Clickers [Paperback]

Reading this, I could almost close my eyes and see myself back at the old [route] '66 drive-in in st. louis watching a triple bill of some good-old fashioned b-horror movies. in "clickers" phillipsport, maine is being over run by giant crab-like creatures that eat everything in their path [ cats, people, etc.] but the catch is they have not come to the coast town to look for dinner, they are fleeing from even more horrible creatures from the sea, called "the dark ones", who come ashore looking for a meal. and they find it in abundance. this is not the first time this has happened, this town has a "history" of this sort of thing. I love all types of horror, but this has to be my favorite. I would love to see more of this gory, no one is safe, take no prisoners, horror. subtle this is not.

I have just recently started reading JF Gonzalez, and I have to say that I am definitely sold! As other reviewers have said, Clickers is an old-school creature-feature tale. Gonzalez knows how to shock, with just the right amount of gore, and the right amount of suspense. Yes, as another reviewer stated, there are some spelling errors and this book could have used a better editor, but that really did not detract from the story at all - at least not in my opinion. The story was engaging, so I was able to overlook any minor editing problems. I look forward to the sequel, and I would just love to see Clickers made into a feature film.

Only the term "transcendent" could do justice to J.F. Gonzalez's and the late Mark Williams' "Clickers". Labelled by the authors as an hommage to 3-D B-Movie Creature from the such-and-such lagoon flicks, "Clickers" quickly passes the thresshold of such cheezy monster fare into the realm of high-quality hard core, queasy-stomach-churning Splatterpunk.

The protagonist, an author of cheezy horror novels himself, moves to the lovely vacation spot of Phillipsport, Maine for some peace before starting his next novel. However, soon after his arrival, the town is confronted with an infestation of acid-dripping, over-sized mutant crabs (affectionately dubbed "Clickers") that emerge from the sea. Though the crabs' razor sharp claws, tremendous numbers and extremely painful poisonous barbs (which liquify your innards and turn you into a quivering puddle of crab lunch) do tremendous damage to the community and cause horrendous casualties among the innocent folk of Phillipsport, the Clickers' arrival is only a precursor to the infestation of an even more horrible, ancient race of "Dark Ones" (to use a Lovecraftian turn of phrase). The townspeople, continually diminished in numbers, are thrust into more and more terrifying and desparate situations by their antagonists as they endeavor to leave the community for safer inland territories.

Yes, giant man-eating crabs and slimy sea creatures are the stuff of the saturday matinee popcorn flick. And yes, we have the strong protagonist endeavoring to lead his woman, her child and the chummy local kooks to safety just as we do with every Harryhausen giant ant from the desert/mutant squid attacking the golden gate movie. But there the similarity ends.

The authors spend a considerable time fleshing out their considerable cast of characters, whether protagonists or jerks, smart, scrappy survivors or pathetic idiots. We see these people at their local haunts, in the privacy of their homes, in their work places. We begin to identify with their wants, their limitations, their dreams. And then all of a sudden these characters are horrifically violated, subjected to terrible pain and extrme anxiety, all in the places they felt safe so few pages before. Their varying conceptions of the nature and supremacy of humanity are simultaneously and irrevocably rendered null by the arrival of these ingeniously imagined creatures.

The agitation and terror of the work is doubled by the nature of the antagonists-- these are not supernatural creatures of evil, or visiting upon the collective guilt of Phillipsport, but are simply following the natural dictates of hunger and preying on the most defenseless food source available. There is no malice involved in their attacks, which makes the story all the more difficult and sad to consider. Humans we care about and recognize as individuals are inescapably rendered into walking sacks of lunch meat. Even innovative, quick thinking, well-armed, aggressive humans can do little to stop the onslaught (and in truth only serve to draw unwanted attention to themselves).

As the violence and gore are ratcheted up from chapter to chapter (especially when awful deaths happen to children and families in their pathetic scramble to escape from Phillipsport), this thematic ambiguity will more and more deeply unsettle the reader. All hope is extirpated from the community (except for the chance working of fate)-- something that most people, being semi-optimists in the power of our rational, intelligent minds, might find very hard to accept.

A masterwork of modern horror (think of the film "Deep Rising" but on a grander, more serious scale), "Clickers" will quickly ensure its primacy on the shelves of any discriminating horror reader.

A must read!

N.B. As a work of such extreme violence, this is not literature for the squeamish or for children.

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