Saurian
By William Schoell
1988 Leisure Books
Paperback, 368 pages
Suspension of disbelief is of
the utmost importance while reading this book. It gets pretty goofy but if you
play along, you can have some fun with this dinosaur stomping tale of aliens
and alcoholism.
In 1957, lil’ Tommy Bartlett is
a loner of a kid, content to read comics and monster magazines alone (sounds
like me). His folks are useless; his father a drunk and his mom a woman who has
given up. Bribed by his mother to play with the local kids, he acquiesces and through
them, finds a hidden lake in the woods with a creepy house on the other end. He
rows over to the house on his own (the others are chicken) and gets a scare
from a weird man in the house. That night, a massive dinosaur levels the Florida
shanty town Tommy lived in, leaving the boy the only survivor.
Onward to 1988, and Tom co-owns
a bar (odd since his father’s drink is what destroyed his childhood) on the
Florida coast. He is drawn back to his childhood area and finds it all built up
into an expensive property. He bravely goes back to the hidden pond and found
that area developed, too. He’d forgotten the tragedy that befell him back in
the Fifties but piece by piece it comes back. The weird man, the massive
dinosaur… how does it all fit?
OK, I’m not going to say too
much. The dinosaur scenes are tons of fun. The beast is massive, it swallows
Blue Whales whole for a snack. It levels cities, hurls boats and licks human
remains off the bottom of its feet like you’d suck honey off your finger.
Impossibly huge, savage and yet with a human intelligence. So how does this tie
in with the weird old man in the house? Don’t worry… kooky exposition lady
Mistress Dunn will tell all. Now, even with a completely open mind, I found
this to be really dumb, but I carried on and let Schoell tell his story. It’s a
lot to swallow but it’s a fun ride.
A few notes: considering his
father was consumed by alcohol, Tom drinks a fuck of a lot, even though he says
he has no problem. Maybe that’s the author’s point, that addiction sneaks up on
you. Tom’s girlfriend in the latter chapters is an alcoholic as well. Lots of
drink talk. There is also a lot of padding, as is the case with a lot of
Leisure’s horror novels. Some of the well-rounded characters have nothing to do
with the narrative, they just add color. That’s fine but a tighter book might
have been a little more satisfying. Still, this is a fun, if silly, creature
feature. It is well written and easy to blow through.
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