Take a photo of a barcode or cover
michaelpatrickhicks 's review for:
Oasis of the Damned
by Greg F. Gifune
The desert has secrets, and it can play tricks on the unwitting. Every night, a horde of evil is unleashed upon the two survivors who find themselves stranded in the Sahara, holed up in an old military fort. These victims of chance and circumstance - both have been lost to this stretch of sand by separate aircraft crashes - must fight for survival.
I have a fondness for survival horror fiction like this, where we have a small cast with innumerable odds stacked against them, set against a hostile environment. I'm typically a sucker for the perils of frigid climates, but between Oasis of the Damned and Michael McBride's recent DarkFuse release, Sunblind, I'm starting to become a fan of the harshness inherit in desert-set climes.
The main threat in Gifune's latest is a combination of extreme weather and ghuls, demonic creatures popular in Arabic folklore for populating burial grounds. While the weather is a threat, it's not quite as up-front and in-your-face as the beasts that attack Owens and Richter night after night. In fact, taking center stage is some pretty solid character development for Richter, a tough woman who lost her younger brother and pulled two tours in the Iraq war. Gifune fleshes her out well, and the story takes place largely from her point of view. She definitely commands attention with her steely resolve and can-do attitude, despite Owens being the more experienced survivor at their small compound.
Gifune also does a nice job of flipping the script roughly halfway through, which gives the story is really nice twist while providing a minor examination on the cyclic nature of life and death. The desert holds a lot of surprises, and, thankfully, so does Gifune's work. Definitely recommended.
I have a fondness for survival horror fiction like this, where we have a small cast with innumerable odds stacked against them, set against a hostile environment. I'm typically a sucker for the perils of frigid climates, but between Oasis of the Damned and Michael McBride's recent DarkFuse release, Sunblind, I'm starting to become a fan of the harshness inherit in desert-set climes.
The main threat in Gifune's latest is a combination of extreme weather and ghuls, demonic creatures popular in Arabic folklore for populating burial grounds. While the weather is a threat, it's not quite as up-front and in-your-face as the beasts that attack Owens and Richter night after night. In fact, taking center stage is some pretty solid character development for Richter, a tough woman who lost her younger brother and pulled two tours in the Iraq war. Gifune fleshes her out well, and the story takes place largely from her point of view. She definitely commands attention with her steely resolve and can-do attitude, despite Owens being the more experienced survivor at their small compound.
Gifune also does a nice job of flipping the script roughly halfway through, which gives the story is really nice twist while providing a minor examination on the cyclic nature of life and death. The desert holds a lot of surprises, and, thankfully, so does Gifune's work. Definitely recommended.