The Segmented Tail

Happy Belated World Book Day everyone! Hope you all read some lovely books and shared this with others.

Last week an author by the name of Stanley Straub contacted me and asked me if I would like to read and review his book ‘The Segmented Tail.’ Within a few hours, I’d received an e-book version of his novel. First impressions of this book, I had images of a giant mutant rat in my head and in all honesty, I was sceptical as to whether or not I’d like it as a Sci-fi isn’t really my favourite genre.

BOY WAS I WRONG TO BE SCEPTICAL!

I started reading it yesterday around 5pm and finished it at 11am. It’s a short book, only 147 pages but it’s perfect and everything is in there that you would want from a book. I find some sci-fi novels are way too long and drag every little bit of information out but because this book isn’t very long, you avoid all of that. There are some modern ideas thrown into this book such as DNA testing and bringing prehistoric creatures back from extinction as well as the idea of fake news and how it is interpreted.

We start the book, meeting different folks in Bounder, Arizona. We learn of their relationships, their pets, their children and how new relationships are created and lost. It almost gave the feel like that of In Cold Blood. We meet Frank and Philip, two detectives in charge of some gruesome murders around town, but it’s not as simple as that…all that is left is a pile of bones after each murder and anything seems to be the next victim, a child, a cat, a dog, an adult. A cannibalistic murder is at large, or is there…

Twists as turns on every page. There were a couple of aspects that bothered me about this novel, firstly we never truly know what these creatures are until we’re well over halfway through but saying this the book doesn’t feel crammed towards the end and seems everything is perfectly placed in enough detail. Again something I loved was the suspense factor – what could these creatures be? What do they look like? Where do they come from?

The second thing is the ending, whilst it’s an interesting ending for the reader, the last couple of chapters seemed a little bit anti-climatic in comparison to other events in the book. But it still worked for the book and there is still a cliffhanger there for the reader to decide what happens next.

There’s no real sense of time – you don’t know how long this goes on for, how long the creatures have been around for, the time between each event. You can guess by totting up the frequency of how often months and years and weeks are mentioned.

If you love sci-fi and all things alien and crime then please give this book a chance! Give it a read and let me know what you think! Link below to purchase from Amazon:

Keep reading!

D x

Ps MANY THANKS GOES TO STANLEY STRAUB FOR TRUSTING ME IN REVIEWING THIS BOOK AND FOR GIVING ME THIS OPPORTUNITY.