Skin of the Insatiable Book Series – Indie Book Spotlight

Greetings, Readers, and welcome to May’s Spotlight! I hope you’re all safe and healthy?

Are you ready to say goodbye to cold weather? (If you’re in the Northern Hemisphere, anyway.) I’ll be honest, I live in an area that runs warm pretty much all year and so I tend to romanticize chilly weather somewhat and miss it dearly when it’s gone. I also find that I do the most reading when the conditions outside are inhospitably cold.

Speaking of cold and inhospitable, this month’s literary excursion is Skin, a horror novel by Patrick Logan. It takes place in the frozen north and was recommended to me based on my love for Stephen King and Bentley Little! With comparisons like that, how could I possibly pass this title by?

So, despite the days getting longer and warmer, I found myself transported to the winter wonderland that is Askergan County… where something is going horribly, horribly wrong. Put on some snowshoes, power up your Kindle, and Come with me.

Book Stats

    Author: Patrick Logan
    Formats: Kindle, Audiobook, and Paperback. (I’m reviewing the Kindle version.)
    Price: Free via Kindle Unlimited, $0.99 otherwise. $17.99 on Audiobook, but $7.49 with the purchase of the Kindle version or Free as a part of your trial Audible membership. $16.99 for the paperback.
    Length: 327 pages.
    Number of books in the series: At the time of writing, five.

Basic Premise

We start off with a tribe of Askergan tribesmen. Hunters. Lights in the sky drew their attention and since they saw those heavenly bodies hurtling to earth, there’s been only one thing on their minds. It’s coming through in a way that’s imperative but wordless; something like the force that moves migratory creatures, something like gravity. They’re being pulled to the place where whatever it is they saw came to rest.

They arrive to find an object in a crater and they’ve never seen anything like it before. It’s melting the snow and killing the grass but producing no heat of its own. Their leader goes into the strangely placid impact crater to investigate…

None of these men make it home.

We pick up hundreds, or maybe thousands, of years later with Cody Lawrence, his wife, and two children. They’re headed north to a Lawrence family gathering in Askergan County. It’s a little before Christmas and they’re all gathering at the family matriarch’s house for the holidays. Not only to celebrate but to mourn and reconnect; Cody’s father, Gordon, had passed somewhat recently further fracturing a family that already had troubles. And Cody, in particular, knows about family troubles considering he and his wife, Marley, have been On the Outs for a while. He’s hoping this trip will be a chance to rekindle things, but as the car trip goes on the idea of this seems less and less plausible. A storm is rolling in, and it looks to be a pretty massive blizzard.

We meet Oxford, an addict who’s had more second chances gifted to him by his family than he can recall. He’s Cody’s brother and our introduction to him is seeing him wake up on a bare mattress in a crack den next to a lady he doesn’t know, having fallen off the wagon in a big way. Once we’re at the Lawrence household, we also meet Jared and his partner Seth. Jared missed his Father’s funeral as his choice in romantic partners didn’t sit well with The Old Man. While Jared and his relationship with Seth are embraced by the remaining Lawrence, it’s clear that missing the funeral is still something of a point of contention.

We also get to know some of Askergan’s other residents. Sheriff Dana Drew, Deputies Coggins, and White and Ms. Wharfburn. The lady Wharfburn is having more than a little trouble in this weather – her front yard is filled with big oak trees, the branches of which are breaking under the weight of the snow. She absolutely must have someone come and help her out before one of them snaps the power line to her house. Sheriff Dana, being a real stand-up kind of guy, heads on out to her home to help her set up her generator and take a look at the tree situation.

As the snow piles on and the storm pick up, everyone seems to be feeling pretty tense. There’s an omnipresent force in the background, something in the air, a buzzing between the ears, and the word Come repeated over and over, drawing them towards the great white outdoors. Can the Lawrence family even begin to fight something like that when they can barely even deal with their own baggage and strained relationships?

You’re going to have to read it to find out!

My take

This was a fun, tense, and fast-paced horror story. And, as I mentioned before, if you like the works of Stephen King and Bentley Little and want something in that same vein, you should check this one out. There’s also a Lovecraftian element at play here. It’s kind of like Desperation, The Resort and The Color From Outer Space came together in a blender with a heaping scoop of ice.

There are a lot of characters to keep track of and we get to see things from all of their perspectives, oftentimes treading ground more than once through the lens of these different people. I did find a few instances of this where I found the order of events confusing and I had to re-read sections to make sure that I had the flow of events correct. (This is probably a Me problem rather than the text itself so your mileage may vary.) Certain character conflicts aren’t explained or delved into beyond being there and I will admit to wishing for more. I don’t want to spoil anything so pardon me for being vague, but a little additional illumination on some of these relationships would have made a good story even better. All in all, most of the characters in this book are broken people in one way or another, and understanding those cracks and what keeps them tied together is half the fun.

And being flawed people makes them all the more compelling to follow as they throw themselves through this maze of snow and gore.

All in all, I recommend this story for anyone who wants a horror where things are messy and a little complicated. If you like your protagonists flawed and vulnerable and your situations tense and claustrophobic, you’re going to have a good time in Askergan County.

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