George A. Romero’s most recent lost novel to be completed by the terrific Daniel Kraus is one helluva ride! With lots of characters and some interesting ideas, PAY THE PIPER is a good yarn and a worthy capstone to Romero’s career.

This was a horror story with a lot of depth in plot—a warning of what happens when we ignore our history, when we put greed ahead of care, how important it is to remember and learn from past mistakes—and a lot of heart within its characters.

The atmosphere is phenomenal. I can’t vouch for accuracy but I could feel the humidity, the dampness. I was completely immersed with this storytelling.

I loved almost every character and at the very least, I felt for all of them. Once I picked this up, I didn’t put it down. I needed to know what was going to happen to them. I love a book that makes me feel so strongly for the people within its pages and this did exactly that.

Pay the Piper by George A. Romero and Daniel Kraus is a supernatural horror book set in the Louisiana swamps. This story was an unfinished novel by George A. Romero that was found in his archive that Daniel Kraus finished. The simple plot is children in the swamps are dying and their bodies are being found in the swamp. The killer is rumored to be a swamp creature called the Piper. The pace of the story is very slow, the murders are boring, and the creature is barely in the story. I felt like this was a creature feature who forgot about the creature until the end. I had a lot of problems with this book after loving the last collaboration between Romero and Kraus with The Living Dead novel. The description of the swamp and settings are almost nonexistent and very hard to picture. They describe this baseball field that the swamp took over that I tried to picture based on the description that I just could not see. The characters were hard to connect with in this ensemble for the most part I did like two. A highlight of the novel is the creature is like cancer and how that is tied into the story works. The ending was okay, there's a scene when a character figures it all out, that was such a leap, that it confused me more. The villain's plight is too late why did it wait so long? The date of the story is weird, I came to conclude the late 90's but for the longest time, it felt like 80's. When I read the afterword it seems like even Daniel Kraus doesn't know and it shows. I think the story idea is good but the execution could have been better and I feel it was the wrong time period. I read Pay the Piper thanks to Netgalley and Union Square & Co. who gave me a free copy. Pay the Piper was published on September 3, 2024.

Plot Summary: Pontiac, 8, wants to go to the fair that comes around every year, and see a creature exhibit full of swamp creatures. Billy her best friend is too scared to go and goes home, but at his home, he is lured out and never seen again. This is not the first kid to get lured out to the swamp and won't be the last. The legend of the Piper has been going on for some time, and Pontiac is obsessed she has a log book that she has been writing all the disappearances and has been reading H. P. Lovecraft. Pete is a former cop who liaisons as a cop in the deep swamp and has been investigating the murder with his not deputy Spuds. Pete is obsessed with John Wayne and is haunted by one of his films, which seems to tie into what is going on. Can they stop the Piper before it is too late?

What I Liked: The cover of the book is awesome. The John Wayne angle is really interesting and I liked how it relates to the story. You get a mini film history on John Wayne and I'm all for it. I like the H.P. Lovecraft reference and I will say the novel matches the denseness that Lovecraft spends on his characters and the final version of the Piper fits a Lovecraft creature. Pontiac is a real firecracker, she reminded me a lot of Missy on Young Sheldon. I like how a zombie is worked in more of a voodoo zombi.

What I Disliked: The time period was all over the place the only reference we get is JAG on CBS which felt like the story took place in the 90s. The story involves pirates and a slave God taking revenge, but what took him so long, since even the novel says they blended in the former slaves and pirates? I felt the piper was getting revenge on the same people he is seeking vengeance on. We only see the Piper kill three people until the big standoff off I wanted a lot more. The Piper is in the novel only 22%. The descriptions use the H. P. Lovecraft words but don't paint a picture in my mind. I wanted to see better killing since the creature is barely featured. We only get to see the aftermath of the killing for the most part or not at all.

Recommendations: Pay the Piper is not a great book. I can not recommend this novel. It kills me to write those words because I am a fan and loved the last collaboration The Living Dead so much. So I recommend skipping this book and reading The Living Dead instead.

Rating: I rated Pay the Piper by George A. Romero and Daniel Kraus 1.8 out of 5 stars.

Something is stalking the humid, sticky, bayous of Louisiana. Children are going missing around Alligator Point and the local sheriff, (well, sort of sheriff), is at his wit's end trying to figure it out. Soon enough, a few adults go missing as well as this book kicks into a higher gear.

I've been a fan of George Romero's ever since my parents took me to see Night of the Living Dead at the drive in theater. The end wrecked me and that was probably the beginning of my love for horror and the fact that it can be a great framework for addressing real world, real time societal problems. I've been a fan of Daniel Kraus' work since I read his last collaboration with Romero, The Living Dead.

But somehow, this combination of two favorites of mine, just did not work that well. I loved a few characters here, most especially young Pontiac, full of spirit and missing her friend Billy May who was the first child to disappear. I also enjoyed Dave, (the sort-of sheriff). Most of the other characters here, though, just did not connect with me. And even though Pontiac did connect, there became a point where I just didn't care what happened and I wanted it to be over.

I rolled along with this tale anyway, hoping against hope that it was going to get better, but unfortunately, I just got more bored. Then, near the final denouement, this took a kind of environmental detour and that just didn't seem like it fit. I mean, there were very few, if any, statements or discussions about the environment up to that point, (other than the oil man from a nearby town who was buying up Alligator Point by the acre.) It felt like it didn't fit the narrative at all. I have a few other things to say, but I don't want to belabor the point.

This is not the review I thought or I wanted to be writing right now, but I'm being honest. Pay the Piper very much disappointed me and I'm just going to leave it at that.

2.5/5 stars, rounded up to 3 for Goodreads.

*ARC from publisher.

**Thank you to NetGalley and Union Square Pub for the eARC of this title!**

I was obsessed with Kraus' novel Whalefall and could not wait to get into this one. Unfortunately, it is just not holding my attention for some reason despite multiple attempts at reading it. I am hitting pause on this book for the foreseeable future and am planning to circle back to it when the mood strikes.

I don't want to force myself through it and not enjoy it, because I know I am the perfect audience for this book! As always thank you for the approval and I am looking forward to enjoying Pay The Piper soon!

DNF.

I've tried a few times now and I think it's just a me problem. I liked our Main Character, the speech patterns reminded me of my Louisiana Relatives, and I even liked the mix of fairytale horrors and our small community. I just has some issues staying with this. I kept...wandering.

I think this will work very well for most people and it was just me.

I want to preface this by saying I GET WHY it’s done that way. And the disclaimer at the front even shed some light on it. But the way this book was written made it extremely hard for me to follow along. It took me about 10x longer to finish than most books. I couldn’t stop though because what I DID understand, I really enjoyed. I am going to try again on audio if/when it comes out because I think I’d follow along better. It definitely gave me the creeps a time or two.

This was a book I was really looking forward to, but it fell short of my expectations. As many have said, the book has heavy similarities to IT and also reminds me of Stranger Things, but mostly at a surface level. It’s the typical evil folk-tale entity taking kids, a coming-of-age story with a rebellious tomboy girl as the main character, a troubled home life, and a southern sheriff on the case.

The best part of the book for me was the setting. The swampy South and bayou have this grungy, haunting, and mysterious feel, but they still manage to feel like a home that calls to you. Outside of the setting, I found the characters to be just alright and the story to be a bit bland. There were dramatic moments that were often thwarted by comedic inserts, and overall, I didn’t get the level of horror I was hoping for.

I’m sure this book will be well received by others who enjoy more character-driven stories that aren’t too scary, but for me, this could’ve stayed in the archives—and maybe there’s a reason it was in there.

Yet another great book by Daniel Kraus and George A. Romero! A captivatingly immersive story set in the Louisiana Bayou. The characters are greatly fleshed out and feel real, The setting is one I’ve never personally read about in a horror novel and it has just the right about of body and cosmic horror. I definitely recommend checking this one out and love that I didn’t have to wait long to add a physical copy to my book shelf. Grab a copy now!

No individual has been as closely associated with a specific horror subgenre as George Romero with zombies. Bram Stoker’s “Dracula” revolutionized the vampire mythos, but Stoker’s other works covered a variety of subjects. However, ever since Romero wrote and directed the influential “Night of the Living Dead” in 1968, he returned to zombie lore repeatedly in his films and the few books he wrote. So, it may surprise many readers that his last written work, “Pay the Piper,” bypasses zombies for a different type of occult horror lore set in the unlikeliest Romero locale, the Louisiana Bayous. What won’t come as a surprise is that “Pay the Piper” is an often creepy tale that perfectly captures its locale’s atmosphere.

“Pay the Piper” has an unusual publication history. After Romero died in 2017, the book’s co-author-to-be, Daniel Kraus, began cataloging Romero’s personal library and notes. He discovered Romero had written a 350-page unfinished draft for “Pay the Piper” years earlier and then put the project aside. (This may explain why the book is set in 1998 with no mention of Hurricane Katrina.) Romero’s draft had no conclusion or notes suggesting how he envisioned ending the story. Instead, Romero left the book’s many plot threads unconnected. Kraus completed the book, working from his knowledge of Cajun folklore and Romero’s own likes and preferences.

“Pay the Piper” takes place in and around the town of Alligator Point, deep in the Louisiana bayou. The story begins with the arrival of a traveling carnival on January 8. That date is significant because the Battle of New Orleans occurred on the same date in 1815, and most residents of Alligator Point are descendants of Jean Lafitte’s pirates who fought alongside Andrew Jackson. (The book will conclude with the carnival’s return six months later.) A precocious nine-year-old girl named Pontiac visits the carnival and has an unfortunate encounter with one of its attractions, a cottonmouth snake that gets out of its enclosure. Pontiac (she doesn’t like anyone to use her first name) escapes unharmed, which is a better fate than the one that befalls her best friend, Billy May, that night. He is lured from his bedroom by the enticing voice of the titular Piper, following the entity into the swamp, never to be seen again.

Over the next six months, the population of Alligator Point dwindles dramatically. A couple of young people disappear the same way Billy May did. Others sell their property to the Oil Man who makes offers on behalf of an oil company for their land to those who want to get out. To top it off, the town’s residents have had abnormally high death rates from cancer over the years, courtesy of toxic byproducts from the nearby drilling sites. Pontiac is one of the few residents who realize that evil forces are active around Alligator Point.

What impressed me the most about “Pay the Piper” were the story’s many unique, fully developed characters. Horror fiction often relies on stock characters because many aren’t around for very long. “Pay the Piper” has about a dozen characters that rival anything you’ll find in this type of fiction. Further, they all reflect the Cajun bayou atmosphere. My favorite was Pete Roosevelt, Alligator Point’s unofficial law-and-order representative. He’s unofficial since the town has no authority to have a police department (and he doesn’t carry a weapon). But he still makes his rounds trying to keep people in line. He’s also a huge John Wayne fan, having memorized almost every bit of dialogue from all the Duke’s movies. Characters like Pete make “Pay the Piper” entertaining, even when there are no supernatural goings on.

Unfortunately, the book’s complexity and many colorful characters prove its eventual undoing. George Romero put the book aside for years because he couldn’t fit all the plot elements together. Daniel Kraus does so, but in a way that goes way overboard, turning the book’s finale into something out of a bloated-budget disaster film. The last revelation of the nature of the evil forces at play borders on being ludicrous rather than suspenseful or frightening. I must assume these last few chapters are Kraus’s contribution to the book. This portion of the story becomes very confusing and difficult to follow. (I’m still not sure which characters survived by the conclusion.) Worse, parts of the story seem taken from a “Watchmen” comic book.

I suspect that the nature of George Romero’s unfinished text may have given Daniel Kraus an impossible task to complete “Pay the Piper.” The book’s current ending is a mess that detracts considerably from the wonderfully descriptive text that preceded it. Most of this book creates a marvelous feeling for the locale, its culture, and its characters. Not even the disappointing ending could diminish its effect. I’m giving “Pay the Piper” a three-star rating and marginal recommendation. Read it for its strengths and try to get through the weaker parts.

NOTE: The publisher graciously provided me with a copy of this book through NetGalley. However, the decision to review the book and the contents of this review are entirely my own.

Pay the Piper by George A. Romero; Daniel Kraus was a spectacular horror novel.
I was on the edge of my seat and through bleary eyes, I read this in one sitting… Make sure you have nothing else on when you start… you will not be able to tear yourself away! You have been warned.

Daniel Kraus and George Romero are the unholiest of holy unions, and I mean that in the best possible way. From Living Dead to Pay the Piper, their voices have united to create a storytelling juggernaut. Romero’s mythology and atmosphere, Kraus’s tone and prose— it’s an unbeatable combination. One I only wish could be explored further in the future… alas. But Pay the Piper is a truly wonderful spectral spectacle, a grim but heart-filled adventure in the dark, dangerous Louisiana bayou. I happily let myself sink into those gator-filled marshes at Kraus and Romero’s behest, and I’d happily do it again. What fun!

I was intrigued by the premise. I like horror, I like kids in horror dealing with the monstrosities that adults can't, I like the southern gothic aesthetic. I couldn't get into it though. The chapters made little sense and were too jumpy. Side characters started appearing with seemingly no good reason (why did Spud and his companion enter the novel?), and they weren't interesting enough for me to figure out. The author went a little hard on the bayou flavor to the point that it felt a little stereotypical and cliche. It wasn't much of anything so special I had to keep going.

An eco-horror novel that flips racist Lovecraftian elements on their heads. When children start to go missing in Alligator Point, a poor swamp town originally founded by pirates, locals suspect The Piper, a creature from an old folk tale with a penchant for luring away kids. The main character is Pontiac, a smart and vulgar 9 year old girl who starts connecting the dots between the history of the town and the motivation of the monster.

Daniel Kraus discovered the beginning of this manuscript in George A. Romero’s archive and wrote the rest himself, which is pretty obvious since the start is noticeably wordier and the pacing just feels off. Introducing the monster early on also killed any suspense I was feeling. I think there's just a bit too much going on in the plot and the conclusion doesn't tie everything together in a satisfying way.

The heart of this story are the well-developed oddball characters and the vivid descriptions of the bayou. Writing a book that will actually scare people is difficult, but I feel like the horror elements really took a back seat to the character development. I love the characters and the general themes but I was left wanting to feel scared.

Thanks @ NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review!

Daniel Kraus resurrects the mind of George A. Romero once again with Pay the Piper. He found the bones of this novel, with a lot of research and notes, while going through the University of Pittsburgh Library’s System’s George A. Romero Archival Collection. Unlike the previous postmortem collaboration, The Living Dead, this work didn’t center on zombies. That fact may explain why this find was such a surprise. Kraus rose to the challenge, though, and you can see the successful result when this book hits shelves on September 3rd from Union Square and Co.

I said this book isn’t about zombies, so what is it about? Answering that is going to take the rest of this review. On the surface, it’s about a small collection of shanties in Louisiana called Alligator’s Point. It’s about the people struggling to eke out a living from that swamp. And it’s about the mythical Piper coming to collect. That myth may not be just folklore—kids are going missing.

Pay the Piper gives us multiple points of view into the goings on of Alligator Point. There’s a young girl, who goes by Pontiac, that we follow closely. Her teacher, Miss Ward, is another. Then we have the local “sheriff” who doesn’t actually have that level of authority. And the local “doctor” who runs a mercantile instead of practicing medicine. Oh, and did I mention Pontiac’s dad? He’s one of the many drunks in the swamp. All those viewpoints don’t get muddled, though. They are each important, and necessary, for understanding everything this book is saying.

Really, nothing is unclear about this. Normally I get a little annoyed if I feel a book is too heavy handed with what it is saying. That didn’t happen here. And to get to the heart of why I think that is, we have to step away from Louisiana for a moment. I want to talk about Daniel Kraus and Whalefall. It’s going to be difficult to knock that book out of my top books of the year, it’s beautiful. It’s also a book that looks at whales, the ocean, nature, as something primal and beyond human understanding. It’s that heart that made Kraus a perfect candidate for finishing Romero’s story.

If Whalefall has you dive into the ocean, Pay the Piper has you sink into the swamp. It’s a slow build and a slow realization. There’s an adjustment period. And it sticks to you. This book is about so much more than an entity collecting payments in children. It’s about why that would be the case. It’s about accountability, responsibility, conviction. It’s about the harms people perpetuate against people, against the land they live on, the waters they rely on. This is a book with clear heroes and villains—until it isn’t.

This book also speaks to some very topical issues in the realms of reading. Where is the line between creator and creation? I’ve mentioned primal forces but I haven’t outright said that this book is cosmic horror. And in keeping with the themes mentioned above, Lovecraft himself is discussed. I loved seeing the conversation continue through different characters. I can’t offer quotes here, since the book is unpublished, but there are some wise words from Pontiac. You’ll recognize them when you read them.

I’m optimistically saying when, there, because I am highly recommending this book. Pay the Piper gave me chills. It took me a minute to connect but once I did, I was invested. And once I was invested I understood. When everything falls together you have to admit it’s an important book. It’s a heavy book, a difficult book, and a beautiful one. I can’t promise you’ll love it. But I can promise it will make you think. And I promise there’s at least one scene that will make you feel like you’re watching one of Romero’s creations on the screen. This is a horror book with the blood of a legend, after all.

Thank you Netgalley for the arc of this upcoming book!

What a journey....lets start there. After reading the much praised "Whalefall", I knew this author was one that I would always enjoy. There is something to be said for Daniel Kraus' style. Its digestible, enjoyable and based off of what I have read from him(now 2 books), he will be an auto buy. Creature Features are hit or miss for me, but this was solid. Lengthy, yes, but solid.

Considering it is written with Geroge A Romero, I am now running to get the other book they wrote together because zombies...

In 2019, Daniel Kraus discovered a half-finished manuscript for Pay the Piper amongst the numerous boxes of the University of Pittsburgh's collection of George A. Romero's archives. No notes were left by Romero on where the story was intended to go or how it might conclude, leaving Kraus free to tie up the loose ends based on the clues and subtext present in the manuscript left orphaned by the famous film director's death in 2017. In Kraus's afterword, he writes that it was likely that Romero's partial draft was written somewhere between 1998 and 2004, well before his passing.

Reading this final co-written copy, I couldn't help but wonder if Romero had set aside Pay the Piper because he simply lost interest in it and perhaps never intended on finishing it. Even with Kraus stepping forward to salvage Romero's once-secret project, the end product feels largely aimless and shallow, and I'm not convinced that the world of horror literature would have lost much if this book had stayed buried.

Riddled with shades of Stephen King's IT, an ancient entity, the titular folkloric Piper, is luring away the youth of a Louisiana Bayou shantytown to devour them. Pontiac has lost her best friend, Billy May, to the monster, but this tragedy feels more like a minor footnote in her life. At one point she finds an old, beat-up baseball in the swamp she names Billy May Part Two, and that's about the extent of any care or empathy she shows toward her dead buddy.

If Pay the Piper is notable for anything it is its complete lack of depth and superficial approach to every topic its authors attempt to touch throughout. Instead of complex characters we get cardboard archetypes. Pontiac is The Rebellious Kid. Her dad is The Town Drunk. Pete is The Sheriff. Eventually, they gather to square off against the Piper because the narrative demands they do so, not because they have any great compelling reason to, although revenge does figure into for some of these, of course. The Piper's motivations are hidden in centuries of buried history that ultimately have little to do with anybody, providing yet another layer of disconnect between plot demands and the character surrounding it.

Kraus, and by default Romero, present a skosh of compelling eco-horror late in the narrative, which would have been more compelling if it had played a more significant role in the overarching story. The history of the region and its role in piracy and the slave trade provide some truly interesting background and inform the motivations of the Piper, but it never really goes anywhere, nor does it seem like a compelling enough reason for this monstrosity to unleash hell on swamp-rat kids circa 2024. Instead, it feels more like the authors forcibly reaching for a meaningful explanation, or any explanation at all, and becomes yet another disconnected element that never fully enmeshes itself with the rest of the narrative.

Pay the Piper has plenty of nifty ideas, but they never come together when they need to and lack any depth to make them interesting narrative devices. Why did Romero shelve this unfinished manuscript and keep it hidden away? I'm sure there's plenty of compelling reasons and theories, and Kraus shares a few of his. But the answer simply may be, it's just not that good.

Pay the Piper, the second collaboration between the late George A. Romero and Daniel Kraus (author of Whalefall, one of my favorite books I’ve read in the last year), is a horror novel set in the Louisiana bayou.

Romero and Kraus do a fantastic job at immersing you in the setting (you can feel the sweat and the humidity dripping off the page) and the effective use of Cajun dialect. I’d never spent so much time in a book in that part of the world and it was very well done.

The characters are vivid and feel real, even when they feel larger than life. The beating heart of the novel is the main character, a nine-year-old latchkey girl named Pontiac. Between the nicknames and the time the authors spend developing the characters, it makes it all the more effective as the horrors, real and supernatural, happen.

This novel has a lot of heart, but Romero and Kraus do not pull their punches on the horror. There is some fantastic body horror and cosmic horror at play here.

Overall, this one gets a strong recommendation from me if you’re looking for a horror novel a little left of the dial, if you enjoy strong characters, and if you want a taste of that Louisiana bayou.

Thank you to Union Square & Co and NetGalley for the eARC!

**Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an advance copy in exchange for a fair and honest review**

I really enjoyed this book. The language was so expressive that I really felt I was in the swamp along with the charcters. My smattering of French certainly helped me to understand their conversations and I loved the creeping presence of the Piper.

The story took a route I wasn't expecting with threads of environmental awareness, history and redemption.

"This is a reckoning!"... indeed.

Thank you to Netgalley for the chance to read, all opinions are my own.

Wow! Straight away from the first chapter I was HooKED. As a reading teacher, I appreciate a new take on the Pied Piper lore, mixe with bayou culture. This incredibly eeire, creepy book, with equally heartfilled pages will have you pulled inside till the very end.