LITERAL REMAINS

Contestants on a reality survival show are stranded on an isolated tropical island with bloodthirsty, hungry, monsters.  They aren’t playing for money anymore, they’re playing for their lives.

The last couple of Brian Keene novels I read, Dead Sea and Dark Hollow, left me with a bad taste in my mouth.  It seemed as if Mr. Keene were just cashing in a paycheck.  I skipped his book Ghost Walk, and ignored Castaways upon its release earlier this year.  I read the back cover, thought it sounded interesting, but still thought I’d skip it.  But it gnawed at me.  I picked it up (along with his latest which I should have a review for some time next week), because Keene is a good writer, read The Rising and City of the Dead if you don’t believe me.  If Castaways is the first of his novels that you read, you might call me a liar.

As a tropical storm moves over the island, the contestants of the show CASTAWAYS are left to fend for themselves along with a watchful producer, sound guy, and cameraman.  Little does anyone know that the short, hairy, primitive, bipedal inhabitants of the island have been watching them play their little game and have decided that the male contestants will make nice dinners and that the females just may be fit to breed with.  Carnage ensues.  Limbs and lives are lost.  People are eaten.  Women are raped.

Castaways is almost worth the read, but, like I said, it feels like Keene is just going through the motions.  I have nothing against exploitation, or grade B pulp, but Castaways isn’t bad enough to be good.  Ooh, here’s short hairy monkey looking little creatures raping women!  Keene presents these things in a manner that suggests he’s writing them to just be writing them, trying to shock his audience in a way a kid will cuss just to be cussing, to try to rile someone, to get a reaction, or because they think it’s cool.  It’s a shortcut to thinking, and it shortchanges the reader.

There are some things that work, it’s not a total loss.  The action is constant, the book moves swiftly.  The characters are interesting when not trying to preach a message or when they act like standard horror characters.  But when it comes down to it, if Castaways is to be read, it’s to be read for the action scenes.  The chases through the jungle setting are fun.

2 out of 5
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