Siege on Dome 17
By Nick Young
2024 White Mountain Pub.
Paperback, 239 pages
This is Young’s debut novel and it’s fair to say that he’s off to a fairly auspicious start. The many characters’ (some are super unsavory) actions all have an effect on each other in one way or another and the story is multi-faceted, but that’s not to say that Young doesn’t know what we’re here for. Gore and bodily fluids flow and splash aplenty. Blood, plasma, claret, urine, vomit, pus, jizz and entrails leave bodies in every chapter… and there are 41 chapters!
Ten years have passed since the bombs dropped and the world is a dead, radiated desert and the surviving humans live in steel domes. Dome 17 may well be the last dome with anyone alive. Some remaining humans have become mutants, covered with boils and pus-filled sacs who become crazier over time. Taft is the man in charge of killing the mutants once they lose their humanity. A shitty job indeed. Three housing blocks are in Dome 17 and the A-block is all mutants. The survivors are running out of everything and things are breaking down, including the dome’s retracting roof. It’s turning into a war between the humans and the A-block and things are about to get even worse.
Giant insects are getting into the dome and the car-sized ants and huge wasps don’t care who they’re killing and eating. One vengeful mutant is feeding victims to a massive spider. The humans have to find a way to curb the insects and the mutants and save their asses, but the rag-tag team of heroes seem like a very unlikely crew to handle the siege. Descriptive violence ensues and the viscera is knee-deep in no time. As with the 80’s pulp horrors that this book is inspired by, inappropriate sex is also graphically depicted.
Young has a ton of fun with his killings, with guts sliding out of impaled bodies and the above-mentioned fluids spraying far and wide. The characters include a pedo/ child-murdering reverend, a mourning mom, a German co-worker of Taft’s that I pictured looking like Ted V. Mikels, a useless, dog-killing Dome Mayor, a mutant with revenge on his mind, the mayor’s very capable wife who become Taft’s main squeeze, and a plethora of folks, both good and bad, who are trying to survive. They are all worthwhile characters that help push the story along.
As with most small press books, it could have used another pass by an editor. A character named Arthur become Albert after a few pages and there are some typos throughout but overall, in that respect, this book is in better shape than 90% of the self-published/ small press books that I encounter. Young sent me a review copy with a barf-bag that he thoughtfully included as a bookmark. I didn’t have to use it but I can see where some might! The splatter is heavy, the gore is plentiful and the sick bastards that live in this book just might make you puke! On a side note, I wonder if Young’s idea for the domes came from Skydome in Toronto.
It's a barf-bag! It's a bookmark! It's a barf-bag bookmark!!
