Amid the worst storm in living memory, five Royal Marine reservists and a handful of civilians battle to survive.
But mother nature and the heavily armed mercenaries hunting them are the least of their concerns. A seemingly unstoppable Pagan force has been unleashed from the darkest depths of our ancient past – a phenomenon that will stop at nothing to see humanity reduced to ashes.
Low on ammo, no chance of rescue and surrounded by the unspeakable, it’s going to be 24 hours from hell.
Let the hunt begin
This reviewing lark can be hard work sometimes. My schedule is often set months in advance and much as I love reading, and I really do, it can grind me down. It’s at times like that where I crave something uncomplicated. A read that is nothing more than pure, unadulterated escapism. Chases, explosions, pithy one-liners, and wherever possible, undead spirits hell-bent on mass destruction is what I need. The elder book gods have taken pity upon me and provided exactly what I was looking for. This week I’m casting my beady eye over Wild Hunters by Stuart R Brogan.
The premise is devilishly simple, a group of squaddies find themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time. The legendary Wild Hunt are on the move, and they are looking for blood. What follows is a suitably violent game of cat and mouse. Trust me, there is a fair amount of viscera. I’ll admit I’m a sucker for a bit of folklorey mythological mayhem so I couldn’t have been happier.
Now normally at this point in a review I would waffle a bit about the main characters and explain what I thought about them. I’m going to break with tradition and not do that in this case. Every character is fair game in Wild Hunters, and I really want to avoid spoilers. One of the joys of the novel is trying to spot who’ll make it and who won’t. The question I found myself asking was who is next to get Pertweed*? It’s that kind of book. No one is safe. It’s exactly the sort of tone I want from this kind of story. We have a group of individuals way out of their depth having to make split-second decisions. The consequences of said decision are what makes everything so damned enjoyable.
In case you’re curious, based on my best calculations and factoring in my expert level survival skills, my life expectancy if I were in Wild Hunters would be approximately two and a half minutes… on a good day… If I was lucky.
The entire novel is set over a single night in a small geographic area, so it feels like we are in a race against time. One way or another you know that there will have to be a resolution by dawn. The Wild Hunt are relentless in their pursuit and the action builds nicely to a climax involving one of my favourite British landmarks. That was an unexpected added bonus. It’s clear the author has had a blast writing this novel and it really shows, everything is gleefully unashamedly bonkers. I loved it.
Let’s be honest, the likelihood is that you’ve read books or seen movies that cover similar ground to what is going on here. The important thing is that this particular iteration of man versus supernatural evil is perfectly executed. Wild Hunters doesn’t pretend to be anything other than what it is. There are no hidden depths here. This is a balls to the wall creature feature filled with lashings of gore and some darkly comedic moments. It’s the sort of story that if it were a movie it would be destined to become a cult classic. People would seek out late-night showings at their local indy cinema. Everyone would know exactly what to expect and they would love it all the more for it.
Wild Hunters is published by Horrific Tales Publishing and is available now. Great fun and well worth your time. I would strongly advise checking it out if you like your horror nice and bloody.
My musical recommendation to accompany Wild Hunters was a bit of a no-brainer. It kind of had to be the soundtrack to Dog Soldiers by Mark Thomas, didn’t it? If you enjoy some sounds in the background while you’re reading, this will definitely set the appropriate tone.
*Pertweed – to suffer an outlandish, ultimately futile, horribly violent death at any given moment. For further information see the collected films of Sean Pertwee – Doomsday, Wilderness, Event Horizon, and The Reckoning are just a few examples. The list goes on and on. I think there is even one with werewolves if I remember correctly. I forget what it is called.
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