In 1445 BCE, at the age of 110, Joseph (son of Jacob) was laid to rest in Egypt. It took 400 years, but eventually his burial shroud was moved to Israel. Today, Joseph’s Tomb in Nablus is recognized as a religious shrine and represents a key Zionist ideal—the return from exile to the Promised Land.

That’s not where Joseph’s journey ended, however. According to author Maxwell Bauman, the Egyptians wrapped the Old Testament prophet in gauze and covered him with an arcane curse. Even after a millennium of golden slumbers, he wasn’t exactly dead. Someday he was fated to rise again.  

That day had finally arrived. A trickle of blood from an American tourist revived the ancient mummy of Canaan. His face was cold, stiff and gray, but for someone who had been dead for thousands of years, he looked pretty darn good. It actually looked like he had just woken from a nap, wrote Bauman.

The undead prophet emerged from his sacred sarcophagus and immediately started grabbing internal organs from luckless sightseers—eyes, intestines, liver—all the important stuff taken from him during the mummification process.

He also nabbed a stomach from a kid taking a dump in a public toilet. After thousands of years of not eating, the Canaanite was starving—he couldn’t wait until the poor boy was done with his business. Later, he shambled to a nearby food truck and devoured a big plate of shawarma. It smelled wonderful and the meat and spices were delicious, he said to himself.

Naturally, all this grisly mayhem caught the attention of the Israeli Police. Unfortunately, Detective Yosef Leib never truly understood what was going on—he didn’t believe in fairytales, after all. “Given the location of the attacks,” he opined, “I have reason to think it was gang activity or a religiously motivated hate crime.”

It was actually archeologist Golda Kohn who figured everything out. She was a woman of science who also believed in ancient scripture. She was the one to stop the mummy’s rampage across Israel. “You are the son of Jacob,” she told him. “This is Israel, the land promised to your father and your ancestors.”

Kohn knew there was a curse lingering in her homeland. She also knew that Joseph’s mummy was the continuation of that curse. “You are safe in the land of your people,” she said finally freeing the prophet from his burden. “Let this restlessness go.”

[The Mummy of Canaan / By Maxwell Bauman / First Printing: October 2019 / ISBN: 9781944866990]

“The grizzly’s belly was full,” wrote Edwin Corley at the beginning of this movie novelization. “Dimly the beast was aware that he had stumbled upon a rich source of food that seemed inexhaustible.”

Until this moment, the hikers and campers of National Park had been a vague threat, to be avoided and hidden from. But now the giant bear had tasted their prime red meat, and he lost all fear of their strange acrid scent and noisy ways. “His thoughts obsessed about the juicy, easy food he had discovered, and his crafty mind began to form a plan of action.”

After the graphic slaughter of two comely female campers, the park rangers knew everyone was in imminent danger. “We’ve got ourselves a rogue bear, a berserker bruin,” they all agreed. “That bear has tasted human blood. “From now on, he’ll be a killer. Until we kill him first.”

Normal grizzly bears were seven, maybe eight feet tall. But this one was easily 20 feet high and over three thousand pounds. Standing erect on his hind legs, he was able to snatch a helicopter from the sky. Truly, he was not unlike some kind of prehistoric monster.

And according to a local expert, that’s exactly what he was. “At one time there were grizzlies that large,” explained naturalist Arthur Scott. “The books call them Arctodus-Ursus Horribulus. They were one of the mightiest carnivores during the Pleistocene Era.”

But everyone wondered how a beast from a million years ago could still be alive? Was he trapped in ice like Captain America or what? “He was probably born of normal grizzly parents with hearty ancestral genes,” speculated Scott. “If so, he’s a genuine throwback to the Quaternary Period. He’d be an outsider to even his own pack.”

Still, no matter how fearsome bears were, they weren’t usually man-eaters. They mainly subsisted on fish, berries and pic-a-nic baskets. And like Winnie the Pooh and Baloo, they loved bees and honey too. Just like every other super villain in history, this psycho grizzly had an origin story that turned him into a raging man-killer.

As you’d expect from a novelization of a 70s exploitation flick, the action in Grizzly is waaaay over the top and spiced with Burt Reynolds-like bravado and curvy ladies. In fact, it’s laughable how much inconsequential chit-chat there is about big boobs in this book. Watching the movie, the actresses weren’t particularly zaftig. Their endowments came directly from the author’s overworked imagination.

For 180 pages, the bear roamed his domain without fear of consequence. Even though he was a gigantic prehistoric throwback, he was able to stay ahead of armed National Guardsmen at every turn. “That damn bear is smarter than you and me and everyone else put together,” admitted a weary park ranger.

[ Grizzly / By Edwin Corley writing as Will Collins / First Printing: April 1976 / ISBN: 9780515041798 ]

Monsters weren’t supposed to exist, said Berkley, the plucky protagonist of Laura Martin’s latest novel. “I mean, I’ve read about them in books and stuff, but I’ve also read about dragons and elves and gnomes and giraffes, and none of those exist either.”

The truth was, there were all kinds of monsters in the world, all of them sea monsters. Jörmungandr, ghorch, makara, cetus, saw-mouthed skeplar, charybdis, kronda, bakunawa, two-headed aphant, loogie, mortagog and sea pig—they all existed because the world was now one massive body of water.

Because of a “Tide Rising” apocalyptic event, mankind was forced to take a giant evolutionary step backward. Humans lived on cruise ships and Navy aircraft carriers and existed on a diet of “fish, fish and more fish.” Like everyone else, Berkley was born and raised at sea. It was a precarious situation at best. “Fear was just a part of life,” she understood at an early age.

Berkley discovered gigantic sea creatures existed one day when she and her friend Garth were scavenging the Mediterranean Sea looking for valuable junk. Coming face-to-face with a 30-foot hydra serpent irrevocably changed her life in more ways than one.

Not only did monsters exist, she realized, but they were also intelligent and vengeful. Said Berkley immediately after escaping the clutches of the ruby Hydramonsterus serpentinius: “I turned back to look at the monster one last time. There was something about the way it looked back at me that made me sure it would kill me if it had the opportunity. I never thought that a creature like that could communicate emotion through its gaze.”

As a result of their first-hand, near-death experience with the hungry hydra, both Berkley and Garth were recruited as full-time monster hunters on the good ship Britannica. Now they would be stationed on the frontlines of the ongoing battle between man and monster.

It’s obvious Martin has a thing for sea monsters of all stripes and colors, and not just the shadowy unknowable blobs lurking at the bottom of the ocean. She takes care to give her creatures distinctive personalities. In particular: Elmer, the bratty gargantuan octopus.

Throughout the novel, ol’ Elmer is a pest who terrorizes the Britannica’s crew. It doesn’t take long before Berkley realizes he’s simply a colossal prankster with no evil agenda. After helping the ship overcome a hostile takeover by pirates, Elmer gives Berkley a convivial wink. What happens next is unknown, but the possibilities are endless.

[The Monster Missions / By Laura Martin / First Printing: June 2021 / ISBN: 9780062894382]

When you’re in the woods and a bigfoot unexpectedly crosses your path, there’s only three options available: run, submit or fight. What would you do?

In David Irons’s latest book The Bloody Tracks of Bigfoot, a character doesn’t run or submit to the eight-foot-tall beast. Astonishingly, he accepts the challenge before him. “Okay, asshole,” said tough guy Tony Reynolds. “Let’s go.”

The resulting fight was insane. Reynolds had been a Hollywood stuntman for a long time and there was no way he was gonna lose a fight to a goddamn freaky bigfoot. Wrote Irons: “Even though it towered over him and was a greater foe than any man he had ever fought, there wasn’t a bone in Reynolds’ body that was going to back down.”

Implausible as it might seem, the wily stuntman kept his adversary on its toes. Reynolds was a tough bastard, all right. “He was true Hollywood tough guy tough.” The writing in these four chapters is very good—simultaneously violent and humorous in equal parts. You could (maybe) call it Tarantino-esque.

Even though the cryptid was enormous, it wasn’t quick or agile. That helped Reynolds gain an advantage. With muscle memory culled from an old B-movie kung fu flick, the stuntman was able to dodge the beast’s sharpened claws and deliver a barrage of well-placed kicks and debilitating punches. When the giant bigfoot went down, Reynolds arrogantly blew a snot rocket toward the prone figure. “Just another furry pussy,” he said dismissively.

Reynolds was in the mountains of Oregon helping a crew shoot a low-budget independent horror film. It was the golden age of gory slasher flicks (the 80s) and everyone in Hollywood was looking to make a quick buck at the box office. This effort was going to be called Mountaintop Madman Massacre.  

But when a bigfoot family was discovered nearby, the original film was scrapped. Director Rob Lieberman decided to make a documentary instead. It would be a film that transcended celluloid, he thought, something that would change the world forever. Lieberman felt like he would go down in history as the man who clearly captured bigfoot on camera. There would be no denying the creature’s existence—the director was confident that he could bring home the Grand Guignol of bigfoot films.

What happened next was a grubby spoof of Hollywood wannabes and has-beens. The director’s dream of cinema verité quickly becomes a nightmare reality. With each death captured on celluloid, his grip on sanity unspooled. Life behind the lens desensitized him to what was in front of it. By the end of the novel, Lieberman was completely complicit in the mountaintop massacre.

No spoilers from me, but only one person from the film crew makes it to the last chapter. Everyone, even the lone survivor, experiences a shocking comeuppance. The Bloody Tracks of Bigfoot doesn’t suffer moviemaking fools lightly.

[The Bloody Tracks of Bigfoot / By David Irons / First Printing: August 2021 / ISBN: 9798454467999]

Have you ever finished reading a book (or a series) and wished it had been told from a different character’s perspective—Tiger Lily instead of Wendy, perhaps, or Jane instead of Tarzan?

That’s sorta how I felt when I put down Monstrous Escape, the third and final (?) novel in John Grover’s titanic Kaiju Overlords series.

In all three books, the story swirled around Jason Bagley of the U.N. Special Forces. He was the presumptive hero of the series—a fearless fighter pilot, a doting family man and a steady influence to everyone under his purview. Without a doubt, he was the nicest man since Atticus Finch.

But there was another character who could easily have been the hero. John Temple had a compelling personal story before he joined the U.N. team. He also had a growth arc that took him from cocky pirate to selfless savior.

Grover’s kaiju trilogy would have been wildly different with Temple as the protagonist—in a good way, I think. But don’t be mistaken, I’m not asking for a rewrite. I’m just saying that a John Temple series would’ve been cool. He could have been the boss hero instead of the “woman in a refrigerator.”

As with all final books in a trilogy, Monstrous Escape wraps up with an explosive climax (for a quick catch-up, read my reviews of Behemoths Rising and Giants Reborn). In addition, if you’re like me, you’ll dig (!!) the unrelenting giant worm action. Added bonus: the giant centipede action ain’t too bad either.   

One thing I really liked about the Kaiju Overlords series was the way the author gave an emotional kick to all of his characters—two of them even found time to get married.

One of these emotional moments came a split second before the unthinkable endgame. Two colleagues suffering from the same post-apocalyptic funk attempt to articulate their feelings to each other. “I can’t keep losing everyone I care about,” said one.  

What followed was an intimate and awkward conversation forever unfinished between a man and a woman. Were they sharing a romantic moment (maybe) or were they trapped in a state of torpor (probably). Knowing now how the series ends, the conversation remains ineffably sad.

[Monstrous Escape / By John Grover / First Printing: August 2021 / ISBN: 9798451452585]

Talon the Giant Killer Claw is a lousy novel with a pinch of charm. In other words, it’s a lot like the infamous movie it’s based on.

Back in 1957, moviegoers laughed out loud when they first saw The Giant Claw in theaters. Positioned to be the next monster movie blockbuster, it turned out to be a disappointing mix of bad plotting, bad acting and bad science.

But mostly what earned The Giant Claw its ignominious reputation was the big bird itself. Initially hoping to enlist the talents of Ray Harryhausen to animate the giant turkey vulture, the crew ultimately hired an inferior production outfit that produced a goofy-looking marionette.

In all other respects, The Giant Claw was a typical low-budget monster movie from the 50s—featuring preposterous science and predictable scripting along with modest acting (including the talents of Playboy model Mara Corday). But the bird! My goodness, audiences from the Eisenhower era couldn’t forgive the goddamn bird. If you’re curious, you can see the movie for yourself (here).

A funny thing happened on the way to the future, however. Over the years, the titular creature became the gold standard for wacky kaiju movie FX. It’s ironic, isn’t it? The only reason people remember The Giant Claw today is because of its half-assed, low-rent puppeteering.

And now we have a dubious sequel to The Giant Claw in prose format. Lucky us. Talon the Giant Killer Claw begins immediate after the movie ends and takes readers up to the present. Note: Don’t get confused—character names have been changed to protect the innocent.

A “Dimensional Protoplasm” wormhole is discovered in a cave at the Mexican border and suddenly the earth is alive with mutant kaiju. There are giant moles, a huge Chupacabra-like thingy and of course there’s another Giant Claw to worry about.

There are also vampires—lots of vampires. The whole area is swarming with Latino bloodsuckers. If something isn’t done immediately, the earth was doomed to become the playground for vampires and giant killer monsters.

The situation is eventually stabilized thanks to the efforts of the Mexican military, a charitable space alien, a gaggle of comandos vampiros and a secret U.S. agency tasked to confront ecological anomalies. In the end, the author leaves the door open for future sequels. Like it or not, The Giant Claw is the gift that keeps on giving.

[Talon the Giant Killer Claw / By T.E. Heglin / First Printing: April 2021 / ISBN: 9798733223988]

One glance at the cover of Chris McInally’s latest effort and you’d properly assume that he’s written a novel featuring a super-sized prehistoric shark.  

That’s sort of correct. Relict is actually about three gigantic prehistoric sharks. Specifically sharks that were previously thought to be extinct for millions of years. 

These Carcharodon megalodon were large—three times larger than a great white shark. They were sixty-foot, sixty-ton killing machines, the ultimate apex predators. Local fishermen ominously called them Los Demonios Negros.

Recent activity in the Baja Peninsula had caught the attention of Dr. Aloysius Mackenzie, a marine biologist who specialized in endangered species. “I am convinced the Sea of Cortez is home to a small—but stable—population of a relict species,” he explained. 

If you don’t know the meaning of “relict,” don’t worry. McInally gives the reader a succinct one-paragraph explanation. It’s a biological term referring to a species once abundant throughout the world, but now restricted to one area—a Kiwi bird for example or a platypus.

Mackenzie knew something huge was stalking the Baja Peninsula, and his gut told him it was a shiver of megalodon. Naturally, his colleagues (most notably submersible pilot Athena Walker, ex-Navy with a double-degree in applied physics and aqua-nautical engineering) couldn’t endorse such a crazy theory. That changed overnight when a chewed up whale washed ashore on La Paz’s Playa Balandra.

If you’re familiar with Apex, McInally’s first novel (read my review here), you already know his shark action is first-rate. After five years, I’m happy to see him return to a sub-genre that suits him so well.

Some of McInally’s non-shark action is iffy, however. Humor often falls flat (the “OK, Boomer” joke won’t age well, I predict), and the snippy dialogue between Dr. Aloysius and his nephew made me wince every time.

But like I said, the action perks up considerably when McInally writes about his sharks. He calls them “vengeful spectres from the Underworld,” and “mountains of flesh and teeth.” The open maw of one megalodon is “reminiscent of a black hole set to swallow a planet.”

He even gives us a little bit of shark sex. “Shockwaves permeated the water as the smaller megalodon rammed its would-be mate. The goliaths sank, the male forcing the female into the depths. Blood spurted as he clamped his teeth around one of the female’s pectorals. Next, he brought his belly flush against hers. With the female trapped, the male inserted one of his claspers into her cloaca, depositing his sperm. Then it was over. Letting go of his mate’s pectoral fin, the male broke away. He fled, plunging toward the abyss.” Depending on your kink, this could be the best part of the entire novel.

[Relict / By Chris McInally / First Printing: September 2021 / ISBN: 9798486427695]

I enjoy a bigfoot yarn as much as any modern-day Homo erectus. But to be honest, Down From Beast Mountain is only a so-so novel. As a reader, you will probably enjoy the soapy social antics surrounding the small mountainside community of Porterville. And I’m certain you’ll get a rush from the Bigfoot violence at the end of the book.

But if you’re looking for anything else—any kind of nuance or specifics—you can forget about it. The devil is in the details and there aren’t many details in this 2017 effort from author Gerry Griffiths.

In particular, there’s one huge elusive detail that persists throughout the novel. For 131 pages, the author never delivers a satisfying description of his monster. After a while it becomes kind of puzzling. Why would he write a gonzo cryptid caper with so much potential but with such indifferent language? Note to Mr. Griffiths: Descriptive language heightens the aesthetic value of the text. It’s kind of important.

When the beast first shows up (page three), he’s simply a dark shadow in the night. In the distance, his “loud roar booms like a cranky lion at feeding time.”

Later, as he’s destroying a restaurant, a convenience store and a supermarket, he’s continually described as a big brawny bear (or maybe a hairy ape). He’s eight feet tall, 600 pounds and smells like a garbage pit. “This thing can pound us into the ground like a couple of action heroes made out of Play-Doh,” says the town’s game warden.

Interestingly, the only memorable detail we get is when the town’s warden and sheriff trap the beast in an alley with their vehicle. Through a rain-soaked windshield the pair of public servants get a split second peep at the Bigfoot’s generous endowments. “It huge!” says the sheriff gawking at the figure before him. “I’ll say,” adds the game warden, averting his eyes from the long phallic appendage hanging between the creature’s legs.

And there you have it, dear readers. The beast from Beast Mountain is big, fat, smelly and well-hung. He’s not exactly a unique or memorable creation. For goodness sakes, the author could almost be describing me!

[Down From Beast Mountain / By Gerry Griffiths / First Printing: December 2017 / ISBN: 9781925711462]

It made sense that Lieutenant Commander Bill Martin (code name: Tiger Shark) of the Secret Underwater Intelligence Service would one day find himself face to face with a giant sea monster.

The stories of marine monsters, including prehistoric reptiles, tentacled beasts and sea serpents were stamped indelibly into every seafarer’s subconscious. Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea wasn’t just a fanciful science fiction novel to career aquanauts like Martin. There was truth in Jules Verne’s undersea adventure story.

The U.S. Navy, however, wasn’t having any of it. It’s policy on such matters remained consistent: Kraken, karathen, lusca, whatever—behemoths from the bottom of the ocean did not exist. They were simply mythological creatures born in the days when men thought the earth was flat and sea monsters devoured ships.

Tigershark: Operation Sea Monster begins when a confluence of events explodes southwest of Guam in the Philippine Sea: a distressed bathyscaphe, an active underwater volcano, a nosey Russian submarine and outrageous allegations of a giant sea serpent dubbed Big Daddy by first responders. It was time for LCDR Bill Martin to transform into his superhero alter ego: Tiger Shark!

The sinking sealab, the pesky Russian sub and the erupting volcano were all serious situations the U.S. Navy was equipped to handle. No problem there. Sea monsters, on the other hand, were something altogether different. Unique in marine biology, Big Daddy was some kind of hybrid between a mutant sea snake and a giant squid, and it was big enough to crush a submarine like a can of beer. It’s single eye was “uncaringly neutral,” said an early report. “Cruel with no intent of cruelty.”

After a couple of close encounters that established a bond between man and monster, Tiger Shark jumped into his hi-tech stingray submersible and chased the mega mutant back to it’s lair at the bottom of the Mariana Trench.

“Stay down there, Big Daddy.” said Tiger Shark to his estimable adversary. “Stay down there and keep out of trouble. The world is not ready for you. Stay down and nurse your wounds and get well and, maybe in another thousand years, pay another visit to the surface and see if men have changed. You, or your spawn, or your spawn’s spawn; wait a millennium before you come again.” Case closed (for now).

[Tigershark #3: Operation Sea Monster / By Manning Lee Stokes writing as Ken Stanton / First Printing: January 1974 / ISBN: 9780532125433]