Monday 10 December 2007

Guy N. Smith Book Review - Crabs' Moon


I think it's only fair to start with a review of the book from which the title of this blog is derived. If you haven't heard of Guy N. Smith, he is a pulp horror writer with roughly fifteen billion books to his name. To say his books move quickly is a bit of an understatement. Characters are routinely introduced and dispatched within the space of a chapter. The whole book is over within a couple of hundred pages and about half of that is spent ineptly describing sex scenes and gory deaths (usually occurring within a few minutes of each other). Obviously, I love them.

Crabs' Moon is actually the fifth in the series. The first book was Night of the Crabs, in which giant crabs march their way up and down the Welsh coast, eating hapless tourists. Crabs' Moon actually tells a story parallel to this one, describing the events occurring at neighbouring Shell Island (i.e. crabs eating more hapless tourists). I wasn't aware until reading the first book later, but Crabs' Moon actually poaches several chapters from Night of the Crabs. One of those chapters is a giant crab attacking a tank (and subsequently hurling it over a cliff), so at least they reused the top shelf material.

I could go into detail about the characters, but they are really just crab-fodder, and none of them are as interesting as pipe-smoking series regular Cliff Davenport, who barely makes an appearance. The plot is standard monsters-on-the-rampage fare and would probably blow away in a stiff breeze. However, if you are a fan of gory, crab-based dismemberment (and who isn't?) then you should check these books out.

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