Cleopatra was the monster darling of Hollywood—a 4,000-year-old mummy gal who looked like a rockabilly version of Marilyn Monroe. Everyone agreed, she was stunning. “A vintage throwback horror dream of every man’s fantasy.”

Her career was in overdrive, but her personal life was a total wreck. Her father was a manipulative jerk and her fiancé was Frank N. Stein, the mad creation of Doctor Victor Frankenstein VII. 

Author Loretta Kendall described Frank in this way: “He looked like a typical greaser, complete with leather boots, a white T-shirt with the sleeves rolled up and matching rolled-up blue jeans. It was like looking at a Frankenstein version of 1950s Fonzie from Happy Days.” Cleo described him another way: “He was an asshole.”

Frank N. Stein and Papa Imhotep had plans to rule the world together. They were in possession of a powerful grimoire called The Necronomicon, but they also needed Cleo’s elemental power of regeneration in order achieve their dastardly goal.  

The one person uniquely capable of thwarting them was Victor Frankenstein himself. After all, he  was the guy who created Frank N. Stein and understood the art of reanimation intimately. Once a villain, he was now attempting to atone for his crimes against humanity. “I’m trying to fix the damages I’ve done,” he told Cleo. “I’m working hard to become a man of integrity.”

Victor and Cleo shared common goals, but they didn’t automatically click when they teamed up. He thought she was a bleach-blonde Botox bimbo with fake tits, and she thought he was a sex maniac and a colossal jackass. 

In truth, they weren’t totally wrong. Cleo was undeniably hooked on her glamorous Hollywood lifestyle and Victor was an unrepentant egomaniac who built his fortune by reanimating dead folks as sex slaves.  

Despite their differences, however, Cleo and Victor formed an alliance to smash the evil machinations of Frank N. Stein and Imhotep. Along the way, something surprising happened—the mummy and the mad scientist fell in love.  

Like Kendall’s previous novel in her Ghouls and Gals series (read my review here), Horror Earth is a place awash in midcentury monster miasma. Mummies, ghouls, werewolves, vampires and one-eyed, one-horned, flying purple people eaters mingle with humans in a hootenanny of rockabilly and bop. It’s a ginchy mix of monsters, romance and kinky sex with lots of laffs and clever word puns.

For me, Kendall’s latest effort really comes alive in Chapter 25 when she brings back a handful of popular characters from her first book, Gigi’s Monster Garage. To save the world, they all agreed to form a confederacy of monsters. 

At the very end, Fox Adams (the romantic object of lust from the first novel) asks: “Are we like a superhero team now? I feel like we’re superheroes.” A seven-foot Sasquatch named Barrett Jackson shakes his head no, “That’s not possible,” he says. “Monsters are real, but superheroes are fake.”

[ Cleo’s All Tied Up / By Loretta Kendall / First Printing: September 2023 / ISBN: 9798861406765 ]