Follow Up: Book Review for J.H. Glaze's Northwest

As I said a few days ago, I'd write a review for this one when I got to it and now I'm getting to it. I give you J.H. Glaze's second book in the John Hazard series: Northwest.

Whereas The Spirit Box was all about atmosphere and character development, Northwest takes a different approach and goes for the throat with a brutal survival story. It begins with Hazard having left his job as a police detective and having gone into private paranormal investigations. This has led him to join forces with Dr. Macy Renner, who is planning a trip to investigate unexplained disappearances in the wilds of the American Northwest. Dr. Renner has assembled a group of students along with Hazard to carry out the investigation in the wilderness. At the last minute, they grab a girl named Emily to go along with them as a camera operator. The problem with her...she has recently witnessed a mob hit and hired goons are chasing after her. There are other characters in the cast who come along with their own share of baggage, but in the end, most of them end up being slaughter fodder. Upon getting their private plane knocked out of the sky, the group learns that monstrous carnivorous alien beasts have been responsible for the disappearances and are now looking to consume them.

Hazard is the only person in the group with any real survival experience and the rest of the group is kind of a motley crew (think the people on Whale Wars) that is more or less damned from the start. As I said before, this book relies more heavily on suspense and action than character or atmosphere building. The main development in character is between John and Emily who end up having a pretty well written romantic relationship. You also learn that Dr. Renner is not to be trusted. Glaze also does gore pretty well in this book. It is used to effect, but not to excess. It's kind of a crucial element when you have hulking alien hunger beasts running around.

The suspense is taught throughout from Emily getting chased by thugs in the beginning to the first encounter with the dread creatures and their cannibalistic brood to a canoe ride down a raging river that is pretty sure to end in disaster. It's not something to read if you want to be calm and lower your blood pressure. You will want certain characters to survive and others not so much. There are some pretty cathartic moments when the shitty ones get their comeuppins (don't care if that's a real word or not).  

In all, I liked this one and it was a fun direction for Hazard that let him flex his action muscles a little more. Next in the series is Send No Angel, which I'll get to eventually when I finish working on my own shit.

Speaking of which....look for Nightmarescape in early September...the Nightmare begins soon....