The Secret [dis]Order of Ken

Next in my series of old reviews is the gruesome yet brilliant Off Season by Jack Ketchum.

Off Season by Jack Ketchum

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Off Season is one of the most disturbing and horrifying tales I’ve come across, and truly one of the scariest books I’ve ever read. It is the story of an editor from New York who plans a quiet vacation in a small Maine beach town with her sister and some friends. They rent a small house in the woods during the off season, after the rest of the tourists have left town.

What nobody realizes is that back in the woods, living in a cave, is a family of inbreds who have devolved into a pack of savage cannibals over several generations of living in the wild, separated from society. This family has been able to remain hidden for years, feeding on random wanderers without calling attention to themselves. This changes when the editor and her friends shack up in a cabin that the inbreds consider theirs.

Shortly after the friends go to bed, the family attacks and a whole lot of gruesome violence goes on.

This was Jack Ketchum’s first novel, but you’d never guess that when reading it. Off Season is a very mature novel: well written with great characterization. It is a story about human nature and the average person’s will to survive. I read a lot of horror, and most of it deals with the supernatural on some level. This book is quite a departure from that, as the villains here are real people. Honestly, I find these types of books far more frightening than those based on monsters and ghosts, simply because the situations tend to be more realistic. Now, you might be thinking that a cannibal family living in the woods of Maine isn’t very realistic. Fortunately, Ketchum addresses the origins of the family, and he makes a very plausible case for their existence and years of going unnoticed. I’m pretty good at noticing plot holes and other nonsense in books, and believe me…there isn’t any nonsense in Off Season.

The one area I would warn against, however, is that Jack Ketchum does not shy away from the gross. Other authors may normally imply some of the horrors that are going on, preferring to let the reader draw his or her own conclusions. Ketchum, however, describes every last detail of the gore…and he pulls no punches. If you have a weak stomach, this book is not for you. If you like quiet, psychological horror, this book is not for you. This book is about a family of cannibalistic savages, so you need to be able to handle scenes that describe tearing people apart and eating them. And believe me…he gets pretty graphic.

If you can get past the gore, I would very highly recommend this book. Aside from the “gross stuff,” the story itself is brilliant. The characters are believable, the storyline is fantastic, and there is enough tension and suspense to keep you glued to the pages long after you should have shut off the lights and gone to bed.


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Mandibles by Jeff Strand

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Tampa, Florida. Fire ants are a nuisance in the South to begin with, but when two-inch fire ants start showing up all over the place, people get a little freaked out. And with good reason. These not-so-little guys start eating campers, bicyclists, and anyone who gets in their way, and they start getting into office buildings and homes. Then they start getting bigger.

On the scene are various characters including a dentist, his hygienist, secretary, and root canal patient; a couple of data processors, their boss, and his assistant; two psycho killers/convenience store thieves; a family of campers; a mother and her son; and an entomologist who just happens to be a specialist in fire ants…and who’s not there by accident.

This book was a lot of fun to read. It was highly entertaining on several levels: it was demented and funny, but the story was great, too. And there was plenty of suspense that kept me reading to find out where the ants came from and how the heck they were going to solve the problem (considering that every couple of pages another character was getting killed, I was very interested to see if there would even be anyone left at the end). The story, albeit ridiculous, was well written. The characters were surprisingly realistic, the dialogue was natural, and it was obvious that the author had a lot of fun writing it.

Anyway, I just can’t help but recommend this book. It’s great. There is some gore and foul language, but compared to most horror novels, it’s pretty light reading. If you like to take a departure from your usual reading materials and escape with something silly (but still well-written), you really can’t go wrong with Mandibles.
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