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It's Loose
Each spring, there are weeks when Ice Island, Michigan, is completely cut off from the mainland. Usually, it is a peaceful, lonely time. But this year, the Evil has come...
One by one, it possesses the islanders, bringing their secret, guilty fears to life -- driving them into frenzied sprees of murder and mutilation. Ancient, ravenous, it feasts on death and terror, rising from the broken body of its host only to strike again. For the panic-stricken residents of Ice Island, there is nowhere to run ... and no way to know who will fall prey to the madness next.
Only one man understands the source of the terrible carnage. For years, aging ex-cop Steven Kesselring has followed the Evil's grisly path across America. Now, within the ravaged confines of Ice Island, he must use his one chance to destroy it -- in a final, soul-shrieking battle...
One by one, it possesses the islanders, bringing their secret, guilty fears to life -- driving them into frenzied sprees of murder and mutilation. Ancient, ravenous, it feasts on death and terror, rising from the broken body of its host only to strike again. For the panic-stricken residents of Ice Island, there is nowhere to run ... and no way to know who will fall prey to the madness next.
Only one man understands the source of the terrible carnage. For years, aging ex-cop Steven Kesselring has followed the Evil's grisly path across America. Now, within the ravaged confines of Ice Island, he must use his one chance to destroy it -- in a final, soul-shrieking battle...
312 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published July 1, 1990
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
July 16, 2018
What a quick and thrilling read. An ancient evil force is loose on an isolated island of Lake Superior? It besets a host and killing people is his business. It feeds on those dead? Is the police able to stop this foe? A classic 80s story on evil overwhelming a small town. Extremely well written fast paced, eerie. It was my first book from Battin and it won't be my last. Pageturning horror story. Reading the book is like watching a movie. Highly recommended!
November 27, 2020
It was very old, as old as the Earth itself. Maybe older. Maybe its kind had floated in space even before the universe was formed. It was unable to remember. It had many names, but they were all names invented by humans and thus of no significance. It had no name of its own, designated by its own kind. Ahead was a two-story house with green shutters. It felt drawn to that house, for someone within was ready, open, waiting. Waiting for it. And it would feed.
Yep, straight from the horse's mouth, the author himself (B.W. Battin) giving a little background on the type of evil entity let loose in this story. The snag in the story for me was when I found myself litterally yelling in my head at the almost too naïvely written protagonist Ice Island constable. There were times I really felt like slapping him into action. He really had no clue how to handle anything this serious and had no inner heroism in his character make up. The only things he seemed trained to do was to hand out tickets for traffic infractions to summer tourists, handle drunk and disorderly calls and dust for fingerprints (the only advanced class he had taken for his law enforcement career). All in all this was a pretty neat old fashioned style horror tale, well written which kept the reader tuned into the flow of the story.
Yep, straight from the horse's mouth, the author himself (B.W. Battin) giving a little background on the type of evil entity let loose in this story. The snag in the story for me was when I found myself litterally yelling in my head at the almost too naïvely written protagonist Ice Island constable. There were times I really felt like slapping him into action. He really had no clue how to handle anything this serious and had no inner heroism in his character make up. The only things he seemed trained to do was to hand out tickets for traffic infractions to summer tourists, handle drunk and disorderly calls and dust for fingerprints (the only advanced class he had taken for his law enforcement career). All in all this was a pretty neat old fashioned style horror tale, well written which kept the reader tuned into the flow of the story.
November 18, 2018
B.W. Battin shows us how a classic horror novel is done. Paced remarkably well with a prologue that reads like the crack of a pistol to start the race, this book delivers thrills from beginning to end.
It doesn't meet 4-star status for me because the above-mentioned pacing gets a bit hung up at the end. In an attempt to draw out the tension, Battin takes the lazy route by having characters repeatedly fail to take decisive action at critical times that could have ended the story earlier. It got a little ridiculous, like watching the end of Peter Jackson's "Return of the King." If you were looking at your watch every time Frodo fell while approaching Mount Doom and cringed while listening to Sam's semi-erotic encouragement about eggs and crispy bacon, the end of this book may leave you similarly annoyed.
The other drawback is that the monster is not terribly original, though fans of Stephen King's "It" will appreciate the concept of a cosmic Evil older than Earth terrorizing a small town. There was also a bit of an "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" homage as well. And by now, horror fans have all been introduced to multiple ways an entire town under seige can become isolated from the potential help and succor of the rest of civilization. But despite being littered with familiar tropes, the story still holds its own and keeps you entertained with some real nail-biting and disturbing scenes.
Battin does do some refreshingly rare things when compared to his contemporaries, however. There is not a single act of gratuitous and unnecessary sex, no annoying characters, and no cheap shock-value smut. Though it has quite a serving of gore, most of the violence takes place outside of the POV of the characters and the readers. We are left with the gruesome aftermath of horrible happenings, leaving us to imagine the details of what the victims had to endure (a la the great film, "The Exorcist 3.") At least for me, these choices by the author kept the book tight and focused. This comes as no surprise since Battin is primarily a thriller writer, not your typical horror novel engine.
The writing is pragmatic and functional, not heavy or poetic, yet is superb. Somehow, the pages sing as you read them. There is a kind of rhythm to Battin's style that makes his work easy for all readers to get immersed in the story. I've read a lot of horror writers from the 70's through the 90's paperback boom, and Battin's prose is some of the best.
There isn't a lot of subliminal imagery, deeper meanings, clever wit, or trend-setting to be found here--just good old-fashioned scares delivered straight. Give it a try!
It doesn't meet 4-star status for me because the above-mentioned pacing gets a bit hung up at the end. In an attempt to draw out the tension, Battin takes the lazy route by having characters repeatedly fail to take decisive action at critical times that could have ended the story earlier. It got a little ridiculous, like watching the end of Peter Jackson's "Return of the King." If you were looking at your watch every time Frodo fell while approaching Mount Doom and cringed while listening to Sam's semi-erotic encouragement about eggs and crispy bacon, the end of this book may leave you similarly annoyed.
The other drawback is that the monster is not terribly original, though fans of Stephen King's "It" will appreciate the concept of a cosmic Evil older than Earth terrorizing a small town. There was also a bit of an "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" homage as well. And by now, horror fans have all been introduced to multiple ways an entire town under seige can become isolated from the potential help and succor of the rest of civilization. But despite being littered with familiar tropes, the story still holds its own and keeps you entertained with some real nail-biting and disturbing scenes.
Battin does do some refreshingly rare things when compared to his contemporaries, however. There is not a single act of gratuitous and unnecessary sex, no annoying characters, and no cheap shock-value smut. Though it has quite a serving of gore, most of the violence takes place outside of the POV of the characters and the readers. We are left with the gruesome aftermath of horrible happenings, leaving us to imagine the details of what the victims had to endure (a la the great film, "The Exorcist 3.") At least for me, these choices by the author kept the book tight and focused. This comes as no surprise since Battin is primarily a thriller writer, not your typical horror novel engine.
The writing is pragmatic and functional, not heavy or poetic, yet is superb. Somehow, the pages sing as you read them. There is a kind of rhythm to Battin's style that makes his work easy for all readers to get immersed in the story. I've read a lot of horror writers from the 70's through the 90's paperback boom, and Battin's prose is some of the best.
There isn't a lot of subliminal imagery, deeper meanings, clever wit, or trend-setting to be found here--just good old-fashioned scares delivered straight. Give it a try!
January 14, 2016
A pretty good horror novel that keeps you interested. An islands a few miles off the mainland is cut off by melting ice. The problem is, they have an evil presence among them that likes to take over a host body and do violent things. The ending was one that if you gave it a few seconds to think about, you know what and how things turn out. But the ride to get to the end is a fun one.
March 13, 2024
Review to come.
August 10, 2014
As good as anything Stephen King ever wrote. Believable characters, slightly old fashioned in their references, and in keeping with who and where they are.
July 19, 2016
While not a masterful, spectacular tale by any means, this is a mean little pulp potboiler that keeps you hooked. Sadly very timely, as well, as it concerns mass shootings and the like. The four star rating is applicable when you compare it to the mass market paperback horror of its time. Circa 1990, there were literally thousands of horror novels published, as publishers tried to cash in on the Stephen King/Dean Koontz horror boom. Most of these garishly covered books were terrible, but there were some gems in there as well. Again, this book is not fantastic, and probably doesn't deserve the 4 stars I'm giving it, but it kept me very interested and turning the pages, and that's more than most of its ilk can boast. First thing I've read by BW Battin, writing under his pen name Warner Lee here, I'll be sure to check out more of his stuff.
October 11, 2015
Not a bad story, an evil presence on an trapped on an island town in winter.
April 26, 2021
The back seemed to hint at this being more of a creature feature novel than it really is, but it’s still a bunch of fun.
After an action-packed prologue, we’re introduced to the the inhabitants of Ice Island, a small town off the coast of Michigan that’s cut off from the mainland several weeks a year. When I say “the inhabitants”, I mean ALL of them. I like to write down all the characters of books I read to keep track and I got up to 88 named characters... I doubt it would have been all that confusing without taking notes since a lot of them are unimportant, but that was a very tightly packed notecard I made.
Unexpectedly for a vintage horror novel, the gore was left fairly tame aside from a few major moments and the sexual content was nearly nonexistent. The horror largely focused around the paranoia of who would be the next one to be possessed and how the constable could defeat the demon/spirit without getting himself charged with murder.
I feel like Kesselring’s story was worth telling in longer form than the short summary we’re given. He also seems to disappear for a large chunk of the second act when he should have been hunting just as actively as the constable, if not even more so.
There were some slow moments and points where a character’s actions weren’t very smart, but it was still a very fun small town horror story (and finally one that has an ending instead of nonexistent sequel-bait).
After an action-packed prologue, we’re introduced to the the inhabitants of Ice Island, a small town off the coast of Michigan that’s cut off from the mainland several weeks a year. When I say “the inhabitants”, I mean ALL of them. I like to write down all the characters of books I read to keep track and I got up to 88 named characters... I doubt it would have been all that confusing without taking notes since a lot of them are unimportant, but that was a very tightly packed notecard I made.
Unexpectedly for a vintage horror novel, the gore was left fairly tame aside from a few major moments and the sexual content was nearly nonexistent. The horror largely focused around the paranoia of who would be the next one to be possessed and how the constable could defeat the demon/spirit without getting himself charged with murder.
I feel like Kesselring’s story was worth telling in longer form than the short summary we’re given. He also seems to disappear for a large chunk of the second act when he should have been hunting just as actively as the constable, if not even more so.
There were some slow moments and points where a character’s actions weren’t very smart, but it was still a very fun small town horror story (and finally one that has an ending instead of nonexistent sequel-bait).
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
December 4, 2023
Better than I expected. Surprisingly well-written for the genre, with good pacing, and reads more like a crime thriller than a pulp horror novel.
November 16, 2025
THis is a 90's paperback horror with a good cover and the story inside was pretty good. I thought it started to spin it's wheels a bit towards the end but I still enjoyed it. If it looks interesting to you, you should give it a read.
February 15, 2015
A little long and drawn out but good overall
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May 6, 2015I liked it. being cut off from the world for weeks...or months. going stir crazy....having something hunt you...
July 20, 2015
Great book!
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews