Lizard People

Spinetinglers #27

by M.T. Coffin

On a dare, Michael enters an empty old house and finds himself in a nightmare world where everyone is a lizard, including himself, and he struggles to find his way back home or facing being a lizard forever. Original.

Genres: Horror

123 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 1997

Reviews

[Alejandro Joseph · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really don’t know how to feel on this one. Lizard People is one of Jim Deflice’s additions to the Spinetinglers series, and his writing is passable here. The idea here is good and the whole reason I anticipated this book, whether I was gonna like it or not. I think the world that was built up was good as well, and the characterization was decent, with Sam being the best here. There’s some solid theming her as well with finding where you belong in the world, beinf outcasted, and loose touches on conformity. The ending is delighting too. But I think the execution of this lizard universe is underwhelming. There’s a couple of info dumps which could’ve been more sparse, some padding and story meandering with the counterpart family stuff, and there’s some aspects of the story that aren’t explained, like that Michael’s counterpart’s whereabouts is left a bit too up in the air, and the house transportation thingamabob is buttfuck random (of all things, a house? Bruh.) The first half isn’t very good, and the a personal dissatisfaction is that the lizard folk are only lizard in the head. Why not the whole body? Why are they crossbred? Just a nitpick there. And the story just feels somewhat meaningless, as arbitrary as that sounds with it having themes. Overall, 6.5/10. It’s fine/okay, I didn’t expect to love it but still wish we had a great lizard person story in kids’ horror. Oh well, maybe someday. Human Sam interaction was easily the worst scene in the book.