The Gauntlet

After reading several of Bryan Smith's blood-soaked horror novels the jury is still out for me. I disliked his collaboration with Brian Keene on Suburban Gothic. I liked his novel The Freakshow a little more. My favorite of the author's work is Deathbringer, although I read it before Paperback Warrior's creation. I keep seeing his books on Amazon and the descriptions just keep getting me to click, “Yes, I would like more terror and torture, take my money.” I don't know why or how his books consistently end up in my shopping basket. But here we are again with another Bryan Smith book, The Gauntlet, published in 2023 by Grindhouse Press. 

An average guy named Nick gets into an argument with a crazed neighbor. After the verbal confrontation, the crazed neighbor goes back inside and this suburban squabble is put to rest. However, Nick receives an online message from the crazy neighbor's wife Krista. She thanks Nick for standing up to her husband. As weeks pass both Nick and Krista end up in an online relationship. As The Gauntlet begins, Krista has ran out on her husband and married life, taking up with Nick on the road. Together the two head into the Pocono Mountains for an irresponsible quick vacation and to plan what awaits them when they return to reality in a few days. 

Running low on gas, with the next city in two hours, the two stop in rural Beleth Station. Pulling into this nowhere town the two notice that the streets are void of people. When they pull into a gas station Nick is attacked by a person wearing a mask and carrying a machete. After his blood hits the pavement Krista takes off running down the abandoned streets searching for help. What she discovers is a town that is opposed to outsiders. No one leaves, no one enters. When they do, they are forced to run a macabre late-night game called...you guessed it...The Gauntlet.

Bryan Smith's novel works like a combination of The Running Man, Shirley Jackson's The Lottery, and any of those violent Saw movies. The game is that Nick and Krista are forced into running through the town's snowfall barefooted to complete objectives – like getting to a phone booth that contains a pair of shoes. Or, to a warm car to rest for 15 minutes. But, the two are separated and must complete different challenges. There's a side-story about a guy named Sean hoping to join a rebellious group of citizens to overthrow this crazed small town government and their Dystopian leadership. 

The Gauntlet isn't a bad survival horror novel. If you are familiar with Bryan Smith's writing then you should already know he writes on the trashy side. There's offensive language, graphic sex, hideous torture, and gross-out violence. I hesitate to even deem this type of stuff “horror” because it is more action-adventure with depravity as the core. If that's your jam then you will certainly enjoy running The Gauntlet. Get it HERE.

Suburban Gothic

Bryan Smith has authored more than thirty horror and crime novels. His novel 68 Kill was adapted to film and his 2009 novel Depraved became an instant cult classic, leading to three sequels. Brian Keene earned the 2014 World Horror Grandmaster Award, two Bram Stoker awards, and the Imadjinn Award for best fantasy novel in 2016. It was just a matter of time before the two friends collaborated on a novel. 

In 2009, Brian Keene authored a paperback for Leisure called Urban Gothic. The premise had a group of kids breaking into an old row house in Philadelphia that they thought was abandoned. Unfortunately for them, a family of inbred cannibals lived in the basement. The book was an obvious ode to “grindhouse” theater flicks like Hills Have Eyes and Texas Chainsaw Massacre. I enjoyed the book years ago, so I was intrigued to learn of the book's sequel, Suburban Gothic, published in 2020. But, the backstory on the novel doesn't stop there. 

It turns out that Suburban Gothic actually connects (retcons?) Keene's Urban Gothic with Bryan Smith's horror novel The Freakshow, which was originally published by Leisure in 2007. I also read that novel, and reviewed it HERE. In The Freakshow, cosmic entities are controlling humans from a netherworld. These entities combine mayhem, torture, cannibalism, rape, etc. into a sort of game which comes to a small town in Tennessee through a traveling carnival. The book was slightly above average and written in a perverse way that I typically find distasteful. I'm not a fan of Bryan Smith.

Suburban Gothic, which is authored by both Smith and Keene, has an early explanation that the inbred cannibals from Urban Gothic are forced to move to an abandoned mall located in a sketchy crime-ridden part of Philadelphia. At the same time, Smith's crazy supernaturally-controlled entities also move into the mall. One side is occupied by these mutant freaks (humans with arachnid-like appendages, multiple heads, etc.) while the other side is the weirdo cannibals. 

Like Urban Gothic, various people enter this abandoned mall for different reasons. These disposable characters include a group of urban explorers shooting YouTube footage, a real-estate agent, and your common everyday headbanging stoners. This is a problem for the book and it's readers. None of these characters are remotely interesting, and all of them are flawed and unlikable. So, when Smith writes nasty, violent deaths for each character (I'm sure he was tasked with their violent endings), I found myself simply skipping to the next death set-up. 

Brian Keene typically isn't an extreme splatter-horror guy, but Smith's participation drags this book into uncomfortable depravity. Characters are raped sodomized, eaten, beaten, forced into various amputations, dragged across multiple hard surfaces, shot, stabbed, and, in some cases, involuntarily placed into barbaric medical experiments. At a time in my life when I can turn on any social media news platform and see brutality and death, reading the intricate details of a fishing hook ripping an anus isn't really what I find enjoyable. 

If you love shock and awe, then by all means have a great time with Suburban Gothic. For me personally, this book is just an absolute mess mired in useless death, excess violence, and horrific gore. Take a hard pass on this kind of thing. Maybe it will eventually just go away. 

The Freakshow

According to his Goodreads profile, Bryan Smith has authored more than thirty horror and crime novels and novellas. His crime-fiction book 68 Kill was adapted into a critically-acclaimed film in 2017. Smith also co-scripted an original Harley Quinn (Batman) story for DC Comics' House of Horrors anthology. I first discovered the author in the mid-2000s by reading his mass-market horror paperbacks like House of Blood and Deathbringer. His 2007 horror novel The Freakshow was originally published by Leisure and has now been reprinted by Grindhouse Press in multiple formats. 

The Freakshow is splatterpunk with the obligatory copious amounts of sex (mostly rape), gore, and violence prevalent over the science-fiction and dark fantasy elements. The novel's concept is that supernatural beings from a netherworld are playing a game where they control humans to do just about anything imaginable. These “things” are losing their home world, so they want ours. By conquering humans through assimilation, they can move from the netherworld into ours. 

These beings are sort of like Clive Barker's Cenobites from his novella The Hellbound Heart and the franchise of films. They have a variety of appearances and abilities and aren't necessarily good or evil, thus the “angels to some, demons to others” sentiment of Barker's stories is the theme of The Freakshow. Because of the variation, Smith's imagination runs wild. There's a two-headed succubus leader, a robotic clown, sexually depraved humans (if you can call them that), rolling heads that chomp flesh, you get the general consensus.

It's hard to find any characters to really cheer other than Heather, a young woman in an abusive relationship with her boyfriend and dealing with an ailing mother. She is the main character, but that's a loose term considering the book has a dozen or more characters. Mostly these characters are disposable and make for rape and torture targets. The story presents characters that are fighting the freakshow invaders or working for these supernatural beings. Mostly, the characters just dwell on perverse sex and creative ways to kill or maim each other. There's no respect for any higher authority beyond their own self-interest 

Overall, I found the book to be slightly better than average. With Smith's literary work, I manage my expectations, knowing that his narratives are saturated in over-the-top violence and gore. There's nothing wrong with that, but I normally like my horror to be more psychological than physical. If a unique, violent bloodbath is your thing, then The Freakshow will surely please you.

Note – Brian Keene's Urban Gothic and this book tie-in to a novel called Suburban Gothic, authored by both Keene and Smith. 

Buy a copy of the book HERE.