The Badly Done Blurbs have risen once again to wreak havoc on the unsuspecting synopses of innocent books. It’s been a whole year since we’ve done a Badly Blurbs and we’ve gotten a few new crew members on board the floating asylum we call the Spaceship Kali. As before, we’ll be putting the actual synopses in spoiler tags below our synopses.
Gracie’s Blurbs – Chosen by Eliza
The Green Kangaroos by Jessica McHugh
It’s the year 2525. War is no longer a threat. Accords have been reached on the One Globe. Disease is almost eradicated and crime is so rare that the last incident on record was the theft of a garden gnome (returned unharmed and with a new tattoo). Animals are no longer endangered to the point of extinction.
But then they took over. It seemed silly at first. After all, what harm could a bunch of kangaroos do? It started with a few small incidents: kangaroos turning up in countries they weren’t normally found. But then the kangaroos got bigger, scarier, smarter.
Then they turned.
Soon people were being bitten and turning into kangaroos themselves. Can one rogue group create a cure before it’s too late? Before humanity is lost to The Green Kangaroos?
Set in 2099, THE GREEN KANGAROOS explores the disgusting world of Perry’s addiction to atlys and the Samson family’s addiction to his sobriety.
The Waiting Mortuary by L.V. Pires
Janna needs a job. The bills are piling up, the car’s about to be repossessed and her house needs a new roof before it caves in on her. She answers an ad for Happy Glades Funeral Home receptionist.
The director, Wickwire, seems to be nice. A small, affable man with slightly messy hair he tries to put her at ease but something disturbs her beneath his mildly pleasant facade.
It’s not long before she notices some strange things at Happy Glades. People come for appointments and she doesn’t see them leave. Workmen are hard to find and, despite its seemingly booming business, no one seems to want to talk about it.
And then there’s the off-limits area outside of the mortuary. What’s in there? Why does Wickwire disappear for hours at a time? Janna had better find out before the Waiting Mortuary has a new guest.
When Bash Trawler takes a summer job at a local funeral home, he hopes for easy money and time to himself but finds that staying up all night watching corpses for an eccentric Vietnam vet turns into something out of his worst nightmares.
Tracy’s Blurbs – Chosen by Cory
Baal by Robert R. McCammon
Baal, the Prince, Lord of the Earth, has spent centuries being revered and worshiped as the god of fertility. The People’s Republic of Christ, in New York City, has just discovered a fool-proof way to reproduce, using scientific formulae to impregnate who they want, whenever they wish. Paying no homage to the old gods, their heresy knows no bounds as their technology threatens to overbalance the already over-precarious balance of supply and demand. Baal is on the move: there will be blood!
The story begins with a horrific rape on the streets of New York City. Nine months after that violation, a most unusual child is born. His name is Jeffrey Harper Raines, but he quickly assumes his true name — and true purpose — as Baal, a new incarnation of the ancient prince of demons. The narrative recounts his lethal progress through the 20th century, which begins with the destruction of his earthly “family.” From there, Jeffrey/Baal moves to a doomed Catholic orphanage, where he unleashes carnage on an unprecedented scale, then out into the wider world, where he embraces his destiny as the Prophet of the Damned, generating a legacy of chaos, violence, and despair.
Baal is very much a young man’s book, raw and brimming with emotion. Listen closely and you’ll hear the voice of a gifted storyteller struggling to be born. In 1980, the career that would encompass Swan Song, Boy’s Life, and The Five still lay waiting several years down the road. This is where it began.
Cherron by Sharon Combes
Lucy’s family harbors a secret. Descendants of the original underworld ferryman, Charon, the Hermes family has guarded the secrets of the dead for thousands of years. Lucy is the child foretold, the one called Cherron, and in an attempt to hide the truth from her and protect modern humanity, her parents raise her with light and love amidst their flourishing floral business. For the original ferryman was corrupted and changed to a minion of hell. The Hermes has spent generations ensuring the connection to the Underworld was kept disconnected. Is beauty and hope enough to prevent Cherron from rising and ferrying millions to an early death? Or will her blood tell the tale as she embraces the destruction she was always meant to wreak?
Then it happened. Sarah discovered that, by thinking very hard, she could make things happen…scary things…dangerous things. Now she had a power no one could take away — or control. Now it was time for vengeance!
Sam’s Blurbs – Chosen by Shawn
Tik-Tok by John Sladek
The beings on planet Omega55 pride themselves on their consistent looks. Connected through a telepathic neural network, there is no need to differentiate themselves through their appearances. But when 7P43 taps into a signal from Earth, he is rapidly consumed by a singular desire: to become a viral sensation on TikTok. As his peers become aware of 7P43’s new obsession – and his new look – they begin to hunt him down, protecting their protocols at any cost. Will 7P43 be the next viral hit…or will he be reprogrammed?
But the life of a robot (if that isn’t a contradiction) is still all service and unpaid labor. Tik-Tok served many masters, all of whom came to a bad end. Happily he went on gathering steam with a trail of catastrophes getting bigger and bigger, destined to culminate with his campaign for the vice-presidency of the United States!
Eliza’s Blurbs – Chosen by Gracie
The Necromancer by Douglas Clegg
Carrie had been excited about the chance to take on a new client. The rumor was that sessions with Tim were just as stimulating for the madames as they were for him. When the day came she struggled to get things set up for Tim’s session. His wings were getting in the way of the restraints and the horns had made it difficult to get the BDSM demon mask in place. Then, Tim said the magic words. They didn’t make sense to her, but she felt a tingling sensation trickle through her entire body as he repeated the mantra again and again. She was supposed to be the madame, but as he stripped she lost all sense of control. Was she under an evil curse, or was this the kind of domination she’d always craved? When Tim brought out an elongated blade he took control of the session, starting a game with her that would force her to fight her desires or lose her life.
From Bram Stoker Award winner Douglas Clegg comes a gaslamp horror gothic right out of “the Marquis de Sade and Charles Dickens…Scintillatingly brilliant.”* For fans of Victorian debauchery, Lovecraftian occultism plus a twist of degeneracy among the upper classes. Not for the faint of heart!
The Mall by Richie Tankersley Cusick
Somerville was a cursed town. It was rumored to be secretly ruled by an evil cult of cannibals and parents kept their kids under lock and key. Teens have a way of rebelling, however, and one by one the girls in Somerville started to disappear. Susie had heard the rumors. Some said they went to parties where they met men and eloped. Others said that they’d headed for the highway and hitchhiked their way to freedom. Susie had heart another rumor, however. That they hadn’t gone to parties or left town. She’d heard that they’d all gone to the local mall. When her best friend, Betty, disappeared, Susie was determined to find out the truth. Was an evil shopkeeper turning girls into mannequins? Or were the rumors about a sinister cult true? Susie knew there was only one way to find out, so she snuck out and headed for the desolate mall on the edge of town. Would she find answers? Or become the latest victim in this cursed town?
Trish smiles into the dressing-room mirror, admiring herself in the gorgeous white dress. Unknown to her, someone else is watching. He knows she is smiling just for him. His soft, strange voice whispers her name from the crowd. His hooded eyes follow her every move…
At first she thinks he’s just a creepy customer, hanging around Muffin-Mania where she works at the mall. But suddenly he’s everywhere, the man with a thousand faces tormenting her day and night. He knows her secrets. There’s no safe place to hide. There’s no one she can tell, no one she can trust. How can she escape a madman willing to kill to make her his—forevermore.
Cory’s Blurbs – Chosen by Tracy
Fungus by Harry Adam Knight
Action. Intrigue. Romance. None of these things can be found in Harry Adam Knight’s third epic of biological horror. In the backwoods of Louisiana, phytopathologist Marlon Fries is called to the scene of a strange and disturbing phenomenon. A research facility and greenhouse has been apparently abandoned by its occupants, and the structure has been completely overrun by a fungal plant disease, covering even the architecture of the complex itself in fine threads of spore-producing polyps. But what at first appears to be no more than an anomaly in overactive cell growth proves more sinister as the bones of the missing researchers begin to turn up in parts of the facility that had previously been empty, encased in crusty shells of fungus. With escape rendered impossible by a strand of strangely fast-growing mushrooms invading and gumming up the engines of the team vehicles, Fries and his assistants are left with no choice but to discover the source of the bizarre fungal encroachment. But it may already prove too late for them, even with science on their side. The spores are everywhere. Now adapted in the blockbuster video game, The Last of Us.
THE FUNGUS
It grows on you
It begins as a tiny patch on your skin. And then it spreads…
Some it kills quickly-they are the lucky ones.
It’s a plague that cannot be halted. A creeping horror that threatens all mankind
The Fungus.
Jizzle by John Wyndham
All aboard for a post-apocalyptic ride of sex and terror! In the midst of total desolation through thermonuclear war, hopeful survivors were rushed onto a state-of-the-art luxury passenger train called the J-Rail, named for its creator, Jaye-Isodor Enterprises. What began as a safe haven for the lucky few secured inside the series of fallout-resistant cars slowly became a prison of nightmares. Charismatic deviants carved out their own lascivious factions among the passengers, using the weak and underprivileged as carnal fodder. Now, the lives of the last members of the human race are at stake, as the cars of the passenger-dubbed Jizzle Rail fall into disrepair due to collateral damage sustained in the years of faction skirmishes. Deadly nuclear fallout threatens to leak in and spread through the entire train unless a band of scientists and evangelical Christians can set aside their differences and take control of the engine car together. A conflict for the ages, Jizzle promises a rabid and flushed journey worthy of the steamiest corners of the Thunderdome.
There’s a monkey with a unique artistic talent. A man living his life over again. A tube in the rush hour that was so crowded it seemed like hell; in fact it was hell…
Jizzle will grip you from cover to cover with its unique blend of horror and fantasy — a combination which can never fail.
Contents:
– Jizzle
– Technical Slip
– A Present from Brunswick
– Chinese Puzzle
– Esmeralda
– How Do I Do?
– Una
– Affair of the Heart
– Confidence Trick
– The Wheel
– Look Natural, Please!
– Perforce to Dream
– Reservation Deferred
– Heaven Scent
– More Spinned Against[/spoiled]
Shawn’s Blurbs – Chosen by Sam
Godsfire by Cynthia Felice
The engineers behind the Godsfire experiment had been warned of the potential repercussions. It may help the world’s food supply by creating an endless source of wheat and BBQ chips, but if the calculations were even slightly off, it could have devastating consequences that we couldn’t possibly fathom. They should have listened to the warnings. Now, years later in a world ravaged by chaos and sometimes aliens, the humans must team up with their sworn enemies – the race of Cat-People created in the wake of Godsfire. Banished and forced to live in a giant litter box built by the humans, the Cat-People are none too eager to help. But a new threat is looming that threatens them both. Can they put their differences aside?
[spoiler]Heao is a member of Academe, a future group of intelligentsia on a planet in the throes of a receding ice age. She and all her people have been conquered by a primitive king whose dreams of destruction haunt him, and may doom all her kind. Heao is intelligent and loving, a devoted helpmate and mother. But Heao is not an ordinary woman. She is a member of a feline race, and her body, along with those of her peers, is covered with fur and ends in a long busy tail. She is a member of the master race of Shadowland, the race that keeps human slaves to do their work for them, the race that stands in powerless awe of the fiery ball of light she sees once a year—Godsfire!
In Heao’s world she is a pathfinder, a mapmaker, and she is the Galileo of her world, determined to bring light and wisdom to her shadowed world where most folk see slaves not as merely different but inferior. Heao knows better and won’t deny her belief that slaves are intelligent and if not human, certainly more than animals. Her temple adversary, Tarana, would subdue and control, the young pathfinder to steal her dream-goal, or kill her if that fails. The king-conqueror, with tortured dreams of his own, needs Heao’s mapmaking skills as much as he needs the Temple’s support. Even Heao helper-in-life, Baltsar, and her trusted slave, Teon, are affected by the unintended consequences of Heao’s convictions and her quest to follow her dream-goal. It will take all of them through the Evernight Mountains to discover the truth about her world and the blinding vision of—Godsfire!
Wild Violets by Ruth Baker Field
“Roses are Red, violets are blue. Hey, guess what? I’m going to kill you.”
That’s the note single girl Stacey finds on her doorstep along with a bouquet of wilted violets. Could they be from a secret admirer? Or someone with more sinister intentions? Accompanied by strange visions of her deceased ex-boyfriend, an esteemed woodsman, Stacey is about to discover she’s not only unlucky in love, but also unlucky in not being murdered.
They look so peaceful and enticing, but just like a woman, they hide and deceive. Please, don’t get too close to my mother’s wild violets — their beauty is evil, their fragrance is death, and what lies beneath them is too horrible to see!
We hope you enjoy our very real and not made up at all blurbs. Also check out our Badly Done Blurbs posts.
Badly Done Blurbs of Horror Book Covers
Return of the Badly Done Blurbs
The Revenge of the Badly Done Blurbs
The Badly Done Blurbs Strike Back
GracieKat was the first co-host of Sci-Fi & Scary, Lilyn’s partner-in-crime, and sub-head of the Kali Krew. She reviews horror books, movies, and games for the site. She also does a weekly Focus on the Frightful feature, and is the site list-maker. She is also in control of the Sci-Fi & Scary podcast which will relaunch soon.
