Reminded me of the second half of Cabin in the Woods, which I loved. However, where Cabin in the Woods had well thought-out and creative monsters, this didn’t. The first act was fun though and lots of action throughout. ( )

In the desert town of Cromay, New Mexico, resident Mike Fradella returns home from a day of work and an evening of unwinding downing three beers. A tree meets his return coming up from his porch. At first, he considers this nothing more than a prank done by the local teenagers but there is still something unsettling about this. He calls the sheriff and upon his arrival, things start becoming weird as trees spring from the ground. As these trees appear all over the small town, the body count goes up.

Fast forward a few years later, A Haunted Forest Touring company offers a chance on Halloween to view the forest inside rather than around. Those lucky to manage to get their hands on a ticket will get a once-in-a-lifetime experience of the forest and its monsters up close and personal. But this tour is doomed from the start. Forced out of their tram, the group finds itself dwindling as the forest inhabitants decide to make them a tasty meal.

Honestly, I was surprised that I was able to devour this book so quickly. I won't lie when I say the entire storyline was filled with gruesome deaths, monsters both from the gates of hell to creatures right out of nightmares, and on the edge of your chair as survivors struggle to stay alive inside of being picked off by the monsters.

This was a unique take on the horror genre. I have read a lot of horror books in my past but I am going to say this one will stand out against all the others. The tale is unique. The deaths are filled with gore. The ending was not something I was expecting. Nevertheless, it was a bit satisfying but a bit anti-climactic.

Final Thought:
If you are looking for a tale of horror, then definitely pick this book up. It will be the perfect Halloween read. ( )

Wow! This was an action packed blood and gore infested horror romp!

A little backstory:

Come one, come all and take a ride into the haunted forest where you will see amazing creatures the likes of what you have never seen before!

There are trams on tracks that take tourists through a haunted forest with all kinds of oddball creatures and the tourists are hoping to get glimpses of the creatures that are roaming through the forest!



However, with any maiden voyage though comes unexpected problems that are unforeseeable and when one of the trams comes to a stop to view the creatures the last thing expected would be that the tram would lose power, but that is what happens and when the power goes out, so does the chance of escape. When another tram rams into the powerless tram it brings about a horrific crash which that is when things get interesting as now the tourists are considered a prime meal for the creatures out in the forest.

What happened to the tram? What happens to the tourists? Do they escape the clutches of the creatures? What kind of creatures are roaming the haunted forest? No spoilers here as you will just have to read the book!

There are quite a few characters within this story which I am not going into detail with each one, but I will say that I really loved most of the characters as they tried to fight their way to survival against the creatures.

There is lots of blood and gore throughout the story which starts practically right away in the first chapter and doesn't let up till the end of the book!

The story just flows along with the fast paced action but when the trams crash and the tourists are sitting ducks is when the story goes into overdrive. From that point on the story stays in overdrive with constant blood and gore action to the point that I could literally not put the book down as I wanted to stay awake to see what would happen next!

This book was awesome and it is a perfect read for Halloween! Giving this book five "gory" stars!

Highly recommend to all horror fans! ( )

3 1/2 stars.

The good: full of the humor that you expect from Strand. This is my first experience with James A. Moore but I will definitely read other books by him now. Characters are interesting. Main Bad guy is really pretty bad--as are a few of the humans, and snarkiness abounds. Entertaining with never a dull moment.

The bad: Just too much. Of everything. Too many monsters. Too many characters going in too many directions. Too much mayhem. One third of the way in I was hoping that the action would slow down so that the plot could develop. No suspense because the action never stops. No scares because there are monsters everywhere you look. I think if we had less characters and if the story developed slower it would have been better. If we are talking about Strand's lighter books, I like the Andrew Mayhem series and Benjamin's Parasite better because they had more focus.

To see the more serious side of Strand I would recommend Dweller, which is just amazing. ( )

Fast moving gore packed romp through a haunted forest. ( )

I was well pleased with this novel. Everything about it was fun: the story, the humor, the deaths. It had the perfect combination of horror, comedy, and seriousness.

The story takes place in a small, normal town in New Mexico. Normal until a full grown forest pops up and takes over the entire town in one day. A forest that is populated with monsters and ghosts and too many creatures to describe. Flash forward a few years and the forest has been converted into a tourist attraction with tram rides through the center of the forest. A special Halloween tour is about to take place and this ride is going to be more disastrous than anybody realizes.

The mix of characters was very easy to picture in my head. And the vocal performance by Joe Hempel really helped to differentiate each one. The story had a wide selection of characters so it was not obvious as to who would be killed and who wouldn't. And there were than a few times where I was actively laughing out loud. One more thing that I don't know if Strand and Moore were doing this on purpose or not, but it seemed to me that they kept stopping chapters semi-abruptly, leaving a character in a near impossible spot. In my mind, I pictured it as either Strand or Moore saying "Ha, let's see how you write your way out of this one." as they pass the story to the other. I'm not sure if that was real or not but it felt like it. To me, it made the experience even better. ( )

Welcome to Disneyland!

This novel is either bizarro fiction, a novel written on a methamphetamine nightmare, or it's a flip off for all the horror fans who've enjoyed too much of a good thing, namely blood, gore, and more blood.

The trick is to have us first CARE for the victims or possible heroes first. Failing that, we need to have a really compelling reason to hate them and want to see them die horrible, nasty, brutish deaths... EVENTUALLY.

In this case, we're given no foreplay.

It's just a carnival sideshow with super-silly demon antics with the most tired sacrifice plot ever devised, a million monsters in a magical forest, and cartoonish (if blood-soaked military action had a cartoon industry) fight scenes.

The reactions of the characters in this book are less than satisfying. What should have come across as sarcastic cardboard cut-outs actually felt less like we were supposed to laugh WITH them and felt more like the novel was laughing AT us.

*sigh*

Not happy. The novel itself was written competently enough if you leave out the purpose of empathizing with anyone... but overall, the effect was depressing. ( )

While searching for a good scary book to read for the Pages and Pause Screen Halloween episode, I stumbled across The Haunted Forest Tour by James A Moore and Jeff Strand. The synopsis did grab a chuckle out of me and I thought okay, clever. Maybe if the book could be half as clever, it’ll be enjoyable. Boy, was it more than just half as clever! It was surprisingly fantastic!

Haunted Forest Tour is a constant thrill. Every time a question is raised, it gets answered within the next ten-ish minutes. A character pops up that is just horrible? Guess what? He’s dead! Everything is just constantly flowing and and moving. Which is surprising considering this book has two authors. I’ve found that most books with co-authors can become clunky and the handoff from one author to another is blatantly obvious. This is definitely not the case in Haunted Forest Tour. It is fluid and seamless.

Then, there’s the perfect balance between horror and comedy. You’ll get one scene where you are completely terrified, but it will be followed up by something so foolish, you can’t help but laugh, and then we can go back to gore (which is light, in my opinion, esp when compared to something like Little Heaven by Nick Cutter). It’s all just so wonderfully crafted, a truly fantastic horror story. What makes it even better is that the questions are all answered. You don’t really need them answered, you accept it at face value. Yeah sure, New Mexico seems weird enough to have a random forest full of monsters pop up. Why not?

If you are looking for just a fun, but scary book to read, I DEFINITELY recommend The Haunted Forest Tour by James A Moore and Jeff Strand. It’s just super great and really makes me want to pick up more stuff by both authors. ( )

This review is written with a GPL 4.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at WordPress, Blogspot & Librarything by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission

Title: Haunted Forest Tour
Series: ----------
Author: James Moore & Jeff Strand
Rating: 3 of 5 Stars
Genre: Horror
Pages: 270
Format: Digital Edition

Synopsis:

A forest grew up in one day in New Mexico, destroying a small town and killing almost all of the inhabitants. The survivors reported seeing otherworldly monsters.

The owner of the land opened up a tourist attraction where people could take a ride on armored buses through the edge of the forest to see the various creatures. He also hired cryptozoologists to study the remains of the creatures. The Haunted Forest Tour has a 100% safety rating and no one has ever gotten hurt.

For months now, crew have been laying down new track to the center of the forest. On Halloween a select group of 80 people are invited to go deeper into the forest than anyone has ever gone before. Unfortunately for them, the power goes out on the track and an accident occurs between 2 of the buses. Also, the monsters begin attacking, something they've never done before. The tourists split, some staying in the buses to wait for rescue and others to try to strike out and rescue themselves. Those who stay are eaten rather quickly.

The group we follow make it to an abandoned facility within the Forest. They realize they've gone even deeper into the forest and one of them strikes out on his own to follow the rails back to the edge of the Forest. The remainder are split up. It is revealed that the Forest is an intrusion from a demonic dimension and that the ruler has made a deal with the owner of Haunted Forest Tours. This demon needs a willing sacrifice AND a willing host to fully integrate his dimension into ours. He gets the sacrifice but is outwitted and some other humans destroy his host.

The whole forest and all of its denizens return to the their dimension and only a few people survive.

My Thoughts:

I have to admit, I was hoping for more. Part of that was me wanting answers well before the authors chose to give it. I didn't learn that the Forest was a hell pocket until well past the 50% mark and up to that point I was trying to figure out what was going on. The deal with the devil explained almost everything but it came too late for me, as I was too distracted by my own questions up to that point.

I was also disappointed in how the military reacted. They're shown as a bunch of lackwits and idiots. I was hoping for something a bit more in the vein of Through the Looking Glass by John Ringo.

The violence was pretty high but felt like some sort of B movie violence where it was just so splatterific that it moved into silly territory when that was NOT the intention. There was one torture scene near the end though that was just grotesque.

For a horror book, I never felt a moments dread. Horror is atmospheric, not just describing people getting killed horrifically. This had as much atmosphere as an empty elevator.

Overall, I don't feel like my time was wasted, as I got all the splatterific I could handle but there was no nuance and the whole supernatural side of things was just shoehorned in. The ending seemed to happen in 5 pages and authorial handwavium definitely occurred. This book didn't leave me wanting to seek out any more by either author.

★★★☆☆ ( )

A fast paced gory thrill ride through a forest filled with mind blowing monsters that came up from the bowels of hell. Horror fans, do not miss this one! ( )

Take a cryptozoological romp through the Haunted Forest with Jeff Stand and James F. Moore. These authors collaborated on this book a number of years ago and recently resurrected it for their fans. After you read it you'll be glad they did.

The plot jumps out immediately as huge trees suddenly begin sprouting up all over a town causing tremendous amounts of deaths and destruction. No one can say why this happened, but an enterprising company soon takes the area over and advertises it as the Haunted Forest Tour. You see, not only trees sprouted up years ago but also all kinds of creatures. Some of these are mythological in nature, others defy definition. It's these creatures that become the selling point for the tour.

A huge Halloween tour is planned to showcase the area with a limited guest list. As Strand and Moore throw together a number of disparate characters (that we get to know well) together, the fun starts to begin. See, the tour is advertised as 100% safe with no chance that any of the creatures can get at the guests as they tram through the forest. (Yeah, heard that one before...) Well, you can probably guess what happens pretty quickly.

The bulk of the book follows a number of characters as they attempt to battle their way out of the forest and back to safety. Strand and Moore let their imaginations run wild as they expose the characters (and readers) to dozens of different creatures.

While, not for the squeamish, the plot never lets up and concludes with a satisfying finish. ( )

The Haunted Forest Tour by Jeff Strand and James A. Moore is a great horror book. I felt like I was watching an old time horror movie. It was part funny and part horror but I couldn't quit reading it. The crazy things that lead up to the forest and then up to the people in the forest is crazy and weird but fascinating! The last 1/4 of the book lost some stream but it was still good. I enjoyed it tremendously, even if I felt like I was watching a B movie, I loved that! It was a hoot. Gore, mayhem, creatures, terror, and strangeness, YES!!! LOL ( )

Review being worked on ( )