It was just two months ago that Dr. Mark Hudson and his cryptid investigation team saved Los Angeles from being destroyed by a group of quarreling giant monsters (read my review of Gore vs. the Cryptid Kaiju here). And now, after a brief respite back home at Area 51, Hudson was called back into action again.

Only this time, the stakes were even higher. Famine, one of the original Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, was making a play to destroy the cosmos—or, at the very least, reshape reality in his own image. 

At his command was Gore, the 400-foot-tall super wendigo from the previous novel. Gore was the ultimate avatar. With the she-beast by his side, Famine (known biblically as the Black Horse) felt unstoppable. “There was a reckoning on the way,” warned authors Zach Cole and Cody Bratsch, “one that would put Famine and Gore directly up against the great pantheons that ruled over the cosmos.”

It was time for the earthly gods to assemble their celestial warriors—the avatars! Here the avatars are human beings transformed into kaiju-like monsters by the gods. Said the Great Spirit, a Native American divinity: “We endow a chosen mortal with the power to be able to change into a great beast at will. In these forms, most avatars end up being even more powerful than the gods who chose them in the first place.” 

Because of Dr. Hudson’s past experience fighting kaiju in L.A., the Great Spirit chose him to be his personal avatar. The process was pretty straightforward—there were no tricky sigils or incantations involved. A syringe of “magical blue energy” was injected into the back of Hudson’s skull and (voilà!) he gained the ability to transform into a Divine Beast named Thunderbird. There was no scientific logic to it—the gods themselves barely understood how the transformation worked.

The avatars then enter into a Shōnen Jump-like tournament to prepare for the coming war. This is where the authors introduce the eight celestial warriors to the reader. Along with Thunderbird, there’s Scylla from Greece, Jorogumo from Japan, Fafnir from the Norse pantheon, Camazotz the Mayan, Naga the Hindu, Osiris from Egypt and Behemoth, the Christian representative. For the record, Scylla and Fafnir are considered the mightiest of the bunch. 

Each of the avatars has unique powers and a distinct personality. Despite their foibles and quarrelsome temperaments, they make for a fun mix of characters. Gold star to the authors for creating this winsome cast. 

As seen in the previous novel, Gore was a brute. But here she continues to evolve physically. The antlers atop her head have become thicker and now point forward (“better for skewering,” said the authors). Armor adorned her arms and legs, making her more durable. And at some point, monstrous spider legs sprout from her spine.  

But she wasn’t just a cipher or a tool. Gore suffered from an inner turmoil and angst that motivated her. Said the authors: “Never again would Gore let herself fall victim to someone else as had happened in the past. Back when she was a human named Callista, she was helpless and meek and vulnerable to the world around her. Now she was the mighty Gore and she had the power to make the world crumble before her very feet and the will to make it happen.”  

[ Gore: Avatars of the Gods / By Zach Cole & Cody Bratsch / First Printing: July 2026 / ISBN: 9798182224093 ]

“I’m a vampire,” said James Sugré, the protagonist of Michael J. Seidlinger’s latest book Brokeula. “And like all vampires, I have forever and a day to spare.” 

But living forever wasn’t cheap. Sugré didn’t have a stash of gold coins buried somewhere in the Carpathian Mountains to help pay for all of his bills. Without generational wealth, he couldn’t afford to be immortal. “I’m hungry,” he howled, “hungry for some fucking money!”

Instead of riding the highway in a sporty vintage Porsche or stalking trendy Manhattan jazz clubs looking for his next meal, Sugré lay motionless in a coffin all day and night with nothing to do. To pass the time, he would admire his coffin’s luxurious interior. 

That all changed the day he brought a blue-haired emo girl named Lauren back to his dingy apartment. She promised to give him all the money in her bank account if he turned her into a vampire. “Change my life and I’ll change yours,” she told him.

Looking at the opportunity like a businessman, Sugré had to make a decision and run the numbers. That’s what an employer would do, he reasoned—examine investments for potential profit. “The entire time I was taking in her warm blood,” he said later, “I was thinking about her life savings. I was thinking about the size of the transfer.”

Together, Sugré and Lauren started a multi-level marketing business. But instead of selling vitamins and supplements like Herbalife, their company sold eternal life. They both knew the idea was pure gold. Entire industries existed to combat the effects of aging. People had always wanted to live forever. 

And guess what? Their scheme quickly turned into a multi-billion dollar business. “There’s an entire world out there full of humans who would willingly pay me every penny to their name to be turned into a vampire,” said Sugré. “And like any good business, my customers become lifetime members.”

Unfortunately for Sugré and Lauren, the success of Bloodsucker LLC was short-lived. The company was quickly dismantled by a consortium of vampire overlords. These ancient progenitors didn’t appreciate being exploited for capitalistic gain.  

The downfall of Bloodsucker LLC highlights the novel’s two central themes: capitalism’s tendency to commercialize everything, and the tendency of MLM companies to amplify everything to absurd levels. 

Brokeula is a satire of these ridiculous impulses. Author Seidlinger makes readers (especially U.S. readers) look at capitalism through a funhouse mirror. If everything is a commodity, he seems to be saying, then nothing is a commodity. 

[ Brokeula / By Michael J. Seidlinger / First Printing: July 2026 / ISBN: 9781968043094 ]

Apparently, editor Annie Knox is committed to compiling an entire shelf of anthologies based on abominable creatures. Last year she helmed a terrific collection of werewolf stories (read my review here) and she’s currently working on a collection of stories featuring sirens, the undisputed queens of the seven seas.

Her current effort contains 11 tales of vampires, with some embracing their darker impulses and others showing surprisingly degree of charity and humanity. As Knox herself says: “Even in the darkest places and times, we can find goodness in ourselves and in others.”

But to be clear, vampires can’t escape their bad behavior completely. They remain the most indulgent monsters on Earth. Even dragons, succubi, leprechauns and Mister Mxyzptlk can’t hold a candle to a vampire’s excess and penchant for chaos. Those traits are on full display throughout this anthology. 

“Mine is a divine horror that has fueled countless nightmares,” says Dacian Nastase, the vampire in John Baulding’s story “Kill Him Again.” “I am the scourge of the living, the drinker of blood and the omega denizen of the deepest nights. Look upon me and embrace your death incarnate.” 

Nastase isn’t the only vampire plagued by an inflated sense of self-importance. The creature in “Three Fighters” is equally insufferable, and Ulric, the bird-eating vampire from Paul O’Neill’s “The Fresh Blood of Birds,” is downright obsessed with his ancient vampiric lineage. In addition, some of these jokers think of themselves as angels—death angels or otherwise. 

Like most anthology editors, Knox saves her best stories for last. Both “The Girl with the Grey Eyes” by Jacqueline Erasin and “The Last Sunset” by Anne Wilkins offer emotional resonance that lingers like a wistful dream. Together, they provide a satisfying final note to Creatures of the Night. 

Erasin’s story is about a man who falls in love with a cute vampiress. “She was like a drug,” he confesses, “Intoxicating.” But there was no way their budding relationship could ever last. Even if Liliana turned her lover into a vampire, their romance was still doomed. “Vampires live alone,” she tells him. “We have our own hunting grounds. If we stayed together, we’d eventually destroy each other.”

Wilkins’ story is even more tragic. As a mortal, Edith possessed a rare blood type—only 43 people in the world had the same Rh-null blood as she did. Now, as a vampire, she can only feed on people with this rare “golden blood.” After a year of starving herself, Edith eventually finds an unwilling donor. The lifelong relationship between Edith and George is complicated, to say the least. The way it all unravels is like an emotional gut punch. 

[ Creature Feature Classics, Vol. 2: Creatures of the Night / Edited by Annie Knox / First Printing: May 2026 / ISBN: 9798255286317 ]

This wasn’t the first time Maxwell McTavish and Erin Johansson tangled with monsters. While they were bumpin’ uglies on Paradise Island (not Themyscira), giant centipedes invaded their posh French Polynesian resort (read my review of Mega Freak: Bloody Paradise here). 

Now, six months later, the lovebirds were attempting to build a normal, no-monster existence in Las Vegas. Unfortunately, that proved impossible. The violent chaos of Paradise Island had awakened something within Max. Knowing monsters roamed the Earth filled him with a sense of obligation that he couldn’t ignore. 

When his father, a high-ranking ex-Army vet, offered him a job with Sentinel Security Resolutions, Max jumped at the chance to become a professional monster killer. Initially, he hoped to keep his side hustle a secret from his girlfriend Erin. 

That didn’t last long, however. When a bunch of monsters escaped from a genetics laboratory in the Nevada desert, both Erin and Max were caught in the ensuing chaos. Max and his Sentinel Security colleagues found themselves in the drainage tunnels beneath Las Vegas battling a giant tarantula, while Erin had to wangle a 50-foot Gila monster on the Vegas Strip. 

Dressed in full showgirl regalia, Erin was on a party bus cruising Las Vegas Boulevard when she first spotted the colossal lizard. Thundering down the street and digging trenches in the pavement, the beast moved at a tremendous speed. “Abandoned cars littered the roadway, some crushed like empty beer cans, others ripped in two,” writes author Mike MacLean. “A battered SUV lay upside down on the walkway. Ruptured fuel tanks dripped gasoline. Blood and fuel mixed on the blacktop.”

I’m happy to see that MacLean decided to write a sequel to his first novel. In fact, it appears he’s got more sequels planned. In this new book, he intentionally leaves unresolved plot threads to be explored in future efforts. As a writer for movies and comic books, MacLean knows a thing or two about ongoing serial storytelling. 

In Mega Freak: Bloody Paradise, I thought Erin was a bit like Princess Merida from the 2012 movie Brave. But I was wrong. Here in Mega Freak: Savage City, I realized she was more like Poison Ivy Rorschach, the iconic flame-haired guitar player for the Cramps. 

Trapped in a casino gift shop, Erin—still dressed like a campy showgirl—shoulders an M4 Carbine rifle and rips apart the colossal lizard. “The sight of her in that skimpy, shimmery bikini blasting away with an assault rifle might’ve seemed comical if not for the rage in her eyes,” wrote MacLean. If you listen carefully, you’ll almost be able to hear the song “Bikini Girls with Machine Guns” playing in the distance. 

[ Mega Freak: Savage City / By Mike MacLean / First Printing: June 2026  / ISBN: 9781923663367 ]

Without question, my favorite novel from last year was written by Nora B. Peevy (read my review here). As I said at the time, Flesh-Eating Turtles! was an outrageous and sharply satirical critique of scientific hubris, complete with awesome giant turtle mayhem. If you haven’t read it yet, I highly recommend putting it in your Amazon cart right away. 

Now we have a follow-up anthology from the author called Cemetery Tacos and Other Delights. These stories reflect Peevy’s penchant for monsters, ghosts, witches and cows. Except for a couple of hiccups, it’s a terrific (delightful?) collection of absurd, genre-busting horror with a big pop of dark humor. 

Unfortunately, the book begins with my least favorite story. While “Knock, Knock” contains a touch of psychological realism and emotional subtlety, it mostly reminds me of bad New Yorker-style fiction from the 80s. And it certainly doesn’t capture the charm of Peevy’s writing that I enjoy so much.  

Things pick up quickly as Peevy reimagines the Queen of Hades as a flirty vigilante in a story called “A Taste of Murder.” In this case, Persephone’s got her sights set on a serial killer known as the Midwest Mangler. 

When she eventually traps her prey in a gas station restroom, Persephone lets loose with a wonderful explosion of purple prose. “I, so lush and green and fecund before him,” she tells the reader. “I tore his shirt off like we were in a cheesy porno. Really, I wanted to tear his head off with my bare hands and use his spinal cord as the newest belt in my collection, but I had discipline after all these years on the road tracking down the slime of the earth. I would relish this moment like a fine wine and a box of chocolates—every girl’s best friend.” 

Without a doubt, the craziest thing in Cemetery Tacos and Other Delights is “Carnivorous Cows from Outer Space.” The author introduces us to Mooligan, an alien cow who’s leading a covert operation from Planet Moo to conquer Earth. 

Even though he’s responsible for Chick-fil-A, his mission isn’t exactly going as planned. “In trying to save Cowkind from annihilation,” he says, “we have managed to become food for lower, less intelligent life-forms.”

There’s no easy way for Mooligan and his troops to take over the planet, but he’s still optimistic. “Did you know that cows eat eight hours a day?” he says. “Why, if every cow ate one human per hour during their normal eating schedule, the world would be a better place. Don’t you think? I think so.”

And finally, “The Witch of Fox Point” is about a witch named Stella and her great-niece, Anne, who successfully stops the coming Armageddon with the Seal of Solomon. When the dust finally settles, Anne has a question for her great-aunt. “If you’re a witch and witches are real—are vampires and werewolves real too?” Stella shakes her head and sighs. “That’s a story for another time,” she says. 

[ Cemetery Tacos and Other Delights / By Nora B. Peevy / First Printing: April 2026 / ISBN: 9781685101725 ]

There are 43 stories in Of Beasts & Bones, the latest creature horror anthology from editor Robin Knabel. The volume’s introduction promises all sorts of beasts imaginable from science, nature, myth and popular entertainment. It certainly delivers on that promise. 

Writing a review for a book like this—with 43 big whopping stories—can be quite a challenge, to say the least. There’s just no way to provide incisive commentary on every story in this puny 500-word review. Some ambitious critic should probably do it at some point, but it’s not gonna be me. 

The collection contains a string of excellent stories about how loneliness compels opportunistic monsters. Two of my favorites are by Camellia Paul and Alex Goldberg. 

A man visits his wife’s family home in a story called “Hutams Lament.” There’s only enough room in the family’s hut for the wife to sleep, so the husband is asked to stay outside at night. Soon the family and his wife forget about him completely. 

“On the third night,” writes Paul, “Chamelie did not kiss Daichi on his cheek. On the fourth night, she did not say his name. By the seventh night, she had forgotten he existed.” The only witness to the husband’s sad fate is a nearby owl calling out to the wife who never answers. 

In the story “I am Not Alone,” a lonely man named Dennis spends his nights monitoring abstract signals from deep space. Eventually he makes contact with something substantial. To his delight, the static becomes an undulating voice that slowly morphs into something softer, more recognizable. Something feminine. He found it entrancing, says Goldberg. “For the first time he felt truly seen.”

Over time, Dennis and his cosmic girlfriend develop a long-distance relationship. But, of course, it’s all a cosmic ruse. The entity had professed love, but it did not understand love. It only knew conquest, a concept it combined with affection to create a new horrific paradigm for the human race. 

Other stories worth mentioning include “Courting the Cadaver” by Jessica Gleason about a woman’s “love affair” with an ancient Egyptian mummy, “On the Hunt” by Karamia Subocz about a man chasing a sasquatch while he, in turn, is secretly being hunted by a different type of cryptid, “The Warmth” by Leonardo Lamanna about a monster created by insane grief and “Local Guide” by Clint Collins about a small Kentucky town inhabited entirely by monsters. “Food Baby” by Jen Mierisch is about two tourists who experience the wrath of an ancient Polynesian goddess.  

All the contributions in Of Beasts & Bones are pretty short, and because of this, not every story is fully formed (including, I’m sorry to say, a story by the editor herself). Some aren’t even stories at all—just vignettes of monsters doing monstrous stuff. 

But overall, this is an awesome collection of “creatures, grotesqueries, aliens, cryptids, ghosts and other anomalies.” The book closes with a story called “The Ossuary Chamber” by Marc Corondo which features a chilling Ouroboros-like ending. If I’m reading this correctly, Corondo’s story might be a tease for further volumes of beasts and bones.  

[ Of Beasts & Bones / Edited by Robin Knabel / First Printing: April 2026 / ISBN: 9798254717805 ]

You could easily create a Venn diagram from the core beliefs of Christianity and vampirism. Think about it: The longevity of life, the countless followers willing to die for their worship, rising from the dead after crucifixion—all these things are shared and glorified by God and vampires. 

For vampires, all that’s missing are the proselytizers and the apostles. In the novel Vampire Missionaries by Kathleen Rhodes, a nest of vampyri in Portland start recruiting Mormon kids as disciples. After all, who’s better at missionary work than malleable LDS youth, ready to serve and spread the message of the undead? 

The novel begins when Gabe Fitzpatrick looks into the bathroom mirror one morning and doesn’t see his reflection. It takes seven pages for Gabe and his partner, Luke, to figure out their predicament. The two Mormon missionaries are now vampires. What a drag. “All the praying, crouching, tithing, caffeine abstinence. No alcohol. No sex! All for nothing!” they howled. 

In short order, the two teenagers became ensnarled in the evil machinations of a guy named Bishop, Portland’s number one hellspawn. As his name suggests, Bishop actively promotes a vampire religious cult, and he needs compliant missionaries to spread his message.

As vampires, Gabe and Luke are conflicted about their new disposition. They’re both undead fiends hungry for blood, but they’ve somehow retained their souls. They are 100 percent aware that every step they take takes them further from Heaven.

Bishop is resolute, however. There is no difference between his flock and the divine, he said. “We are here to increase our congregation. Isn’t that what you want too?”  

“How can you explain our existence?” he continued. “We live between life and death. I’ll never leave this earth to meet God, and neither will you. We have all the powers of Jesus, and we prove it every day that we open our eyes.”

The bulk of Vampire Missionaries follows Gabe and Luke as they try to reconcile their LDS upbringing with their new monstrous reality. At the same time, the boys find themselves in a swirl of sexual guilt shaped by good religion and bad religion. It must be horrible to be a horny LDS vampire. A good subtitle for this novel would be A Portrait of the Vampire as a Young Man. 

There’s also a lot of vampire-on-vampire violence throughout the book. But unfortunately, author Kathleen Rhodes isn’t very good at sequential storytelling. At times it’s hard to follow her narrative from moment to moment. She could learn a thing or two by studying storyboards, comic books and other narraglyphic picto-assemblages. 

One final comment: Rhodes ends her novel with a newspaper article recapping the recent vampire activity in Portland. It’s an easy way to give readers a satisfying denouement, but I have one question: “What’s a newspaper??”

[ Vampire Missionaries / By Kathleen Rhodes / First Printing: April 2026 / ISBN: 9781639512300 ]

In our solar system, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune are considered dead planets. They’re all geographically inactive and unable to support life as we know it. Not counting Earth, only Europa and Enceladus—two moons circling Jupiter and Saturn—are considered potentially “living” astronomical objects. 

But the Milky Way is a vast, rotating collection of stars, rocks, gas and dark matter. Who knows what’s out there? Potentially, there could be billions of dead exoplanets yet to be explored. With this in mind, editor Eric Fomley has assembled a handful of stories emphasizing the alien desolation of dead planets and the hostile environments they create. 

The collection kicks off on Christmas Day with a story called “Of Faith and Fallow.” Gray and white figures are scattered across the landscape like heaps of garbage. They weren’t people any longer, writes author William R.D. Wood; they were now husks resembling wispy, smoldering layers of burnt paper. 

Overnight, Earth had become a barren space rock. The only thing that remained was a shadow darker than any starless night hanging over California’s San Joaquin Valley. Black tendrils writhed around an undulating mass, like ink spilled in the water of a cloudless blue sky. Globs the size of mountains pulsed against the convulsing emptiness. Despite the surprising (not surprising) ending, the motivation of the Lovecraftian beast is too unfathomable to grasp in the span of a short 14-page story.

The next story, “City of Gold” by Elana Gomel, is about humanity’s failed galactic expansion to a planet with an Earth-incompatible biosphere. The scouting party discovers that Veles is a resource-poor planet that forces locals to survive by committing acts of auto-genocide. The inevitable conflict between the astronauts and the indigenous community is messy, to say the least.

In his story “Ice in the Dark,” Joachim Heijndermans uses an epistolary format to describe a failed rescue mission to an icy and uninhabitable world. How efficiently the planet’s bitter cold atmosphere defeats the rescue team serves as a harbinger for the rest of the universe. It’s a harrowing story and probably my favorite piece in the volume.

“Betrayal Comes at a Pryce” by Henry Herz is a straightforward SFnal retelling of William Shakespeare’s play “The Tempest.” Like the source material, Herz uses the phrase “He that dies pays all debts” as the great equalizer. 

And finally, “Metalloid Blues” by Myna Chang is a funny—and prescient?—story that takes place 100 years after mankind abandons Earth. “It looks like all the pollution and junk we left behind is trying to get even with us,” groans a police detective who is fighting for her life against the attack of Terran biomechanical monsters.  

[ Dead Planet / Edited by Eric Fomley / First Printing: April 2026 / ISBN: 9798255501731 ]

The surf surrounding Savanua island was full of sea corpses—gathered at the water’s edge, lurking like Nile crocodiles waiting for unsuspecting antelopes to drink at their waterhole. 

If you were unlucky enough to be bitten by one of these zombie-like creatures, with their teeth full of flesh-eating bacteria, the resulting necrotizing fasciitis infection would surely finish you off. 

Initially, everybody assumed the victims were being eaten. But in reality, they were dragged to the bottom of the ocean to join the benthic army of Vaekoro, the Killer of Souls, a Polynesian god who ruled the abyss. 

At night and during heavy rainstorms, the sea corpses would come ashore and terrorize the people of Savanua. Clad in swimwear, pirate costumes, sailor uniforms, wetsuits and bikinis, they formed a funky but invincible battalion of soldiers. 

Where the Tide Leaves its Dead, the first novel by author Bray Mattheson, is a story of survival and Polynesian mythology. A novel in which humanity’s response to a monster invasion was profoundly disheartening. 

Casey Davies (sometimes referred to as Casey Jones, a real-life character from history whose life ended in heroic recklessness) is the protagonist of the story. With him are two extraordinary sidekicks named Puaka and Izzy. 

Puaka was a wild boar who faithfully protected Casey from the encroaching sea corpses. “She was a Hell-Pig, a real mean bitch,” he said at one point. “There wasn’t nothin’ sweet about her.” Even though she doesn’t make it to the end of the novel, she gets a touching sendoff in the final chapter from the author. 

Izzy is a 499-pound gentle giant who crushes every obstacle in his path. He’s a sweet guy who simply wants to get his family off the island and somewhere safe. In the process, he becomes a legend and acquires numerous catchy nicknames like “the Skull-Crusher,” “the Leopard Slayer” and “Eighteen-Wheeler Izzy.” If the author is amenable (and I hope he is), I’d love to see more books featuring this charismatic Polynesian paladin. Fingers crossed.

Like I said earlier, the island’s response to its sea corpse problem is extremely shameful. There is a tribe of cannibals who willingly feed innocent people to the “salt-crusted demons” in wild and orgiastic rituals. There is also an entire city that pits citizens and monsters against each other in daily gladiator-like battles. The whole situation is Caligula-like to say the least.

During the denouement, Casey and Izzy reunite on the beach where all the madness began. Said the author:“The war was over. The god was dead. No more monsters to put down. There was nothing left for them to hunt. And for a long moment, they just stood there, staring at the ocean, not speaking. Just two men who’d survived something unspeakable.” 

[ Where the Tide Leaves its Dead / By Bray Mattheson / First Printing: March 2026 / ISBN: 9798254255765 ]