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Carrion Shadows
After years of working as a big game hunter, Denise DeMarco wants to retire to the quiet life of a park ranger. However, a doomed expedition into the caves beneath the game reserve accidentally sends something terrifying bubbling to the veldt’s surface. Something prehistoric. Something hungry. Soon, the dark ecosystem is colonizing the surface world, consuming everything and everyone in its path.
Armed with an elephant gun and years of experience, it’s up to Denise to save the blighted park. Swarms of the oozing undead, relentless poachers, and one very angry dinosaur stand in her way. And even if she survives all that, there’s still something trapped underground that wants out. Primeval horrors and ravenous ghouls lurk around every corner as night falls over the park. Denise must use all her skills if she wants to live through the experience.
She must become the ultimate monster hunter.
Armed with an elephant gun and years of experience, it’s up to Denise to save the blighted park. Swarms of the oozing undead, relentless poachers, and one very angry dinosaur stand in her way. And even if she survives all that, there’s still something trapped underground that wants out. Primeval horrors and ravenous ghouls lurk around every corner as night falls over the park. Denise must use all her skills if she wants to live through the experience.
She must become the ultimate monster hunter.
- GenresHorror
212 pages, Kindle Edition
Published June 25, 2017
20 people are currently reading
15 people want to read
About the author
Jonah Buck
35 books15 followersJonah Buck wanted to study eldritch knowledge and commune with pale, semi-human creatures that flit across the sunless landscape to terrorize the living, so he became an Oregon attorney. His interests include history, exotic poultry, paleontology, and professional stage magic.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
February 21, 2021
Denise DeMarco is back in South Africa in 1925 with her sidekick Cornelia for this sequel to Carrion Safari. Still fed up with the big game hunting business and burnt out from her tangle with the Yersinia corporation, Denise is working at a game preserve. This time she’s up against the Triads, an international criminal syndicate that send poacher Zhang Dong to despoil the preserve.
Their face-off is complicated when a jerk named Thornber collects unauthorized samples of a black biological ooze from the preserve’s caves, and his corpse is reanimated in front of Denise, attacking everybody at the ranger station.
The ooze, they discover, is actually microscopic polychaete worms, with the ability to coordinate their action. (Reminiscent of the black maggoty aura that infects Ashitaka and the boar gods in Princess Mononoke). Once they get ahold of a human body or animal host and they kill it, they can control the motion and propulsion of the bones, essentially reanimating the skeletons, and reproduce rapidly.
This is an awesome premise. It means that not only can the worms turn Denise’s enemies and allies into zombies, but in this park, rich with archeological wonders, the worms are able to create zombie dinosaurs!
But the concept is badly undercut in the execution of the novel. I felt like the story was a first or second draft. I don’t mean typos or grammar issues, but like the basics of the story were still being worked out on paper.
There were a few too many adversaries including Thornber (or his corpse), Zhang Dong, and Denise’s superiors at the ranger stations, and I could never quite pick up the main thread. Some scenes that took ten or fifteen pages could have easily been edited down to five.
That and some contemporary-style metaphors (although those had worked for me in the first novel) were clunky here and made the story more goofy than scary. For example, “The corpse looked like it was locked in the grips of a grand mal seizure. That, or a toe-curling orgasm.”
Overall, a big letdown compared to Carrion Safari.
Their face-off is complicated when a jerk named Thornber collects unauthorized samples of a black biological ooze from the preserve’s caves, and his corpse is reanimated in front of Denise, attacking everybody at the ranger station.
The ooze, they discover, is actually microscopic polychaete worms, with the ability to coordinate their action. (Reminiscent of the black maggoty aura that infects Ashitaka and the boar gods in Princess Mononoke). Once they get ahold of a human body or animal host and they kill it, they can control the motion and propulsion of the bones, essentially reanimating the skeletons, and reproduce rapidly.
This is an awesome premise. It means that not only can the worms turn Denise’s enemies and allies into zombies, but in this park, rich with archeological wonders, the worms are able to create zombie dinosaurs!
But the concept is badly undercut in the execution of the novel. I felt like the story was a first or second draft. I don’t mean typos or grammar issues, but like the basics of the story were still being worked out on paper.
There were a few too many adversaries including Thornber (or his corpse), Zhang Dong, and Denise’s superiors at the ranger stations, and I could never quite pick up the main thread. Some scenes that took ten or fifteen pages could have easily been edited down to five.
That and some contemporary-style metaphors (although those had worked for me in the first novel) were clunky here and made the story more goofy than scary. For example, “The corpse looked like it was locked in the grips of a grand mal seizure. That, or a toe-curling orgasm.”
Overall, a big letdown compared to Carrion Safari.
September 23, 2019
I loved book one in this series-Carrion Safari so I was really looking forward to book two but I was pretty disappointed with it. Denise and Cordelia are working at a game reserve tracking spider migration when two rangers assisting on a scientific exploration of a cave system go missing. Basically, this ends up as a conspiracy with the company from the first book finding out about a tar like lake in the cavern that is alive and can infect those it touches, creating human and animal zombie like creatures out of the hosts. They send their man in to kill a scientist and takes his place to go and get samples for the company lab but it all goes wrong and the ooze is on the loose. As people and animals throughout the park spread the infection, a deadly zombie dinosaur is also unleashed. Denise and her friends have to stop the 'zombies', avoid contact with the ooze and stop the people who unleashed the nightmare.
OK the actual living ooze and zombie animal stuff was interesting enough. I liked the man rising under control of the ooze during the autopsy scene. The problem with the book was the padding around that main plot which was not as interesting. The book spends a lot of time on the angst Denise feels about not getting promoted in a job she isn't too sure she wants anyway and concerns over her future. Even more time is spent on the operations to catch the poachers who are chasing animals in the game reserve, including the planning and executing of a full raid and the aftermath, plus a second raid where Denise goes after a few poachers, and finally the poachers being involved working with the evil company. It also delves into the apartheid side of South African life at that stage which really isn't needed and the inner workings of the game reserve and the people. There is a lot of scientific chat as well which wasn't my favourite part. Overall I felt it was way too slow to get to any relevant action and I was disappointed with the book. I hope the third book is better.2.5 stars. Review to follow.
OK the actual living ooze and zombie animal stuff was interesting enough. I liked the man rising under control of the ooze during the autopsy scene. The problem with the book was the padding around that main plot which was not as interesting. The book spends a lot of time on the angst Denise feels about not getting promoted in a job she isn't too sure she wants anyway and concerns over her future. Even more time is spent on the operations to catch the poachers who are chasing animals in the game reserve, including the planning and executing of a full raid and the aftermath, plus a second raid where Denise goes after a few poachers, and finally the poachers being involved working with the evil company. It also delves into the apartheid side of South African life at that stage which really isn't needed and the inner workings of the game reserve and the people. There is a lot of scientific chat as well which wasn't my favourite part. Overall I felt it was way too slow to get to any relevant action and I was disappointed with the book. I hope the third book is better.2.5 stars. Review to follow.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews