Brood

August 11, 2014
At the start of Novak’s repetitive sequel to Breed (2012), antiques dealer Cynthia Kramer assumes the care of her traumatized niece and nephew, twins Alice and Adam Twisden, born through illicit fertility treatments that turned their parents into ravening monsters. Hoping to rehabilitate the genetically warped twins through “tons of love,” Cynthia has their parents’ Manhattan town house renovated, but she still must contend with a bat in the toilet and a cellar full of rats. Alice and Adam, desperately trying to stave off the puberty they fear will turn them into cannibalistic beasts, repeatedly run away to Central Park, where a gang of abnormal hybrids who sell their blood to lascivious seekers of a fountain of youthful libido lurks. Novak (the pseudonym of Scott Spencer, author of A Ship Made of Paper) achieves a few scenes of genuine rat-inspired horror, but the tongue-in-cheek tone of this satirical supernatural thriller won’t be to every taste. Agent: Lynn Nesbit, Janklow & Nesbit.

September 15, 2014
Feral children, the result of fertility treatments gone horribly awry, roam the streets of Manhattan in Novak's hit-or-miss follow-up to Breed (2012). The pseudonymous Novak (who's really Scott Spencer; Endless Love, 1979, etc.) continues the tale of the Twisden twins, Adam and Alice, now 13 and orphaned following their parents' grisly suicides (equally grisly is the elder Twisdens' penchant for cannibalism, thanks to a Slovenian doctor's fertility regimen). Stepping into the vacant parental shoes is the twins' aunt Cynthia, who jumps at the opportunity to be a mother. But family life is far from perfect as the trio returns to the Upper East Side mansion where Alex and Leslie Twisden raised their children and slowly went mad. The twins soon disappear, running off to join one of the numerous bands of wild children who, like Adam and Alice, are genetically mutated to various degrees following their parents' fertility treatments. One of the children, who partially glows in the dark, is the mayor's son. The leader of the twins' pack is Rodolfo, who, like most of his followers, speaks in an initially jarring (and eventually simply irritating) dialect-"You's not to do" translates to "Don't do that," for example. The wild children are under constant threat of scientific poaching at the hands of thugs from bioengineering company Borman&Davis, which uses human specimens for research in an attempt to harness the children's power. At home in the seemingly empty mansion, Cynthia finds herself skewing more mad than sane. Novak ably combines realism and the supernatural, even if the result is sometimes too preposterous even for suspenders of disbelief.

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October 1, 2014

The Twisden twins are a product of biochemistry, spawned by an experimental Slovenian fertility clinic (recounted in Breed). After the treatment turned their parents into cannibals, ten-year-old Adam and Alice disappeared into the foster care system. Two years later, they're back in their Upper East Side home with their aunt, who's determined to give them the love they never had. But the twins are at the threshold of puberty, a time when the clinic's offspring begin to change into something predatory and savage. A group of clinic alumni runs wild in Central Park, feral children selling vials of their supercharged blood, a veritable fountain of libidinous youth, to aging one percenters. But when a pharmaceutical giant catches on, the twins become the hunted ones. VERDICT Novak (the not-so-secret pseudonym of Scott Spencer, best known for 1979's lyrical Endless Love) has done a marvelous thing for the horror genre by turning his literary pen to monstrous matters. This hair-raising exercise in gothic horror, which reads like a crossbreed of Peter Straub and Whitley Streiber, is beastly, creepy, and altogether freaky. Delivered with a healthy dollop of sardonic humor, the thriller is sure to whet the appetites of Novak's many fans, leaving them ravenous for the next installment. [See Prepub Alert, 4/21/14.]--Jeanne Bogino, New Lebanon Lib., NY

Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 1, 2014
After a lengthy battle with NYC red tape, Cynthia Kramer has gained custody of her 12-year-old niece and nephew, who were orphaned after their parents' violent deaths. The parents were part of a contingent of wealthy couples who sought highly successful fertility treatments from a controversial doctor, only to later undergo evolutionary changes that eventually drove them mad. Alice and Adam have inherited the treatments' effects and are starving themselves to stave off puberty, when uncontrollable blood cravings and superhuman physical abilities emerge. Despite their allegiance to Cynthia, they've reconnected with the packs of evolved kids surviving under the radar and learning to adapt to their bodies' abilities. The pack is selling their blood as a powerful street drug to fund their retreat to a Shangri-la, even as they dodge police and a dangerous organization kidnapping pack kids to study their evolutionary changes, lab ratstyle. Like all good literary horror, a sense of foreboding piggybacks on a layer of strong emotion, and here it's tweaked by the characters' desperate, haunting desire for connections.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)