Due to a sudden, unexpected passing in the family a few years ago and another more recently and my subsequent (mental) health issues stemming from that, I was unable to download this book in time to review it before it was archived as I did not visit this site for several years after the bereavements. This meant I didn't read or venture onto netgalley for years as not only did it remind me of that person as they shared my passion for reading, but I also struggled to maintain interest in anything due to overwhelming depression. I was therefore unable to download this title in time and so I couldn't give a review as it wasn't successfully acquired before it was archived. The second issue that has happened with some of my other books is that I had them downloaded to one particular device and said device is now defunct, so I have no access to those books anymore, sadly.

This means I can't leave an accurate reflection of my feelings towards the book as I am unable to read it now and so I am leaving a message of explanation instead. I am now back to reading and reviewing full time as once considerable time had passed I have found that books have been helping me significantly in terms of my mindset and mental health - this was after having no interest in anything for quite a number of years after the passings. Anything requested and approved will be read and a review written and posted to Amazon (where I am a Hall of Famer & Top Reviewer), Goodreads (where I have several thousand friends and the same amount who follow my reviews) and Waterstones (or Barnes & Noble if the publisher is American based). Thank you for the opportunity and apologies for the inconvenience.

The Children God Forgot by Graham Masterton is a horror story that took me in a different path than I wanted to go on. It was not something I could really get into. If you want to read a book about an aborted fetus crawling on the floor, then this is a book may entice you. Normally I enjoy horror and thrillers but this was out of my comfort zone.

2 out of 5 stars

Thank you NetGalley as well as the author/publisher for giving me the opportunity to read this book in exchange for my unbiased and honest review.

**3.5 stars rounded down**
If you have every wondered what it would feel like for someone else’s supposedly aborted fetus to try to crawl it’s way inside of you while you slept…read this book.

This book was actually so disturbing to me during some scenes. I do not want kids and never plan on being pregnant, but if you are pregnant or ever plan on being pregnant I urge you to proceed with caution on this one. THAT BEING SAID, I really enjoyed this book. It did exactly what I expected it to do, which was GROSS ME OUT. The vivid descriptions of body horror and gore were top tier.

I do, however, feel like the book could’ve been shorter. It dragged quite a bit towards the end and a little of the middle. Also the “mother figure” was a tad too cheesy for my personal taste.

Just didn't enjoy it as much as I thought. From the description, it should have been my style, but it was not.

A man disappears whilst investigating a 'fatberg' in the London sewers only to be found without his legs & his eyes gouged out. A woman has excruciating stomach pain & is delivered of a malformed foetus, even though she insists she cannot possibly be pregnant. Then the foetus goes missing from the maternity hospital. Strange occurrences seem to get pushed in the direction of DS Jamila Patel and DC Jerry Pardoe after they were involved in a previous unusual case but this one looks like being even weirder!

Often there are incidences of racism, chauvinism & homophobia in this book but although there were references to things of the 21st century I felt as if this was set in the mid to late years of the 20th. This is a horror story so there are some truly horrific descriptions & the reader certainly needs to be able to step away from reality when reading this but it was certainly a wild ride!

This was a book I dipped in & out of for a while till I got on with it to the end. For me it was a 3.5 read, rounded up to a 4 because of the sheer lunacy of it all! Thanks to Netgalley & the publisher for letting me read & review this book.

Had been looking forward to reading this book. Sadly it wasn’t for me. It just lacked a good plot to get you excited and wanting more. It was very slow paced and never picked up

I really enjoy Graham Masterton novels and this one was no exception. More of the fast paced action and twistiness expected in this book

Not my favourite work by this usually amazing author, didn’t like the pacing or prose of this work especially and was disappointed by the ending.

I normally like a horror, crime mash up but was a little disappointed with this one. A great idea, but badly executed. The writing was remedial and I had trouble finishing it. I had high hopes but the way it’s written made it had to read.

A lot of women are becoming pregnant in London and none of them are ok. The children are weird and strangely deformed. This has turned into a case for Jamila and Jerry to solve. There’s plenty of gore and disgusting goings on, enough to keep hardened horror fans happy. Plus trips down into the depths of the sewers which are a real “delight”. Definitely not a book to read whilst eating! Creepiness and evil abounds in spades for those who like that sort of thing. Despite the mention of Google and mobile phones the book does have a dated feel to it. The way it suddenly ended was also a disappointment especially as it didn’t get to 100%.

4 Stars!

Graham Masterton has long been a favorite of mine. His books never fail to entertain and terrify. It had been a long time, too long, since I had read anything from this underappreciated master of horror so I was happy to get a review copy of The Children God Forgot and I dove right in hoping to find another tale that would keep me up late into the night.



A strange wave of pregnancies has swept across London. It begins when a woman is rushed to the hospital and delivers a critically malformed fetus that survives even though it should not be able to. Even more confusing is that the woman has no idea how she became pregnant in the first place. As more of these pregnancies mount, the children begin to disappear seemingly under their own power. In another part of town, Gemma leads a team of sewer engineers into the sewers to remove a blockage when they are mysteriously plunged into darkness. Gemma escapes but her boss goes missing only to turn up later with his legs amputates and his eyes gouged out. There seems to be no connection between the pregnancies and the supernatural sewer attack but a deadly link begins to emerge.



Jerry Pardoe and Jamila Patel of the supernatural squad for the London Police Department are called upon to investigate the cases and begin to find a frightening link between the attack in the sewer and the malformed children. The clues lead them to the legend of ancient witch that once terrorized the city and was laid to rest with the proper safeguards to keep her spirit trapped in her coffin forever. It appears that someone has removes some of the charms that have kept her locked from the world, however, and she may once again be on the loose. Pardo and Patel find themselves in a race to stop the ancient evil and her “children” before the plague of violence that she has started encompasses the city and beyond.



Graham Masterton is a scary guy. I have been a fan of his for a long time and have never read a book of his that I did not enjoy The Children God Forgot was not going to be the first. In fact, this book is up there among my favorites from this master of horror. The novel wastes little time in getting started and Masterton draws the reader in deeper with every page. This is not a short novel but it never once feels as if it is running slowly or has a dull moment. It goes from scene to scene flawlessly and the reader can only hold on for the ride. Even when the events seem a bit outlandish, Masterton holds it all together and keeps the reader tied to the pages with his unrelenting style. The horror grows and the reader can only hold on for the roller coaster the story quickly becomes.



The Children God Forgot is a bit of a strange novel that remains somewhat unsettled throughout. It is full of mutants and ancient evil, witchcraft and detective procedure, but Masterton never loses control of the story. The horror ranges from the almost sublime to some fairly extreme scenes of violence and mayhem. It would have been easy for a lesser writer to lose control of the story but Masterton not only holds it together but keeps it growing toward a final crescendo of chaos. While I have read many of Masterton's novels and have enjoyed them all, The Children God Forgot is one of his best ever and one of the better horror novels I have read in a long time.



I would like to thank Head of Zeus and NetGalley for this review copy. The Children God Forgot is available now

I was really intrigued by the premise of this book but I’m afraid it just wasn’t for me. I’ve read nothing by the author before but I’d heard good things but I was unfortunately disappointed.

I didn’t know where the plot was going half of the time and was bored the other half. I was so unsatisfied with the ending. Hopefully, this is just me and others will really enjoy this book. Thank you to Netgalley, publisher and author, for a chance to read and review this.

A highly entertaining, weird and creepy story that kept me hooked.
I loved the world building, the fleshed out characters and the tightly knitted plot.
Highly recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine

The Children God Forgot
by Graham Masterton
Pages: 326
Publisher: Head of Zeus
This is a book I requested from NetGalley and the publisher and the review is voluntary and are all my own opinions.
Are you ready for some really creepy horror involving deformed babies that, even after being aborted, can travel about in the sewers causing havoc? Angelic faces, tentacles for a body, they can travel to another woman and insert themselves! They attacks in groups, dismembering anyone in the sewer system. They also have a deadly witch that guards them, Satan's girlfriend no less! Yea, it's that kind of crazy, horror filled, keep the lights on, covers off to watch for the creepy things, and a dog at your side! (The witch is afraid of dogs!)
This is a super creepy book which I love! I love books that remind me of good, old fashioned, scary-the-pants-off-you, unpredictable, and disturbing! This is that!
This has a lot of side mysteries that are horrific and horrifying and soon they all merge into one!
You need an ominous, bloody curdling book yet one that reminds you of a late night horror flick? This is it but scarier than a movie.
Only problem I had is that the dialogue is too real and very British which for a Midwest American it was difficult to follow in places. Had to really think about how it was used to figure out the meaning.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts and opinions expressed in this review are my own.

First I have to say, this book will not be for everybody. In The Children God Forgot women are turning up with impossible pregnancies. When the babies are removed via cesarean section they are severely malformed and incredibly alive. And things just get weird from there.

While I found this book to be a little long, it was still interesting enough. There were a lot of things happening throughout the book that kept my attention. I didn't find it to be as scary as I anticipated however, it did have a few creepy moments. The story line was very dark and incredibly unique.

As I previously stated, this book won't be for everybody but if you want something that is dark, twisted, and weird this could be something for you.

Strong trigger warnings for abortion and miscarriage.

What if aborted children where brought back to life by witchcraft and hiding in the sewer system? When a sewer tunnel maintenance crew experiences horrifying events and is even attacked, the police sends a pair of investigators that have dealt with some unusual cases before. But even to DC Jerry Pardoe and DS Jamila Patel encountering very real supernatural forces is new terrain. At the same time, a deformed child is born by a woman who claims she couldn't have been pregnant, and another woman is attacked by a horrid human-faced spider-like creature. Step by step, the connection between these strange events is revealed, behind which stands a very powerful and ancient evil.

Despite the obvious ethical question raised and also ethnic conflicts addressed in the book, the basic idea behind the story was very unique and quite unsettling. Suspense was stalled a couple of times by some slow, lengthy, even repetitive chapters, but nowadays old-school-type books (both old ones and new) seem to have this effect on readers (me included, I have to admit with mixed feelings). On the other hand, a lot of detail was put into character-building, overall setting and creating a very creepy atmosphere, which made it easy to visualize the story in my imagination. On the whole, this book presented a fascinating read.

I enjoyed this book a lot. The plot was well constructed and it was an easy read. It was creepy in all the right ways. You've got to be a die-hard fan of body horror and not mind some of the more upsetting elements in a book like this, but overall it was worth reading.

It's been a long time since a book has gotten under my skin but reading The Children God Forgot, I truly had a moment where I thought "This book is going to give me nightmares." This was a very strange book: deformed fetuses roaming for new wombs to call home, a fatberg blocking the sewer with glowing malformed children taking replacement body parts, and last, but certainly not least, a reanimated witch formed of smoke and vengeance. All of those things individually would be enough of a plotline to carry any horror novel, but together are the things that nightmares are made of.

Told in varying points of view, the plot on this one jumps around. You get just enough action to draw you in and wonder exactly what the hell is going on when it switches to another POV to pick up where it left off before. Typically, I hate this style of writing, but I will say in spite of that it kept my interest, especially when you have the scenes set as they are. There are occult vibes, police procedural, heavy body horror, and of course, the paranormal.

I do have to wonder though, as a woman, if this book weighs as heavily on male readers. I would imagine it doesn't. There's a particular horror in simply being a woman and having fears that are unique to the female persuasion alone. The fear of reproduction, of growing a life that is abominable instead of the perfect being it should be, and the fear of being violated. I struggle with that last word because what truly happens here, under other descriptions is rape. Not in the usual sense, but by one of the aborted creatures crawling or attempting to crawl inside another woman's uterus to continue to incubate. See what I mean by horrifying?

There are also some sociopolitical themes here that are played a bit heavy-handed. The entire novel could be a statement on abortion. Not only do you have the many-limbed but cherub-faced fetus being terminated before term, but there's the woman showing up to punish those who participated in the terminations stating that all life is sacred. I feel like this book should have been written decades ago when racism and homophobia were casual and women were written based on the size of their breasts.

I ended up very conflicted about this novel. In the beginning, it was extremely effective horror. It's definitely a horror that relies on the reader's revulsion over Somewhere in the middle, the momentum of the plot starting lagging. From that point on, it was a rush to the ending, curt and to the point, without a lot of explanation. This is one of those novels that is either going to leave you checking the sheets before getting in the bed or leave you apathetic but one thing is for certain, some of these scenes will continue to play in your head long after you've closed the book.

This book was strange, odd, creepy, thrilling, and intriguing. Strange, creepy, and unexplainable supernatural thing are going on in this novel and it is enough to suck you in and keeping you flipping the pages to try to figure out what the heck is going on in this town. I loved the eerie, creepy vibes of this book. A good read that I recommend.

Enjoyed this one. I felt like there was something missing though, something I needed to love it. Well thought out plot and easy to read.