Reviews

Swarm of Flying Eyeballs by Gina Ranalli

sanddanz's review

5.0

Squid Salad Press' second bizarro release, Swarm of Flying Eyeballs, comes from one of the top-selling authors in the genre, Gina Ranalli. In Swarm, the summer school students of a local school are going on a local field trip to a blueberry field. Ron, the poor guy that has to tend to the blueberry fields, watches as the bus pulls up and is a bit disgruntled, since back in the day when he was in school he never got to go on field trips during summer school. Soon, the kids are all picking berries until all of a sudden one of them starts to scream! Ron goes to check on the girl who was screaming, and next thing, both Ron and the girl that was previously screaming are both running and yelling "EYEBALLS!" But what are they talking about? Only the mind of Ranalli and those that have read Swarm know for sure and honestly, I'm not even sure the readers know exactly what Ranalli has in mind once this book comes to such a twisted end. Swarm has the feel of a fun B-horror movie and I could picture the film rolling in my head as I was reading it. The characters that Ranalli has created are brilliant. They vary in age from young kids, to teens, to adults. The weird thing is... it seemed liked a lot of the time the young kids, such as Natalie, our heroine, had more smarts about her then those that should have had more maturity. Of course,, I guess that is how things do seem to be in a lot of real life instances, so Ranalli probably hit that dead on! It's the underlying things such as that, and Ranalli's quirky writing style, that make this such a powerful read. Highly recommended for all fans of the bizarro genre, or even those readers that are hesitant about the genre and just want to consider "dipping their feet in".

Contains: Mild Violence

Review also posted at MonsterLibrarian.com

zoe_e_w's review

4.0

A summer school field trip to pick blueberries becomes a nightmare when the seemingly harmless fruit transforms without warning. Told from multiple perspectives at a breakneck pace, Swarm of Flying Eyeballs only suffers from the flaw of a confusing ending that leaves all of the events with far too many unanswered questions. The characters are well written, and the monsters are unique and quite deadly. I give Swarm of Flying Eyeballs 4 stars.

estrus's review

2.0

Some of these reviews are longer than the story itself. How is this a standalone book? Over before you know it. Did I get a broken book?