Beyond Night

by Eric S. Brown, Steven L. Shrewsbury

An Epic Fantasy tale of action, adventure, heroism, horror and sorcery… Beyond Night is a Dark Fantasy Horror novel that pulls back the veil of nearly two thousand years of jaded history. Come tread in the bloody footprints left by monsters, soldiers and wizards and behold what lies hidden Beyond Night itself. It’s Bigfoot War mixed with Lovecraftian horror on the edge of the Roman Empire. How could Rome lose a Legion? What could’ve happened to blot out the existence of over five thousand men not only from history but the Earth itself? As the Legion moves north to engage the forces of Pictdom, a dark horror emerges from the bowels of the Earth. Thought to be random attacks by hulking monsters, Decurion August soon learns a dire truth, that these bloody events are directed by opposing the wizards of the Picts. While one side assembles all tribes in a confederated army to battle the Legion, the other pulls these Greyman beasts from the depths of the Earth. August fights not only these creatures and workers of magicks, but internal passions in the Legion itself. Can he discover a way to survive the enormous bloodletting about to take place that will only serve to satisfy the wizards of Pictdom? “Fans of David Gemmell will lap up this earthy, brutal fantasy.” – William Meikle, The Ghost Club Proudly represented by Crystal Lake Publishing—Tales from the Darkest Depths.

Genres: Horror, Fantasy

271 pages, Kindle Edition

Published January 26, 2018

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

Reviews

[Join the Penguin Resistance! · Rating 5 out of 5]

Review: BEYOND NIGHT by Eric S. Brown and Steven Shrewsbury

An epic horror-thriller-historic-fantasy (defying facile categorization), BEYOND NIGHT is a Lovecraftian horror all its own, with a fantastically inclusive metaphysics and living mythology, goddesses resurrected, centuries-old wizards, horrid beasts, and terrors from "beyond night." All this is set in ancient Caledonia [Scotland], where the Roman Emperor is determined to expand his already extensive Empire, wiping out the "primitives" [Picts], controlling an ever-expanding geography. Even the might of the Roman 9th Legion might not be able to withstand the terrors arrayed against their forces, nor the terrors summoned from "beyond night."

[Matthew · Rating 4 out of 5]

A cracking read. Full review to come.

[William M. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beyond Night was a lot of fun to read. Authors Eric S. Brown and Steven Shrewsbury did a fine job of working their writing together into a fairly seamless narrative. I always worry about books with two authors being jarring as each chapter switches to another writer, but that thankfully never happened with this story. Some great imagery, violent battles, and some nicely gory kills made the pace of this book move quickly. My only two criticisms were the typos that the publisher should have easily caught and the need for more details regarding the Roman army. I would have loved to know more about how they train, how they feed thousands of men on a long campaign, specific advantages of their selected weapons, what they do to pass the time once their camp is built, etc. A few details were touched upon, but I could have used a lot more to fully paint a realistic Roman army. Regardless, this was a very solid book that more than satisfied my horror and dark fantasy hunger.

[Laura Thomas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bigfoot, a Roman legion, Picts, wizards and bloody carnage. I knew I had to read this book. I’ve enjoyed Eric’s Bigfoot War Series and this is my first time reading something by Steven. I was curious how this author team would handle the disappearance of a Roman legion consisting of 5000 battle seasoned men.

They did an outstanding job, giving a fascinating historical account of the Roman invasion into Pict lands, spicing it up with some magic in the form of wizards, a weaver and a long dead Pict queen.

And let’s not forget Bigfoot. They are huge, mad with a lust for carnage and damn near unstoppable. When the slew of creatures attack the Roman’s its absolute chaos and this horror fan loved it.

There was a hitch in my reading pleasure though. It was hard going at the beginning. The sentences were oddly written. I’m guessing its written as the character’s would speak in their time. And commas often felt like they were in the wrong place, breaking the flow of the story for me. Once I got the hang of it, I was able to concentrate more on the story. My copy is an ARC so I have no idea if the published book has these same occurrences.

There’s so many agendas in play. Each side believes theirs is the right one and use any means necessary to win. Subterfuge, strategy, magic and blunt force all come into play as all move toward an epic battle.

Egad, this was one dark, vicious read, filled with heavy atmosphere. The writing was powerful and I easily visualized many scenes, my imagination fueled by movies like The 13th Warrior and The Centurian.

If you’re a fan of Bigfoot, Lovecraftian and historical horror, you’ll want to read this one.

I received a complimentary copy. My review is voluntarily given.

[Darrell Grizzle · Rating 4 out of 5]

Historical fiction set in the ancient Roman Empire, mixing grimdark sword-and-sorcery, Lovecraftian horror, Bigfoot monsters (called “Greymen”), and lots of action, some of it gory at times. Not for the squeamish! Some of the dialogue seemed a little anachronistic at times, but overall this was an enjoyable read. Recommended for fans of grimdark and action-horror.

[Ann Keeran · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic portrayal of what might have happened to the Roman Army. Underground creatures, humongous monsters and mythical bad guys will entertain and scare the britches off you! Two thumbs up!

[Nicholas Diak · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beyond Night is a sword and sandal meets monstrous bestial horror novel. The story follows the Ninth Legion as they press forward into Scotland and encounter not just an army of Picts, but an endless onslaught of bipedal beast-men. The best way to summarize Beyond Night is to call it the ultimate Neil Marshall film, as it contains core elements of some of his seminal work. The aforementioned Centurion provides the narrative of the Ninth, while his film, The Descent (2005), provides elements of characters facing underground monsters, and Dog Soldiers (2002), sees highly trained military men square off with bipedal beasts (in this case, werewolves).

This is a super abridged review for Goodreads. My review for the book is originally posted at Fanbase Press and can be read in its entirety here:

http://fanbasepress.com/index.php/pre...

[Swords & Spectres · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a book that, when seeing the advertising done by Crystal Lake, I was incredibly excited for. I am a massive lover of ancient history and all things paranormal. So when I saw that there was a book that pitted the romans against an army of Bigfoot … well, I was over the moon. Even more so when I was offered the chance to review it.

Sadly, my excitement was ill-placed. Admittedly, the review copy I got was an unedited version, so I shall not mark this book low for the spelling mistakes and grammatical errors I came across. I will, however, mark it low for claiming it features romans and pretty much having them be as un-romanlike as one could imagine. Everything from the slang they used to their total lack of discipline towards superior officers just smacked of anything but the well-drilled men of Rome. When I refer to slang, I mean the use of the word ‘Savvy’. If I were to just pretend the word was not created in the late 18th century and was one of the few words to not have any root in the Latin language, then it still would have sounded alien coming out of the roman mouths as often as it did. But, the overuse of a word that didn’t crop up until 1785 just kind of rubbed me the wrong way.

I also thought they could have referenced some of Rome’s exploits more than they did. They are, after all, a fiercely proud warrior nation. As it was, it just felt like soldiers wearing roman garb than actual romans. I just came away with a sense that it hadn’t been well-researched.

There were aspects of the book I enjoyed. For the most part, the combat was described incredibly well. There was one battle (between Porcius and ‘The Greyman’) that was quite possibly the worst fight scene I have ever read. Beyond that, it was top notch as far as descriptive writing in battles go. I also liked the character of August. The parts in which he featured were always interesting and kept me turning the pages.

To be fair, the start was good and kept me interested. When you first see the romans go up against the unknown entities that turn out to be the bigfoot army, I was constantly wondering what would happen next. How would they get themselves out of this impossible situation etc …

But then it just felt like it dragged. I got halfway through and already felt as though it was going on too long (considering the relative shortness of this ‘epic’ it could have been due to my not enjoying it that it felt like this for me). For me, there was too many POVs; whether they were roman or from the pict/druid side of things. It just felt like more and more POVs were used to make the book longer and force on it the label of ‘epic fantasy’. Or to make the plot more complex than it needed to be.

There have been a fair amount of reviews and ratings for this on Amazon and Goodreads giving it 4 or 5 stars so perhaps my opinion is a severe minority. But I just couldn’t enjoy it as much as I wanted to. Which is a shame as, given the gorgeous, absolutely glorious cover art, I was hoping it would be a book that I devoured and yearned for more.

[Nick Lucky · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wanted to like this book, but I just couldn't get into it though I tried(made it 50%). For me, the pacing was off, the dialogue awkward and inconsistent. But hey, not every book is for every reader.

[GracieKat · Rating 3 out of 5]

Beyond Night is kind of a fifty-fifty review for me. I didn't realize that Beyond Night was a creature horror (and that was totally my fault)  and I don't really get into monster fiction too much.  So I tried not to rate Beyond Night too harshly in that aspect as someone who likes long-legged beastie stories might enjoy it more than I did. It was a quick read with an even pace to it. It gives you time to get to know the characters but still has lots of action packed scenes as well.

The historical details in Beyond Night were very interesting. However, there were some areas that felt a bit off. The character's speech, along with the narration, sounded way too modern for the time period it was set in. I don't know if this was done on purpose to make the characters more relatable or if they had trouble getting into older speech patterns. I don't need it to be one hundred percent authentic but it should at least be close and sometimes it was very jarring. For instance, a Greek soldier uses modern British slang words. It pulls you out of the story.

There were also some oddly constructed sentences. I had to read a few of them over a couple of times to get what they were trying to say. There are also some strange conversations. I'm guessing they are anecdotes for the historical based figures but there is not any lead up or introduction or even narration to pinpoint it so it's hard to tell and they just come off sounding strange and random.

I did like the 'Coda' chapter at the end talking about The Grey Man of Ben MacDhui. The Grey Man has always interested me as it seems at first to be a Bigfoot type of legend but there are elements that veer sharply from your typical Bigfoot tale. Such as the unreasoning panic people get while on the mountain in Scotland. There have also been reports of conversations with 'something' that people can never remember afterward. It's a very interesting story in its own right and very easy to look up.

I'm not sorry I read Beyond Night but the above issues take you out of the story with a jerk. Maybe someone more interested in creature horror might be willing to overlook them but I couldn't. I would also like to mention that these same issues seem to be present in the ARC and the finished copy.

For this and other awesome horror/sci-fi reviews check out my link text

Received from publisher for review consideration

[Michael Fassbender · Rating 2 out of 5]

In part, this book suffers from bad marketing. The blurb from David Drake identifies it as "vivid Lovecraftian horror" but the novel itself is something else entirely: an action/adventure story with some Sword & Sorcery elements, more akin to the works of Robert E Howard than of Lovecraft. There's nothing wrong with that; it's just not what I had sought.

In broad strokes, the story is engaging enough. The Ninth Legion at the fringes of Britannia face both human foes and hordes of monsters known as the Greymen. The Greymen are fairly conventional monsters, akin to Bigfoot and Yeti (and thus familiar territory for co-author Eric Brown), but they in turn are controlled by a Pictish sorcerer who serves as the primary nemesis.

The writing, however, distracted me more and more as the story progressed. A certain degree of unevenness might be expected in a book written by two co-authors. I found that this book sorely needed another round of editing. The text was rife with the kinds of errors that spellcheckers will never discover: substituting scrounged for scourged, arched for ached, close for clothes, and inane for insane. In other cases, this reader was unable to decipher what they really intended. On page 321, they wrote, "with true purpose in his steps, trite and fast..." Clearly, they meant something other than "trite" in this context.

Beyond spelling, the book suffers at times from passages with troubled syntax, and also with uneven dialogue. At times, the dialogue becomes too modern, as in this sample from page 163: "Well, ya got me there, sister, or Queen, if that's what ya really are now that yer here." The speaker of that line is said to be a descendent of the Spartans, serving in the Legion. Other anachronisms jumped out at me, but many of them are unlikely to be noticed without fairly specialized historical knowledge.

Dedicated action/adventure readers may well overlook such flaws. Indeed, fast, informal prose and irreverent comebacks are probably selling points for many.

[Gilbert Stack · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wanted to like this book more than I did. I love Rome and I’ve read at least one other Brown book, but this novel never quite worked for me. The biggest problem was that the Roman legion never once felt Roman to me. The lack of discipline was the largest problem, but there were subtle elements as well such as the speech of the legionnaires that never quite made me believe that we were dealing with one of the most successful militaries the world has ever seen.

On the positive side, the three-way threat proved to be an interesting problem. But again having one be a threat that the Romans repeatedly refused to believe in didn’t quite work. The authors often presented the Romans as condemning superstition when they had a large number of unscientific beliefs themselves. They also had an interest in other peoples’ gods and their disdain for the possibility that there was a genuine supernatural cause for the very unnatural-seeming deaths of their legionnaires just didn’t strike me as believable.

In a horror novel like this I expect most of the characters to die so a lot of the fun is figuring out who will make it through the end of the novel. One of the survivors made me laugh with delight. I’m not sure if I was supposed to like him but he was probably my favorite character, even though he was a decidedly minor one.

[Mark McLemore · Rating 5 out of 5]

An Instant Classic.

As I considered a headline for this review, An Epic Tragedy came to mind. From the grand battles, to the purposeful loss of characters we fall in love with. A blend of the fantastic with the historic. Legends of lore mingled with legends of the battlefield.
A great read, it was hard to put down.

[Debbi Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you are a history buff and ever wondered what happened to the lost Roman Legion here is your answer. Its never an answer you thought of. A very enjoyable book.

[J.N. Cameron · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved every page! A great story!