Red Sky Paperback – April 7, 2016

Danny Black is a professional bank robber, twenty years of experience in his criminal vocation and he's never had to shoot his gun, now the redneck Dale and his psycho girlfriend Gina have messed everything up by starting a killing spree, which will leave many dead, including a trusted member of his gang, several wounded, him with a hostage, and everybody on the run in Texas where the government sanctioned murder machine runs rampant. So after a spectacular please-make-me-into-a-movie exit from the bank and the town of El Paso, the remnants of Danny's crew find themselves in the desert running low on gas, food, and luck. Then they "luckily" find an abandoned factory to bunk down in during the night. Unfortunately they're not alone, not by a long shot, they have company, and their company is hungry. The title of this book comes from the factory's name "Red Sky Manufacturing", and in this abandoned factory even the snakes are ten feet long and deadly. Then everything just goes straight to hell. They get visitors, and these visitors are soldiers that show up to take out Danny's crew, and they're not particularly picky as to who're their shooting at, as they try to take out the hostage along with everybody else. As the crew scatters, the unstable Gina goes off her rocker, and out of the dark comes a swarm of hungry, brutal death. Within moments every faction ends up playing cat-and-mouse with each other, the situation quickly deteriorates into every faction for itself, and it's kill-or-be-killed, and for some, to be the eater or the eaten. As this war of attrition starts, the tension ramps itself up as the pain escalates, the dying starts, and the feasting in the dark commences. What you see is what you get in "Red Sky". There will no subtleties, thisis basically a made-for-DVD horror monster movie, it's as if Quentin Terrantino did a low budget "The Hills Have Eyes", with bank robbers. We've seen this novel done dozen's of times on DVD and in paperback before, although, sadly, stuff like this has been conspicuously absent from commercial fiction for far too long, and for far too many years, and that's just too bad. So, even if the plot isn't really anything new or original, what Southarddoes well is in creating his characters, and keeping the action going smoothly. Danny is believable as a no-nonsense, hard-core professional criminal who hooks up with a couple of unprofessional loose cannons who are more addicted to the thrill than the job. You end up liking him, despite all-in-all. Melanie is great as the hostage, and who realizes that she's stuck between a rock and a hard place, and who will have to throw her lot in with the criminals, and Gina, well, Gina's a fantastic villain, so over-the-top, read the novel and right away you'll be casting some of your favorite femme fatales as her as she steals every scene she's in. If anything, Southard makes a real mistake in having her leave the stage way too early, and cops out with her in the end, as if he was just tired of writing about her. A good editor would have had him fix that. As for the rest of the characters, even though they often run to type, from the hot-dog driver to the steadfast right-hand man, each is endued with their own individual personality, or enough of one, so that the reader will have some investment in their eventual fate. Like a tank racing downhill without any brakes, this short, fast-paced novel is a wrecking machine that will remind you just how vapid the run-of-the-mill commercial paperback is at present. You shouldn't have to go to the small-press for novels like this, but, unfortunately you do, and more's the pity. Unfortunately, the monsters seem like they could use some more work, and I'm detracting a star because the ending just plain sucks. Then there is governmental conspiracy sub-plot which is pretty useless, unless it's there for a sequel. And as a bonus, we get poor proofreading and sentences like "Gina had tried and failed to feed her man to eat some pork rinds." (?) Or, ". . . Nelson and Mel here are hurt, and they're gonna be more of a harm than anything. (??) Still, I was never bored. I kept finding excuses to keep reading it, I wanted more, and for God's sake, will somebody with some money please make this into a movie? It doesn't hurt that this novel is throwback to the time when not every novel has to be a gosh dang epic, and was usually blessed with a great cover. "Red Sky" IS blessed with a cover by Alan M. Clark that is almost itself worth the price of the book. For this site I have also reviewed these indie horror books: Allen K's Inhuman Magazine #3  edited by Allen Koszowski. Andy  by Bradley Snow. Dead Science: A Zombie Anthology  edited by A. P. Fuchs. Deadfall  by Shaun Jeffrey. THE DESERT  by Bryon Morrigan. Dubaku  by Edward M. Erdelac.Ex-Heroes by Peter Clines. Space Horrors: Full-Throttle Space Tales #4  edited by David Lee Summers.Hissers by Ryan C. Thomas.Kinberra Down by Eric S. Brown & Jessy Marie Roberts. Lucky Streak  by Dane Grannon.The Last Horror Show by Bryan Smith. Rise & Walk  by Gregory Solis. The Tales of Inspector Legrasse  by H. P. Lovecraft & C. J. Henderson.The Undead #4: Headshot Quartet edited by Christina Bivins & Lane Adamson.Zombie Syndrome: A Space Horror Novel by Keith Adam Luethke.Plus a number of things by Tim Curran, like Cannibal Corpse M/C.

Very cool tale about a group of bank robbers getting stranded and falling prey to a group of mutated man made monsters. I really liked this . It's very well-written and is full of action and suspense.Nate does a great job of letting us get to know each character in the story before all hell breaks loose. This was a fun read!

I'm reading this and it's a damn good story but there are dashes in the middle of words multiple times on every page. It's driving me nuts and I almost want to quit. If someone is a good reader and is trying to get into a story and has to read crap like "fur-ther" for example, how do we get past that. My brain sees fur and then ther. There are honestly like at least 100 words formatted of this b.s. so far and I'm only on 34%. Anyone else have this problem? Don't get me wrong, I love this book so far but the formatting is seriously driving me crazy.

...Prepare for a Fright!Imagine a mashup of Killing Zoe and The Hills Have Eyes and you have an idea of what this satisfyingly brutal novel entails. Nate Southard has created a gem of a horror novel, seemingly crafted to be translated to the silver screen.Grab this one and devour it!

Very good book. I enjoyed the creatures and characters alike!

Nate Southard is an author that I haven't read before. For that reason, I approached Red Sky with no real expectations. After reading the first few chapters however, I soon realized that Nate is an author that we should be seeing big things from very soon. Red Sky starts out with a bank robbery gone horribly wrong when a trigger-happy member of the gang starts shooting victims indiscriminately. This attracts a ton of unwanted attention (mainly from the local police)that results in a high speed chase as the bank robbers attempt to make their getaway. As the gang of robbers are trying feverishly to avoid the police, they come across an abandoned warehouse in the middle of the New Mexico desert. They decide to hole up there until the heat blows over. The only problem is the creatures that call the warehouse their home also reside there - and they're very, very, hungry. This book was a pleasant surprise. It is definitely not your run-of-the-mill horror novel. The suspense is what carries the story, and the characters are not cookie-cutter in the least. The mystery of what the creatures are and where they came from is handled masterfully. Red Sky is a really good horror story. I can't wait to see what Nate Southard has in store for us next!

Another well-paced, rollicking, crimes meets monsters novel from Southard, with memorable characters, hideous creatures, and a surprising amount of heart. A tight and page-turning read; think Reservoir Dogs meets The Hills Have Eyes and you wouldn't be far off.

I've read a couple of Nate Southard book so far and found them both highly enjoyable so was looking forward to getting stuck into another novel by him.The story follows a group of bank robbers in the middle of a job when things go wrong and they are forced to go on the run; but in true horror fashion things only get worse. The book has plenty of action from start to finish and manages to have a good collection of varied characters which keeps things entertaining and makes you want to keep on reading well into the night.I really like that everything in the book feels despite having read hundred of horrors in the past - it's nice to see such a good book with a monster that is not the currently popular vampires or zombies. So if you'd like a great book that's just a bit different then this is for you.The novel was received in exchange for an honest review.