Cavallaro's Cavalcade of Carnage
Grindhouse Press is probably the most prolific publishing house that I've ever encountered. It seems that every few weeks or so, there is an announcement for a new book dropping. Despite this speedy publishing schedule, they seem to release quite a few high quality pieces: KILL FOR SATAN! and DEAD STRIPPER STORAGE by Bryan Smith, FULL BRUTAL by Kristopher Triana, and RITUALISTIC HUMAN SACRIFICE by C.V. Hunt, to name a few.

KINFOLK by Mr. Kurtz was on my radar, and Matt was kind enough to send a review copy.

The story starts off strong, and in extreme fashion, with an Edward Lee-esque opening passage. So...I put my seatbelt on, expecting a bumpy ride. Well, I wouldn't need my seatbelt for a few more pages. The protagonists here are two criminals, with a revenge story woven in. I will admit that the relationship between the two brothers fell a little flat for me. I think that Kurtz drew the characters ok; I just wasn't emotionally invested in them. As a result of this, I didn't get hooked into the story until the blood soaked and creepy final act, where Matt really flexes his writing muscles. That's when I needed TWO seatbelts.

There are some occasional flashes of extreme horror brilliance here, but the lack of a sympathetic protagonist kept the story at arm's length for me.

Grade: C

Review by Jason Cavallaro
jcavallaro42@gmail.com
Twitter: @pinheadspawn

1278 Comments

Threaded

Add Comment

Enclosing asterisks marks text as bold (*word*), underscore are made via _word_.
Standard emoticons like :-) and ;-) are converted to images.

To prevent automated Bots from commentspamming, please enter the string you see in the image below in the appropriate input box. Your comment will only be submitted if the strings match. Please ensure that your browser supports and accepts cookies, or your comment cannot be verified correctly.
CAPTCHA