories have appeared in such magazines as City Slab, Flesh&Blood, Book of Dark Wisdom, and Inhuman, and anthologies such as Shivers IV, High Seas Cthulhu, and Vile Things.

For DarkFuse and its imprints, he has written the bestselling The Underdwelling, the Readers Choice-Nominated novella Fear Me, Puppet Graveyard as well as Long Black Coffin.

Find him on the web at: www.corpseking.com.

Reviews

[Adam Light · Rating 2 out of 5]

Tim Curran has been one of my go-to horror authors after discovering his incredible book Dead Sea a year and a half ago. The man can craft a tale that will curl your hair and leave you wishing there were more lights in the house to turn on when you're alone at night.

I have read quite a few from him and usually finish contented and even more convinced that he is the real deal. Even the ones I thought were just okay were still very well written and were just not my thing.

But this one...

I finished it, but I didn't really want to. To me, this one felt like an idea that Curran kept trying to coax into life, but it just didn't want to be born. It had potential, and at times I was sure it was going to finally kick into gear and blow my mind. And then it was over.

I just sat there staring at my tablet, wondering where the rest of the book was. Seriously, almost every chapter was identical except the names of the characters, none of whom I cared one bit about, and it just kept going and going. Someone saw something, and it was bad. They didn't like it at all. Then something came for them, and they knew it. Practically the whole town of Middleburg got their own chapter, which was excessive and confusing to me. When it became apparent which characters were likely to band together and have a chance to survive, it just ended.

I think it would have made a terrific short story, but ultimately it was too short to feel as long as it did.

I look forward to the next Curran work in my library, and still think he kick's ass, but this one was forgettable. Dead Sea, Blackout, Leviathan, or Skin Medicine are some great examples of what this author can do when he is hitting on all cylinders. I recommend checking any of them out.

[Andi Rawson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Review to come.

[Pamellia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Afterburn by Tim Curran
January 31 to February 1, 2015
Facebook Review
Released in 2014

This story starts out with a bang and keeps on giving. Some strange rain starts in the one-horse town of Middleberg. The odd thing about this rain is that is burned those out in the rain. No problem if you stayed in your home, but who knew. Then as the evening progressed the unburned citizens began to discover what was really going on.

Curran takes us around this small town telling different citizen's story. All were frightened and just wanted to get out of this alive. Like any horror story, some survive and some do not. The time period of this story was less than 12 hours.

The suspense of this story was heightened by the fast paced writing style which included shorter sentences and chapters. I would not exactly call the story staccato, however. It flowed well and connected many of the stories. In the short period of time, there is character development. Few grammar errors were noted and no plot holes. Yeah, for Mr. Curran. I liked the ending of the story.

Recommended.

[Thomas Hobbs · Rating 5 out of 5]

Monsters that ignite you from the inside out some call them Firestarters are destroying a small town in Nevada. If you scream they can find you so to stay alive you need to keep your mouth closed. Amazing story!

[Icy_Space_Cobwebs · Rating 5 out of 5]

Review soon--just excellent! Love the writing, love the implacability!!

--
I read this via Kindle Unlimited, but I do plan to purchase it, as I've been a fan of the excellent Mr. Curran since reading LONG BLACK COFFIN. AFTERBURN has appeal for two categories of readers: those who want their horror excellently written and configured, and those who want their horror EXTREME. (Luckily, I'm both.) The terror here is sizzling (quite literally), stultifyingly stunning, terrifyingly implacable, and utterly indefensible. As in Mr. Curran's also excellent BLACKOUT, DOLL FACE, and DEAD SEA, the cause is inexplicable, unidentifiable, and unstoppable.

[Michael Hicks · Rating 4 out of 5]

A new Tim Curran release is always something to be excited about, but I couldn't help feeling that Afterburn would have benefited from a shorter, more compact execution. There's a five-star novella buried within this four-star (maybe 3.5 star) novel.

My main complaint is that Afterburn just gets too repetitive. The main threat in this story revolves around a group of hell wraiths terrorizing and incinerating the small town of Middleburg. The idea is nifty enough, but frankly, there's just so many times you can read about some hapless victim getting cremated, and Curran pretty well covers all the bases, from exploding eyeballs to burning, popping fat, and human bodies rendered down to tallow and charred bones. There's just a few too many instances of this, though, and it gets a little long in the tooth. And while the back half of the book works incredibly well, it also highlights just how bloated and unnecessary a few of the character vignettes in the front half were.

Curran spends a good amount of time hopping from character to character before finally settling on the main protagonists, which was another problem with the structure of the book's opening, albeit a more minor one. I wasn't quite sure who to root for for quite a while in the book's early going's as each new character that surfaced existed simply to show how prevalent and ominous the mysterious threat plaguing Middleburg really is. I can't help but wonder how many of these characters were introduced and dispatched with just as quickly simply in an effort to increase the word count to novel length.

Still, Curran is able to explore his characters sufficiently well in their, too-frequently, limited page counts. Like Stephen King, Curran is a master of blue-collar horror works, taking regular Joes and shoving them through the meat grinder (sometimes literally, and explicitly detailed at that!) with supernatural prowess. In addition to Abby, we get small-town cops, a high school janitor, a real estate agent cheating on her spouse, and a crabby old bitty who has positioned herself as the neighborhood watch and tacky gossiper. As already noted, some get more minor roles than others in the local tapestry Curran shapes in Afterburn, but we get to know each of them well, sometimes to the detriment of a few of these lowlifes and ne'er-do-wells.

As with a lot of Curran books, though (at least the one I've read so far), once things get going there's little letting up. And here, the action starts off from damn near page one as black rain fall across the town, followed by a burning, crystalline hail that slices and dices its way through any townsfolk unlucky enough to be outside at the time. Sixteen year old Abby is stuck inside babysitting and catching up on her favorite infomercials, and soon enough finds herself to be the caretaker not only for her neighbor's newborn, but another boy whose parents were killed by the burning, yearning, hungry-for-more sentient incinerators.

The threat is damning and unstoppable, leading to a scorching, apocalyptic finale that really kicks this already-amped up story into overdrive. And while this isn't the best work of Curran's that I've read, it's certainly worth a read-through.

[Dawn · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really like Tim Curran! This book was a little different to me than his usual stories. I was so into it at first, but about halfway through it started seeming a little repetitive and then I was waiting for the big resolve at the end and I felt like it kind of just...ended. The usual great descriptives and characters I love, just didn't like it as well as the others I have fallen in love with his writing for.

[Jordan Anderson · Rating 2 out of 5]

There was a time when, in my mind at least, Tim Curran could do no wrong. His books like Dead Sea and Resurrection are 2 books I hold almost directly responsible for my deep dive into horror lit and remain as some of my all time favorite novels.

But now, I don’t know. After a slew of very ho-hum, basic short stories and shorter works of fiction, I’m starting to wonder if Curran has lost it. Afterburn really drives that question home.

The problem with this book isn’t Curran’s ideas or his over the top descriptions. It’s not even the length (though this is the longest 191 pages I can ever remember reading). No, the problem comes with the never ending repetitiveness and the exhaustive circling of the plot. By this I mean that Afterburn just never seems to end. Curran constantly uses the same scenes and descriptions. So much to the point that each chapter is basically a retread of the one before. The characters run for their lives from flaming people, hide, then get discovered again and have to repeat the process. Even when side characters do get caught and die, their demises are the same, right down to the exact same descriptions. Seriously, 191 pages of the same words, locations, and actions. And even when Afterburn does eventually come to a close, it’s conclusion is so pedestrian and relies so much on Deus Ex Machina that’s it’s a huge letdown.

I feel like Afterburn was just the seed of an idea that Curran had but rather than keep it at short story length, he tried to squeeze as much out it as possible to give unnecessary length. And it’s too bad because the author is a far superior writer than this one would have you believe. I just feel like Curran has been in a slump.

[Kristoffer Bolton · Rating 4 out of 5]

Abby is definitely in the running for Curran's most likeable protagonists.
Creative premise and overall a really solid read. Wish we spent a bit more time on Melody and Tommy though.

[Zemyah Lee · Rating 2 out of 5]

In the beginning, the story was good until I got super weird with the janitor.

[Kimmo Makinen · Rating 2 out of 5]

If you don't know what happens when human flesh comes into contact with extreme heat, but you are dying to find out just that, please look no further. Tim Curran's horror novel Afterburn describes in great gory detail and to the point of repetition how flesh and bone lose this fight time and again. The novel is set pretty much entirely within the confines of one small American town and follows the stories of several people who survive the initial impact of a strange event that encompasses the town but whose chances to survive the ensuing mayhem are slim at best.

The story of the book revolves around a few unlikely survivors struggling to understand what has just happened in their serene little town and at the same time trying to avoid the calamity that has changed most of the denizens of the town to crisply burnt-up inhuman predators hunting the remaining humans with superb auditory sense and intense heat. Curran has unfortunately expanded his story - fit for a short story or novella at most - to an entire novel by merely adding more survivors and more gory mayhem with which to dispose them. The superb storytelling of his better works such as the "Hive" -novels or, say, "M/C Cannibal Corpse", is somehow switched off here and exposes the reader to a lot of repetition while survivors dodge the hunters and roam the streets more or less aimlessly. Pages upon pages are sacrificed on grimly detailing how the living tissue succumbs to intense heat and while it is certain that this type of book is only read by horror fiction fans delighting and expecting the gore-drenched carnage in the first place, it is now proven that reading about how eyeballs melt for the dozenth of time in the same novel does indeed get old and weary. There isn't much variation in the detailing either as Curran is resorting to similar verbiage and sentence structures many a time. While the premise of the story is interesting, somehow the story does not much evolve as the pages are guzzled up by the reader and instead we are left with disparate wanderings of random survivors as they stumble from hazard to hazard.

I do not know if this novel was meant to be a short story first but got then expanded into a novel. Whatever the case might be, I found this novel to be repetitious and quite narrow in it's gory detailing and lacking in actual storyline being merely an accounting of several survival stories combined into a single novel with only a limited convergence as few of the survivors teamed up eventually. The ending of the novel was way too short and abrupt and left me as a reader oddly thinking "That's it?". I also have to reduce one "star" from my final review due to the format I bought and read the book in. The Amazon -sold Kindle version of the book ended at 90% of the page count and had an advertisement (the publishers call it a "teaser") of some other book in the form of an introductory chapter taking 10% of the remaining pages. I can not condone this kind of behaviour from the part of the publishers and while it clearly is not the fault of the author, it did piss me off quite royally and did affect my overall reading experience and is thusly reflected in my review. If nothing else, I will always remember Curran's "Afterburn" as the book that ended before it should have.

2/5

[Mya · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have heard how much writers tend to cringe at the phrase 'But it was too short!' Still with this brilliant spark of a book, pun intended, I'm not even gonna be shy about my craving. The idea of a new beast on the scene, one that easily puts the old and decrepit notion of zombies into the dust is hard to put aside. It is an alien invasion story on one hand but definitely a contagion story too. Crystals from the heavens fall upon small town USA scalding and burning folk alive, transforming them into walking, crispy and gooey infernos capable of melting both flesh and bone. Porous pockmarked fiends with steam rising from the holes in their bodies as they shamble toward living prey..Oh and bullets and blades don't even faze them, hell they might even cause them to explode supernova-style! I have to give Mr. Curran props and praise with this one simply for the new monster he has created. They are terrifying and many fall victim to their murderous and infectious intents. I gave this book 4 stars on the idea and execution of terror the creatures caused alone. The missing star is for the ending, which seemed a little too easy and neat for such a terrifying concept but I loved this work all the same.

[FictionFreak · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another Tim Curran horror special! This guy writes awesome one-shot horror stories, although myself, I feel a few of them deserve sequels (Leviathan cough cough). I'm not complaining though. Afterburn is a cool twist on the 'night from hell in a small town' story. Just long enough, it's a fast, blistering summer read. Check it out!

[DAVID C PIRIE · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hot fiction

A distinctly different alien invasion. The many forms of mayhem and chase left me breathless. Although I did wonder why the fireman didn't use their primary weapon first.

[Angela · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am becoming a fan of Tim Curran. This is the third or forth book of his that I have read and they have all been creepy and scary. This on started out a little slow for me, but quickly gained ground.
It was a quick read, which I loved. Very good, again!