May 1997
Bacteria are earth’s oldest inhabitants. They are all around us and inside us. They help us clean up our planet; they are the reason we can continue to live on this earth. So what happens when we manipulate and abuse them?
What happens when we make them angry?
Driven by grief at the loss of his wife, an old man has gone out onto an Irish midlands lake to end his life. Only the sight of a burning cruiser stops him. He might want to die, but others on board the stricken vessel might not.
The vessel is called Clothra and the crew are engaged in a desperate struggle. There is something very bad in the water, a vile creature that is killing the lake’s users. They have to destroy it.
But not all of them feel the same.
Forced to abandon the vessel for a lifeboat, the crew attempt to lure the creature in the water to follow them, but one false move and they will also die horrible deaths. They are guided by one of their number to a secluded island where a final confrontation takes place.
As forgotten lake spirits, long dormant, are awoken by the modern day monster, myth and legend, empathy, sorrow, grief and sheer horror combine in a maelstrom as unpredictable and dangerous as the ancient lake’s weather and threatens to destroy them all.
Mutation by Roy Hunt. Published February 2018 by Twilight Books. I received this Kindle version from Netgalley & BooksGoSocial in exchange for an honest review.
Like the rolling hills of Ireland, this book had it’s ups and downs.
Let’s start with the Up side first. This book has a really awesome idea for a creature. Seriously. Gold stars for that. I would have never known about bacteria in factories used to eat up stuff like dyes. Pretty cool and very creepy when you stop to really think about that. Plus, the theme of science going wrong is a true classic in the horror field. The creature really creates an interesting, creepy atmosphere.
Now the downside… oh boy. Ok, so my biggest problem is that this story gets super repetitive. Like, the main character starts talking to his wife about what he thinks is going on and what this creature is. He works it all out. Well he tells this same theory to everyone he meets. That is fine. The problem is that we didn’t get an edited version of this retelling. You know how it is normally, a person retells something and the author normally just says something like ” After Tom was done telling Sue his theory…..” or something like that, you know? Like, you don’t have to sit through the same exact conversation multiple times. But we hear a lot of things multiple times and they weren’t really varied in how they were phrased. So… that was very frustrating.
Another problem I had with the book, is that the writing just felt a little choppy. It’s hard to explain, but I’ll try… So, It felt like the transitions from sentence to sentence was a little rough. Example- First sentence has someone cooking food for dinner. The following sentence has the other character eating the dinner that was just being cooked. I don’t know… It just felt like it was a little choppy in the delivery and that sometimes I felt like it was missing a segue sentence in between 2 other sentences. It wasn’t terrible, but it felt like the writing just needed a little bit more fine tuning.
Mutation had a couple of problems that made it a little hard to read. The idea of the plot really stood out as creative and unique and was the best part of the book. It wasn’t a terrible book, but could have used a little bit of tightening up on some of the writing.
Creature From The Book Lagoon 