Book Review: Shelter for the Damned by Mike Thorn - More2Read
 

Shelter for the Damned by Mike Thorn

 

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About Shelter for the Damned:

 

While looking for a secret place to smoke cigarettes with his two best friends, troubled teenager Mark discovers a mysterious shack in a suburban field. Alienated from his parents and peers, Mark finds within the shack an escape greater than anything he has ever experienced.

But it isn’t long before the place begins revealing its strange, powerful sentience. And it wants something in exchange for the shelter it provides.

Shelter for the Damned is not only a scary, fast-paced horror novel, but also an unflinching study of suburban violence, masculine conditioning, and adolescent rage.

There is a 2021 interview I hosted with the author : https://more2read.com/review/interview-with-mike-thorn/

 

 

Praise For Shelter for the Damned:

 

“A full-throttle descent into visceral terror, Shelter for the Damned grabs you by the throat and never lets go. This haunting tale heralds the arrival of Mike Thorn as a horror writer to watch.”
— Jeffrey Reddick, creator of Final Destination

“A terrifying descent into suburban addiction and male shame, Shelter for the Damned is a gripping, uncanny tale cut from the same cloth as Stephen King and John Carpenter.”
— Daniel Goldhaber, director of Cam (Netflix)

“Impressive is an understatement. Mike Thorn is a fresh voice in horror with a distinct vision well worth your attention.”
— John Claude Smith, author of Occasional Beasts: Tales and the Bram Stoker Award®-nominated Riding the Centipede

 

 

Review:

 

Suburbia, in the middle of a field lay a shack.
First few visits intriguing maybe, dread follows.
The apparent and the unapparent lurks, great trepidation and malevolence to follow.
In youth, boys had places to hang, yards, treehouses, caves, and playgrounds, the Shed is one trip in which at least one of these three boys, Mark Scott and Adam, would be thinking twice undertaking a step into its threshold again.

This is Mark’s story, one of the three friends.
Many things for Mark to decipher amidst the Shed’s pull.
There is the Mark before and after the Shed.
The metamorphosis is undeniable.
The unsettled disturbed soul looking in crevices of life for answers but this may just be the wrong avenue for transcending.
Hyper-real dreams and the addiction to some sense of inclusion and feeling whole.
Ones battle with self, wrongs and disturbances, then there is the deciphering of the Shack with confronting real terrors, and “secret narratives,”a hook to keep burning though the tale.

A capacity for a level of violence in the future something has the knowledge of and wants to advance any future violence to a terrible few days in this town with the macabre, with the most overwhelming form of influence, “invoking malice” and “terror resurrected”. 

 

 

About Mike Thorn:

Mike Thorn is the author of the short story collection Darkest Hours. His debut novel Shelter for the Damned will be released through JournalStone on February 26.

His fiction has appeared in numerous magazines, anthologies and podcasts.

 

Credit: Anita Jeanine

 

Reviewed by Lou Pendergrast on 18 January 2021