The Worms

By: Al Sarrantonio

Narrated by: Scott F. Feighner

Length: 4 hrs and 26 mins

Publisher's summary

A young couple travel to the girl's hometown and are plunged into a living nightmare of evil -- an evil from deep in the past which appears in a shocking and deadly form.

Provine, Massachusetts, is one of those picturesque New England towns where nothing ever seems to change. At least that is how it has always seemed to Felicity Cramer. So when she brings Paul, her fiance, to Province to meet her family, the last thing she expects is for anything out of the ordinary to occur.

Under the sleepy surface of Province lies a devastatingly sinister fate, a fate sealed three hundred years ago when Granny Brind was burned as a witch. Now, the horrifying legacy Granny Brind bequeathed to Province is about to explode with a murderous vengeful power, from which there will be no escape.

The Worms elicits the kind of heart-pounding response fans of horror and fantasy fiction crave. The knockout pace of this terrifyingly suspenseful story will leave you gasping for breath.

©1988 Al Sarrantonio (P)2014 David N. Wilson

EEIRE & CREEPY-CRAWLY

A very good horror novel.

I’ve been searching for a ‘good monster’ read. Serious, not comedy. Unique and not an ‘old-hat’ rewrite
- and I found it!

NEVER HACK AL
Al Sarrantonio is never cliché. Mr. Sarrantonio will tell a story about a known monster but give it enough twists & turns that by the end, like Mr. Toad, you’re amazed at the wild-ride you just went on.

BEST WORM
Horror novels about monstrous worms are one of my favorite reads. Odd, sure, but it gives me an unique status to review Al Sarrantonio’s “WORMS”.
That said, WORMS is the best of the slimy-ooky-deadly-creepy subject matter related books I’ve read.

NARRATION
I’ve heard much worse readers than Scott F. Feighner. However, I’ve heard many far better. I don’t like my enjoyment of good writing being distracted by inexpert reading. The narration did not kill my listening to the whole audio book.
Be that as it may, I do wish WORMS had been read by Gene Blake or Andrew Leman or Sean Branney or Edward French or Samuel Roukin or blah blah blah…

HISTORY
“CREEPY”?
Oh yeah, Al Sarrantonio’s books remind me of my childhood in the 70’s reading the horror magazines, like 'Eerie' & 'Creepy'.
Oh sigh, those were treasured moments!
When the “Comic Code” was established under a threat of congress, “adult” comic magazines like Eerie & Creepy were born. Since they were magazines not comics they didn’t have to follow the comics code.
Mags could could be more graphic, show nudity, and disturbing-scary monsters.

AL’s GOT TALENT
What’s this have to do with Al Sarrantonio?
In trying to describe Al Sarrantonio’s talent in the 'Horror Novel Market' today, Al Sarrantonio reminds me more of non-comics code horror, than comics-code horror.
How so?
LIKE... that other major ‘horror’ novelist (who’s name rhymes with Kephen Sing) writes 100's of pages about character & atmospheric development - often not to the betterment of his tale.
Meanwhile, Al Sarrantonio writes enough character & atmosphere at a tenth of the verbiage allowing him to keep his head-long-frightening plot pace all through his frenetic tale.

A monumentally more enjoyable experience, I believe.

But what do I know?
I like books about Creepy worm monsters.