Wurm

By: Matthew Costello

Narrated by: Matthew DeWolf

By the laws of nature, it shouldn't be alive.

For the sake of mankind, it shouldn't be resurrected from the ocean floor.

For the love of God, it shouldn't be worshipped.

Unless you want to survive....wurm.

The infection is spreading. The cult is reborn. The horror is alive and well and ready to transform humanity forever.

Wurm is here....

©1991 Matthew J. Costello (P)2018 David N. Wilson

LOVED it, great writing for any genre. Disturbing

This author is new to me, but I'm hungry for more. I feel like I was there with Jo on the streets of NYC. I was taken thousands of meters under the sea. Great story, and the narration was excellent. What else can I say? Get it!

Lots of plot threads but minimal explanation

Here we have an ambitious tale with decent characters that opens several great plot lines. Unfortunately, none of them are sufficiently explained.

Matthew DeWolf gives us a solid audio performance that falls several steps short of stellar. His voices are distinct, though some of his accents are a little off and his female voices leave quite a bit to be desired. His vocal inflections are mostly on point, and though they are subtle his tempo shifts are effective.

The story opens with a prologue that does a great job of setting up ONE of the plot lines in the book.

After this we are introduced to a number of characters very quickly. Some are intriguing, others less so.

Over the course of the book, lots of different storylines are explored in varying levels of depths. In the end they do all tie together, though even having finished it there is little to no explanation as to just how they interrelate.

As other reviewers have noted, there is a lot of influence from various films from the 80s here, some are obvious while others are a little more subtle.

Now, I didn't get the "Alien" vibe that some reviews did, but I expect that is largely a matter of personal taste.

Based on the vague hints dropped throughout, I feel like there should have been a book before this one. There is one character in particular who has a largely undeveloped background but there are enough hints to suggest that he has a very complex history that directly relates to this story.

The prose itself is rather old fashioned, but no more than a reader should expect from a book originally published in 1991. With that in mind, the writing is skillful and error-free.

My major issues with the book are with the lack of explanations. There are at least two different creatures involved here and it's not really clear how they relate, even considering one helps and enables the other.

There's also a strong Cthulhu-eske suggestion here, but that is not really explored either.

In addition to that frustration, we have rapidly shifting POVs without any real indication that the POV is shifting.

All that aside, when we finally get to the end things are reasonably wrapped up and satisfying, though there is still a wide open storyline available for exploration in the second book.

An entertaining b-movie matinee

I enjoyed this one. It reminded me of a cheesy creature feature matinee that I would fake sick to stay home and watch while eating copious amounts of potato chips, chugging 2-liters of Dr. Pepper and getting wired out of my mind on packages of fun dip.

Yeah, sounds like I was talking about when I was a kid, but that was last Tuesday :)

Hi, hum

Schlock, predictable plot not done well. Just not remotely credible. In hands of skilled writer might have been salvageable. As is, not remotely so.

Uninspired narration.

“A classic & brilliant Cthulhu Mythos novel.”

WURM by Matthew Costello • “A classic & brilliant Cthulhu Mythos novel.” • The good news is Matthew Costello is not some hack cranking out a pile of lukewarm end-of-the-world-by-zombie books. • The even better news is WURM is a solid piece of literature that tells a right scary good tale of grotesque monsters threatening humanity, and yet at the same time, it discusses the intellectual, spiritual and psychological challenges of the human condition in layman’s language without sounding too preachy, or like a University lecture on philosophy. • Any “Monster Book” that can do that is a darned good “Monster Book”! • Another highpoint is the narration by Matthew DeWolf is highly professional story telling. • You get all that, plus it has an awesome piece of kick-@ss Lowbrow Art on it’s cover. • I’m Old Man Parker, and I highly recommend this novel.