Terminal Core by Lynn Steigleder was published by a small, independent publisher,. Unfortnately, this book didn’t have a lot of positives. The novel was supposed to have a sort of Wild West vibe, but aside from the casual mention of Stetsons and people shooting guns, it felt less Wild West and more like Aliens meets Tremors meets Supernatural. It was very weird, with very weird deaths and weird characters, and a weird ending that will leave the reader asking, “What just happened?”

Some readers might pick this up and think it’s the coolest thing they ever read, but to this reviewer it read very much like a first draft, complete with many typos.  Further editing would have solidified this novel, especially in its plot and characters. 

Even upon completion of the book, readers may still not be 100% sure what it was about. There were so many characters with too-similar personalities that often it was unclear who was who. The setting might have been on the fictional planet Aon, but it could have been on Earth since some characters either were on Earth or came from Earth; it was difficult distinguishing planet from planet.  

So, plot and setting were issues, and as for character development, there was very little. Every character read exactly the same, and where  some were meant to be better than others, they acted just as violently as their less ethical counterparts. (For example, a supposedly “good” man is beaten by thugs, and he retaliates by killing them violently–extremely violently.) This made it difficult for the reader to root for any characters, because even the good guys weren’t very good, and everyone was pretty emotionless. They could lose a good friend and be pretty blasé about it. 

Spoiler alert: There is a lot of that kind of strange, disturbing violence in this book. (Please see content review below.) Nearly every brief chapter had some sort of peculiar goriness, and just when you think it couldn’t get any stranger, it would.

The book blurb sounded really intriguing, which is why I decided to take a chance on this novel, and I wish I could give Terminal Core a glowing review, but I am so sorry I can’t.  The author has a lot of potential with a good ear for humor, but in this book the humor just fell a bit flat and the other literary elements would benefit from further refinement.

This book was sent to Compass Book Ratings for review by the Author

Content Analysis:

Profanity/Language:  3 mild obscenities. 

Violence/Gore:  Many instances of violence and gore, including but not limited to: a character is said to have a ‘taste’ for women, implying he eats them after killing them; a character uses a super-powerful gun to shoot a character in half; characters occasionally verbally threaten each other; a character fractures his chin, with some description of blood and gore; characters are often shot at by hostiles; a character uses a laser to split someone from groin to sternum; a character accidentally burns his nostril with a lighted cigarette; characters are attacked by parasitic worms that eath through their skin; tentacles erupt from the ground and kill a character’s six-legged mount; a man is casually eaten by a monstrous creature; a character relates a pre-teen friend getting beheaded; two boys wrestle and roll down a hill, colliding with a tree, and one of the boys is gruesomely killed by striking the tree, with description of injuries inflicted; a man is dismembered and consumed by a vicious sentient tree; a character shoots a wolf-like creature, and its remains rain down as chunks of meat; a man shoots off another’s face in a fine gray mist; a character is lashed to poles and bits of his skin are sliced off by a hooded figure; a creature is decapitated and dismembered; a character uses a powerful weapon to slice an enemy into one-inch cubes; a man is attacked and beaten by teen punks, and retaliates by breaking one’s spine, digging his fingers into another’s head, and removing one’s genitalia by hand, after which he stabs him with a sword.

Men and monsters are frequently wounded and/or killed in strange and gory ways, including being bitten in half, being dismembered, being beheaded, being skewered, being quartered, being shot, being hacked to death. All instances are fairly gory, weird, and disturbing in their casualness.

Sex/Nudity:  A character notes the handle of his confiscated pistol shoved into another character’s pants are likely not touching certain anatomy; a character thinks about picking up a lady of the evening, but is loathe to think of her curled up naked beside him; a man notes he is cultivating “B-cup size” boobs; a character jokes about a man being primed for marriage; creatures are noted to lack an anus; a man is left in his briefs.

Mature Subject Matter:

Socioeconomic conflicts, murder, death of friends, addictions, smoking.

Alcohol / Drug Use:

A character smokes a cigarette; characters play cards in a saloon; characters catch up over drinks at a bar; many characters frequently drink copious amounts of alcohol; a man gets slobbering drunk; a man drinks three bottles of liquor in one sitting; a man drinks three shots of liquor one after another; a girl mentions what you can get with a bottle of liquor and a pretty face; a character smokes a rolled cigarette; a character drinks from a flask; a man smokes a joint.