The Beast of Nightfall Lodge

The Institute for Singular Antiquities, Book II

By: SA Sidor

Narrated by: Nick Landrum

Length: 12 hrs and 23 mins

Publisher's summary

A mysterious explorer hires a team of adventurers to join him in a hunt for a monstrous beast, in this rip-roaring sequel to Fury From the Tomb.

When Egyptologist Rom Hardy receives a strange letter from his old friend, the bounty-hunting sniper Rex McTroy, he finds himself drawn into a chilling mystery. In the mountains of New Mexico, a bloodthirsty creature is on the loose, leaving a trail of bodies in its wake. Now, a wealthy big game hunter has offered a staggering reward for its capture, and Rom’s patron – the headstrong and brilliant Evangeline Waterston – has signed the team up for the challenge.

Awaiting them are blizzards, cold-blooded trappers, remorseless hunters, a mad doctor, wild animals and a monster so fearsome and terrifying, it must be a legend come to life.

©2019 S A Sidor (P)2020 Angry Robot

Hook, Line, and Sinker

This book quickly grabbed me and held on tight. Excellent storytelling and character development and kept you wondering just who or what was the beast up until the end. I had my guesses but there was no way to know for sure and that’s exactly how I like a story like this to be. There was one small thing left unresolved to my liking but still it’s a five star read or listen. Also, the Narration of the audible version was excellent.

An Improvement By Inches

On a whim, I bought both this book and it’s prequel Fury From the Tomb from the recommended feed after finishing another horror western. I have to say, both titles are terribly disappointing.

For a horror story, there’s not a lot of actual horror or anything horrifying going on. Blood and guts and grizzly deaths are abundant—literally, in two cases—but there’s nothing I would peg as horrifying. The plot leads you in one direction for a good long while, with a handful of startling twists that did in fact throw me for a loop. The quality of storytelling is a remarkable jump from Fury’s scatter-shot transition between plot points.

However, just when the finish is in sight, the story yanks the reins and you dive headlong into something completely out of left field and stomps on the progress across the first and second acts. Which is the death-knell for a supposed creature-feature, not even the titular Beast’s reveal is underwhelming and the reveal is as predictable as the heartbreak it’s supposed to compel into the audience.

There is the silver lining in Nick Landrun, both here and with the first book. He breathes tragedy and innocence and charisma into all of the cast that is sullied by the book’s conclusion. Given the lackluster finish, it’s mind-boggling how a narrator of Nick’s caliber could be attached to such a blunder of a title.