Fire & Flesh

Rating:
Summary: One of the worst books I have ever read
Review: After an evocative opening in Calcutta, the book switches the action to Miami during a massive heatwave. People are spontaneously combusting and B-Movie characters Detective Eric Bannon and Assistant Medical Examiner Angelica Hunter have to stop the evil Hari Shakir from joining with Adib Shakar and forming a super snake god thingy called the Kundalini capable of burning the world.
Yes, it is as stupid as it sounds. Characters are introduced and then flamed 2 pages later. Human characters exhibit stunning amounts of greed and stupidity even when faced with the reality of the Kundalini. There is no development of characters whatsoever. Most of them come and go with stunning rapidity and exist just long enough to utter some of the worst lines of dialogue I've read. You really haven't lived until you experience the ebonics-like dialogue when Shakir attacks a black woman in her apartment. I don't know if it was rascist or not but it surely was poor taste. Once Shakir really gets a head of steam towards the end and starts combusting people at random the novelty has long worn off and has been replaced with a numbed feeling of "Dear God this has to be over soon."
Words actually fail me to describe how incredibly bad this book is. I like horror and I like fantasy, but this is simply horrible. It's boring, non sensical, and trite. If your idea of a quality reading experience is dialogue like "The fate of the world rests in our hands." and "Give it more power, all you've got!" then you may enjoy this.
The introduction of a never before seen or heard of character during the last 5 minutes only reinforces the bad B-movie tendencies this book has. The ending reminded me of "Raiders of the Lost Ark" and the great scene with the Ark being wheeled into a warehouse. Though something a bit similar happens in "Fire and Flesh, it is nowhere near as interesting. Mainly just mind numbingly stupid.
Avoid at all costs. There are better "mindless beach reads" out there then this pulp ....

Rating:
Summary: Robert W. Walker does it again...
Review: Evan Kingsbury is a pen name for bestselling author Robert Walker (author of the Instinct series with FBI agent Jessica Coran-- UNNATURAL INSTINCT is the latest).

Walker is known for his visceral, pull-no-punches style, and this book is no exeption. It delivers the goods! There's more horror, violence, and evil in this one than in Stephen King's last three books combined.

I recommend FIRE & FLESH to anyone who enjoys solid, fast paced thrillers. The setting is well drawn and pulls you in, the creature is scary and fascinating, and I look forward to Evan's (Robert's) next effort.

One helluva ride, baby!

Rating:
Summary: BETWEEN KING and KOONTZ FIIND EVAN KINGSBURY!
Review: FIRE & FLESH BY EVAN KINGSBURY is so hot they ought to have sold fire extin&uishers with it, or at least placed a "surgeon general's warning" on the cover, as it is heart-racingly FAST and mesmerizing, so much so I almost had a coronary when reading it on the bus and missing my stop. I took the rest of the day off and finished the book. The creature "smokes people" instaed of camels! Set in India in the opening pages, he/it/whatever the creature is--a mythological snakegod couched securely in the abdomen of not one but two men--seeks atachment, and to this end it travels to Miami where it enjoys an ungodly killing spree amid a godawful heatwave of record breaking temperatures that makes it right at home (like old India week). As it seeks out its "brother snake" --living large as Miami's Chief Medical Examiner, it "smokes" people to both sustain itself and to "learn more" in its quest to "join" with its fleeing other half-self. The story soon develops into one big long, bizzaro chase through hospital corridors, morgues, elevator shafts, parking garages, grocery store freezer units, Miami streets, the Florida Keys,The Everglades, and I won't give away where the chase finally takes us in this breath-taking roller-coaster ride of chaos of carefully constructed point-counterpoint in what at times feels like a "symphony" of terror in which you just know everyone on Earth is doomed but saved, doomed but saved again in repeated cycle. My point is, it's so RARE to find a horror title that doesn't disappoint, that does not resort to alien abductions, governmental conspiracies, black opps. and bald-faced coincidence atop coincidence--a story that doesn't fail the expectations set up in the opening, a story that doesn't fall apart or come apart at the poorly constructed seams we too often find in horror literature. And mark my word, this book, Fire & Flehs by Kingsbury (on the shelf between King and Koontz) is so well written that you can call it "literature" in the true sense of the word, in the tradtion of the best horror writers and some of the early works of Dean Koontz (as in Whispers and Phantoms) or early works of Stephen King (as in Salem's Lot and The Shinning). At the same time it is as fast-paced as an ALIEN film or the Terminator films. I thoroughly enjoyed it and thoroughly recommend it without a single reservation.

Rating:
Summary: Kicking Book Reads like Wild Fire
Review: I opened this book at a time when I really had no time to read as I work full time and I do my own business on the side, and I am The EAR to everyone I know who has a problem and that's a full time job in and of itself. But I read the first sentence and it drew me into the world of Calcutta like sliding down a child's slide and wammo, I didn't get to work that day. This book had to be read in one sitting. I went to Caribou Coffee house and read it entirely straight through and for one day I was so totally transported from reality to a wonderful world of horror and mayhem that only my dad, horror and suspense author Robert W. Walker could have created. OK, so I am a little prejudiced, but how does that explain Fire and Flesh's umpteen recommendations for the prestigious Horror Writers of America Bram Stoker Award? This book is kickass fun and it has the coolest monster ever created in the "dark side of the Kundalini mythos." The book will SMOKE your mind as its evil Hari Shakir smokes cats and people for sustenance to the serpent god coiled about Hari's spine. What the professional critics are saying is true: "Mr. Walker quite simply SNATCHES your mind." and "...greatest creture I've seen in a decade." and "...a triumph for the horror genre."

Rating:
Summary: Terrific police/armagaddeon thriller
Review: On a steaming hot day in Calcutta, India, a young girl dies. Her father, a local scientist forges a bond with a local pier burner to have her body incinerated. After the deal is completed, and as the man is exiting, a fellow Indain man comes up to him. He tells him that he will make a fantast for him beyond his wildest dreams. The man then turns into a snake like creature and burns the man to stone.

Three months later, during the heat of a Miami summer, a doctor is found dead inside her car with her insides turned to flame. As the days pass, the body count rises. When snake scales are found at one of the crime scenes, Detective Eric and Angelica Hunter find that they are dealing with more than a psycho pyro. It turns out that a serpent god with a power greater than you can ever imagine is rising to take over the world with the help of his host body. And, as Brannon and Hunter later find out, it grows with the feeding of human souls. As the tension grows, so does the action as two law enforcement officers struggle to save the world as we know it.

Full of suspense and action, FIRE AND FLESH is a superior by a new and gifted author. Think the movie, THE MUMMY only with snakes with Detective Richard Jury as Eric Brannon and Medical Examiner Kay Scarpetta as Angelica Hunter. The book is positioned to fly off the shelves and be enjoyed by fans of Koontz and King.

Rating:
Summary: He has dipped his pen in the darkest depth of our fears !
Review: The title, FIRE & FLESH, does not do justice to this work of incendiary horror. The cover should carry warning labels:
- DANGER: ONCE OPENED,CAN NOT BE CLOSED!
- DO NOT READ THIS IF YOU WANT TO SLEEP TONIGHT!
- WARNING! THIS WILL HAUNT YOU FOR WEEKS!

The story opens in Calcutta, in streets so alive and so viscerally real that one tends to cross over from the imagined world on the page. Few works ever capture me like this.

The story moves to Miami, another place of unrelenting heat. I lived there for seven years and I can still feel the steering wheel of my car sear my hands in the parking lot. Well, from steamy Calcutta to searing Miami, this story burns, burns, burns!

Evan Kingsbury is Robert Walker, the author of the INSTINCT and the EDGE series. A sure hand, he has dipped his pen in the darkest depth of our fears in FIRE & FLESH !



Rating:
Summary: Fire & Flesh
Review: This book reads like a Terminator film and takes place in India in its opening chapters with an eloquently horrific and heart rending beginning. But the incredibly fresh "hot" and unique villain/creature--a symbiosis of man and beast within, host and hostess, you might say (extremely sexual)is this "wanna-be" snake diety coiled in the India native's abdomen--in its obsessive search for its brother snake and its human host lands in a Miami, Florida heatwave and is right at home. During its search, it must feed, and it does so by "smoking" humans and brething their smutty elements into its nostrils, and when the victims of "spontaneous human combustion" begin to accumulate and can no longer be ignored, all hell breaks loose in this break-neck but literary gem of a story. Miami, unlike India, is going to investigate sudden fire deaths, and soon firemen, police, and medical professional are overwhelmed. Kingsbury's creature is a rare breed in its uniqueness, and we all know how hard it is to find a horror novel with something new to say, but Kingsbury's leading the way back to originality and spirit in the horror novel. While it moves with such a forward dynamo that it may as well be a laser knife that author Evan Kingsbury is using for a pen, an his eloquent style and masterful sentencing is pure craft--harkening back to an era when craft in writing meant something, paying unintentional but clear homage to Poe, Lovecraft et.al while also blending in the tradition of the great modern masters of suspenseful horror: Rober Bloch and a touch of Richard Matheson--the emperors of horror writing. Great read and a class act--first rate, worthy of the bestseller list, it would curl Stephen King's hair. Careful Dean Koontz, this guy's on your heels!

Rating:
Summary: Enjoy
Review: Your mentor, your surrogate father, one of your closest friends has a secret--one big enough to destroy all of humankind. Did you really know him at all? This dilemma threatens to overwhelm a young medical examiner in Miami. In the wake of her mentor's suicide, following a string of strange deaths, Dr. Angelica Hunter is left with an unfathomable mystery, but she must not wait to act. The fate of the world is the hands of Dr. Hunter and Detective Eric Brandon whose job it is to investigate these deaths.

What unfolds from this point is a captivatingly written story of suspense that holds you in its grip until the very end. Pursued by a god/monster who wants nothing more than to incinerate the bodies and souls of everyone in his path, Dr. Hunter and Detective Brandon must find a way to stop him before he reaches full strength. Each page holds a new struggle and demands your full attention. Will the doctor and detective be able to save themselves, much less the world?

Caution: Choose wisely where you decide to read this book. I read the entire second half of the book in one sitting while at my favorite hang out. Mesmerized by the story, I couldn't leave until I had finished.