Helpful Score: 5
This book starts off in one direction and then veers off into another totally unexpected one! The book is good for those who like science fiction, horror, military/conspiracy, and vampire/ghoul type story lines. One becomes surprisingly attached to the "monsters" in this story. Great book.
Helpful Score: 3
Fast read, and very interesting plot. The ending was a suprise and that is refreshing to me since I feel alot of books are predictable. I highly recommend this book if you like Horror!!!
Helpful Score: 1
Yikes! Scared me...but that was what I was looking for. Flet like I was watching a Quinten Tarrentino movie.
Helpful Score: 1
Good story with some unexpected twists. It does drag a bit in a few spots but not enough to take from the story. The events in the story take place in a very short time but there are flashbacks to times prior to the story. I would love to find one of those flashbacks expanded into another book.
Helpful Score: 1
I've always heard the saying you don't judge a book by its cover and I can say that I haven't picked out a book that way since I was a kid wandering around the adult fiction section for the first time at the local bookstore. Well that bookstore met it's demise by the wrecking ball long ago. Since then, I've expanded my reading horizons in a more systematic way. First, it was through the recommendations of like-minded friends. In the last couple of years, it's been through the recommendations of my like-minded Goodreads friends and Tim Lebbon was one of those recommended that I should check out. So, when looking through his work, I came across Berserk and it's cover with the creepy girl with grayish-green skin and evil eyes peeking... No, leering out at you. What a great cover! I had to see what it was about. I'm pleased to tell you, the story behind that cover is just as creepy.
Lebbon introduces us to Tom, a husband who is still grieving with his wife over the loss of their only child, Steven, twenty years earlier. Steven had been in the army and was apparently killed in an accident at a military base. The details of which were kept secret by the government. Tom and his wife buried an empty casket. Steven's body was supposedly never recovered. This has never set well with Tom. One night, he overhears two soldiers talking about that fateful accident in a local pub and learns that his his son was buried in a mass grave not far from there. If this sounds like an "uh oh" moment, you're right. But the "uh oh" isn't the fact that a distraught father took a shovel out to a deserted army base and broke in to do some digging. The "uh oh" is in what he dug up and the aftermath of it. Lebbon weaves a creepy and eerie (there are those two words again) tale dripping with atmosphere and good characterization. Although, watching what Tom does throughout the story is like witnessing a train wreck unfold and you can't look away, you understand where he's coming from. You feel his anguish and despair controlling his decisions. While I may have preferred a different ending, Berserk was a chillingly fun ride. A solid 4 stars.
Lebbon introduces us to Tom, a husband who is still grieving with his wife over the loss of their only child, Steven, twenty years earlier. Steven had been in the army and was apparently killed in an accident at a military base. The details of which were kept secret by the government. Tom and his wife buried an empty casket. Steven's body was supposedly never recovered. This has never set well with Tom. One night, he overhears two soldiers talking about that fateful accident in a local pub and learns that his his son was buried in a mass grave not far from there. If this sounds like an "uh oh" moment, you're right. But the "uh oh" isn't the fact that a distraught father took a shovel out to a deserted army base and broke in to do some digging. The "uh oh" is in what he dug up and the aftermath of it. Lebbon weaves a creepy and eerie (there are those two words again) tale dripping with atmosphere and good characterization. Although, watching what Tom does throughout the story is like witnessing a train wreck unfold and you can't look away, you understand where he's coming from. You feel his anguish and despair controlling his decisions. While I may have preferred a different ending, Berserk was a chillingly fun ride. A solid 4 stars.
"They kept monsters." That's what Tom overheard in the bar that night. And he heard more things that could finally lead him to the truth about his son's death ten years before. The army had said it was a training accident. But why had the coffin they sent home been sealed? So on a dark night, in a deserted field, Tom begins to unearth the mass grave where he hopes-and fears- that he will find his son's remains. He finds instead madness: corpses in chains and dead bodies that still move and grasp and clutch. And one little girl, dead and rotting, who promises to help Tom find what he's looking for, if only he will free her....
A little odd......fast read.
A truck load of Solders die in the desert. Bodys shipped home in sealed caskets. One man determined to found out what happen to his son discovers a hugh grave. When he dig to uncover what's buried there the bodies are still moving.
A good story line but fails in execution. Over 300 pages of grief and anguish told over and over and over again. It reminds me of Stephen King which is to say that it had a great idea but could have been 75 pages shorter and a lot more smoother. Ending was exciting but could not save this book for me.
"They kept monsters." That's what Tom overheard in the bar that night. And he heard more things that could finally lead him to the truth about his son's death ten years before. The army had said it was a training accident. But why had the coffin they sent home been sealed.
So on a dark night, in a deserted field, Tom begins to unearth the mass gave where he hopes-and fears-that he will find his son's remains. He finds instead madness: corpses in chains and dead bodies that still move and grasp and clutch. And one little girl, dead and rotting, who promises to help Tom find what he's looking for, if only he will free her...
So on a dark night, in a deserted field, Tom begins to unearth the mass gave where he hopes-and fears-that he will find his son's remains. He finds instead madness: corpses in chains and dead bodies that still move and grasp and clutch. And one little girl, dead and rotting, who promises to help Tom find what he's looking for, if only he will free her...
Tom overheard something in a bar and wondered if that was connected to his son that death. So what he finds when he starts to dig up the mass grave is madness. Corpses in chains and dead bodies that still move. Good read.
