Ancient Enemy Paperback – September 22, 2013

Better than I anticipated. If I had high hopes I would've bought the whole series in 1 edition and save a bit of money but this book was a great read I found difficult to put down.Book 2 on its way to me!

I'm a huge fan of cosmic horror, since before I first picked up a Lovecraft book, so I decided to give Ancient Enemy a go. It takes the cosmic horror sub genre far from R'lyeh and Miskatonic U and plops it down in Colorado and the story of the Anasazi . We open with Stella.and David fleeing a archeology dug of horror, right into the hands of bank robbers while an ancient evil pursues them. Trapped in a small cabin they are forced to do the horrible bidding of the entity or face even worse horrors. Will they give it what it wants or will they read themselves apart. Like I said I love cosmic horror but it's easy to get bogged down with others trying to write new stories I. The Cthulhu mythos.This is a fresh look at a horror just as cosmic yet different. A new, ancient enemy. The book moves at a decent pace and once the horror starts it plays out fairly quickly. While none of the characters are exceptional they are all well written and developed well enough. It's a bit light on the gore but one scene made me out down the book till morning . It was disturbing enough and one of personal queasy moments. If you are a fan of cosmic horror and want something different than tentacles and and cultists then give this a try.

Stella is at an isolated archeological dig, and she is in trouble as the expedition is under siege. Death and mutilation has happened, and more has been demanded, as something has arrived at the dig and is picking off the archeologists one at a time. And what it NOW is David, a young orphaned Navajo boy, who was found alone and bloody by the archeologists, but Stella won't let this something have him and flees. Simultaneously, a bank robbery has gone bad, not real bad, there's no massacre, but bad enough, a man is killed. However, this will cause tension in the gang as Frank, the gang's leader is near murderous over this "deviation" from the plan. However, the other members manage to calm him down, they flee on their snowmobiles on the lookout for an alternate means of locomotion. Bad luck is bad luck, and soon Stella and David find themselves carjacked, but the car is damaged in the jacking, and is overheating, and if they don't find shelter soon they are going to be stranded in the middle of the nowhere as a paralyzing snowstorm starts blowing in to the area. Then, luckily at the last minute, they find a log cabin in the middle of the countryside, but while empty, it hasn't been abandoned. Somebody has been very recently living there, and now they're not. Not living, that is. Unfortunately for all, that which Stella has fled from has not forgotten Stella, and it has followed her, and it has found her, and now the fun starts. And this will be the basis for Lukens' novel's core plot as both parties, Stella's and Frank's, are now under siege, and a bloody war of attrition begins. Mark Lukens' biography in the back of this book states that Lukens is also a screenwriter, which may explain why "Ancient Enemy" reads very much a novelization of a direct-to-disc movie. There is very little in the way of characterization, the characters are your standard literary types, as there is the villain with a heart of gold, the nervous and panicky weak link, the blind and protective motherly archetype, and they all exist to be merely cannon fodder, to be used only to push the story along. And in-the-end it didn't help that I really didn't like any of the characters, including the sullen and unsociable David. There is little in the way of plot, this is your basic siege story, and as such, Lukens gives us little in the way of story development. The reader is dumped right into the action, and then the action never lets up, so there is little, except for some brief infodumps from Stella, any reason for any of this to be happening. In fact, even the information that Stella gives isn't satisfactory as to why this ancient being is doing what it is doing. Random evil for the sake of random evil is just laziness on the author's part. In fact, in the way that Mark Lukens starts his novel "Ancient Enemy", it reads very much like a sequel to a previously published novel. Continuing the feeling that this is a novelized script is that this novel has plenty of movieisms, that is, transparent movie set pieces. Like the corpse in the freezer who bangs about causing distress to all those inside the house, the footsteps in the snow that just STOP, the villains who start turning on each other, the first seven page opening scene, and the classic/cliché cynical last scene as Lukens rubs the reader's face into the fact that everything that we had originally thought about the creature is wrong, and that Lukens has just cheated his audience. This type of ending is alright, I guess, in an hour and a half tv movie on the SCY-FY channel, but in a novel, it just feels like a cheat. I also thought that knocking off one of the main characters first was a mistake, while keeping the weakest character until much later. Plus, we never get any explanation as to WHAT this ancient creature is, and WHY this ancient creature is committing the mayhem that is doing, leaving me frustrated, and with a sense that all of this random mayhem was just a waste of my time, that was only compounded by the cynical ending. All we know is that blood and death will happen to the people inside the cabin if this creature's escalating cat-and-mouse demands aren't met. This could have easily have been a mass-market paperback from Tor or Leisure in the nineties, and then forgotten. Although this would have been something that a much younger, and less demanding, me would have enjoyed. So, while I enjoyed this rocket ride to hell, when all was done I still felt let down as the prose seemed simplified for a lesser IQed reader, and I felt that there was very little substance to this novel's plot. For this site I have reviewed these other indie horror novels: Andy  by Bradley Snow. Cannibal Corpse, M/C  by Tim Curran. Crogian  by John Leahy. Dead Sea  by Tim Curran. THE DESERT  by Bryon Morrigan. Hissers  by Ryan C. Thomas. Lucky Streak  by Dane Grannon. Red Sky  by Nate Southard. Rise & Walk  by Gregory Solis.Snapper by Peter Maloney & Felicia Zekauskas. Vespa  by Dean Lombardo.

Honestly, there's no other word for this book. Out of the batch of Kindle horror novels I bought recently, this is the only one I've read so far that I literally could not put down. A brief summary: A young woman and a Native American boy (not related) are fleeing from some mysterious force when their car gets hijacked by a band of bank robbers needing a ride! It's the darkest part of winter and they need a place to stay for the night, so the bank robbers force the lady to go to a nearby out-of-the-way cabin. But when they find a corpse there, it seems whatever the woman and the boy were fleeing from has followed them! Now they have to figure out a way to survive as the malevolent spirit does its hardest to turn them against each other--and the Native American kid. Is he responsible for their plight? Or is he the only way out of it? That, friends, is something I'll leave you to figure out ;DI was really impressed with this story. The writing and editing were solid (I didn't catch any egregious mistakes at least), with truly spine-tingling portrayals of bloody deaths and supernatural malfeasance, especially involving the reanimated recently-dead! The characterization wasn't exceptional, but good enough that I ended up caring about the woman and her young ward, as well as one of the more sympathetic bank robbers (the others were pretty thuggish, and thankfully got what was coming to them--in grotesque fashions!) The best part of the book though, at least in my opinion, was how Lukens kept the true nature of the supernatural threat ambiguous until the very end. The Native American kid it's apparently following was very quiet, so the characters and the readers don't figure out whether or not he's allied with the evil spirit or fighting against it until the conclusion, pretty much. That was enough to keep me on the edge of my seat and turning page after page nonstop until the truth was revealed!For all these reasons, I heartily recommend this little tale of terror, especially at only 2.99. While I didn't like the other Lukens book I got recently (Sightings) quite as much, it was still pretty good in my view. Thus, after reading one competent book and one excellent one from this author, I think I'll be keeping an eye on him, and I encourage the rest of you to do the same!

Impressive work of fiction - features a compelling blend of the supernatural, a consistently forward progressing plot line, and just the right amount of morbidity to be a page-turning thriller that keeps you engaged. What I enjoyed most was that this novel offered something unique and different blending the story of an archaeologist digger, a group of bank robbers, the Navajo, and a supernatural being. The unfortunate part about this book is the ending; while the story keeps you engaged, it abruptly ends - but not with that leaving you craving more feeling. Instead it feels very unfinished. That said, if there should be a sequel to pick up the story where this one had left off, I would be the first in line to pre-order the book.

Bought this book ages ago and finslly got around to reading it. Really enjoyed it. It was creepy and unsettling, but the characters and storyline were easy and believable to read which also made for an enjoyable read. I wouldn't say it was like reading a King book though. The voice is very different. Will definitely be reading more by this author.

Un peu trop "gore" à mon goût mais les amateurs vont se régaler. L'horreur augmente progressivement. La fin apporte une réponse que j'ai trouvé très satisfaisante.

Read to the end but could not really get into it. Parts kept you going but not overall

ニューメキシコの遺跡発掘現場から、考古学者であるステラとナバホ族の少年デビッドは、恐ろしい「何か」から命を懸けて逃げている途中だった。彼らは、雪深いコロラド山中で、やはり逃亡中の銀行強盗犯人らにカージャックされてしまう。猛吹雪の中、山小屋へ逃げ込んだ彼らを「何か」は追ってきた。待っていたのは、そして始まったのは想像を絶する恐怖の連射・・・。私にとっては、久々のスーパーナチュラルホラーですが、とても面白かった。テンポが速い割に、とても丁寧に恐怖が積み上げられていく展開は、シンプルでストレートだが、なかなか先は読めず、期待以上の出来だった。風呂敷を広げすぎないところもよかった。作者の他の作品もすぐに読みたくなった。英語は平易でとても読みやすかったです。