A survival horror mixed with cosmic horror and Tremors vibes. Held my interest throughout.

Thank you to Netgalley for the ARC.

This book is like if that AMAZING movie Tremors and Nick Cutter's, The Troop, had a baby. I devoured this. This book is all things weird and disgusting and I cruised through this in one sitting. I love how we hit the ground running and didn't stop until the end. And that ending??? Immaculate. Anything that ends on an ambiguous note makes my little heart sing with joy.
The characters were all kind of thrown into this melting pot of horrors and it truly was survival of the fittest or smartest? Regardless, the survivors ENDURED SOME SHIT. The way those who didn't make it died in unique and disturbing ways.
I loved the setting for this read so much. I truly think stories set in the middle of nowhere woods are top tier because the possibilities of horrors are endless. And as someone who loves to go hiking and hopes to conjure some weird horrors, this book added more fun possibilities to my arsenal.

Nameless Things is a wilderness survival novel. It is a mix of Stephen King’s Dreamcatcher, The Thing, and Tremors. There are scenes in the novel that made my skin crawl. Unfortunately, I found the pacing to be a mixed bag. The novel starts off good with a literal bang which escalates to creepy-crawly horror. However, once the reader reaches 20% into the novel, pacing slows down and there is no tension. The characters should be fearful or anxious, racing to get back to civilization, instead they bicker. The main character is gay, it does not influence the overall plot or feel of the novel. The reader will find the author’s description of the characters as lazy. Instead of creating an image of what each character looks like, the author would simply write that a character looks like a specific actor. This is a fun novel I would recommend as a beach read or something to read while traveling.

🪱 ARC REVIEW 🪱

NAMELESS THINGS by Ernest Jensen
3/5 🌟
Pub date - Mar 11th

The concept for this book was really cool, but the characters' choices in this book were questionable at best. I'm also not sure if the main character was likeable, I was divided on him.

This book starts with our main character, Mike, going on a hiking trip with his buddy. They see a meteor hit, and hell follows.

Please read if you like the following:

🪱Survival situations with strangers relying on each other
🪱 The movie "THE THING"
🪱 Rock climbing
🪱 Alien worms

Thank you Netgalley and Dreamscape Media for this ARC

It started out giving me a Tremors vibe. I kept that the entire way through. There were several grammatical errors, with only a few that made me take pause and backtrack to figure out something. I did feel a lot of repetition reading this. I feel this was a great first effort into the horror genre for this author, but for me, it lacked. It wasn't terrible, but it wasn't fantastic either. I also feel this is probably more sci-fy/dystopian, rather than horror.

Nameless Things is a mix of survival horror, body horror, and maybe creature horror. Set in the wilderness, we follow a mix of characters as they fight to survive against an alien foe, not to mention hunger and thirst.

The book is fast-faced and filled with tension and dread. There's a sense of panic and fear in the characters and the scenes. As a reader, I was caught up in the confusion and fear felt by the characters - the sudden shift into the unknown and the terror of facing something alien and deadly.

I was happy to see a gay protagonist in a horror like this, but he needed better characterisation. There's nothing, apart from being told he broke up with his boyfriend, to let the reader know he is gay. I'm not asking for cliche or stereotypes, but maybe something that would make him distinct from his friend in the book. But I feel this book may be focusing more on the action and the fear, on the character movement and the struggle for survival. In that way, it gives the story a more movie-like feel, where the visual is more important than building the story.

But overall, I enjoyed this horror. It's a quick read. It's tense. There are edge of the seat moments. I think it achieves that it sets out do to.

Eh..... Just read The Troop by Nick Cutter.

While I understand what Jensen aimed for, it was just mid at best.

I didn't find this interesting, shocking or scary at all.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for the opportunity to read and review this book.

Nameless Things by Ernest Jensen (AKA Louise Jensen Duffy) took a very interesting premise, and muddied the waters with an incredibly dumb and unlikable main character, too much inner monologue of this main character, and the chapter progression of a goosebumps book. It felt like 20% of the chapters ended in “and that’s when he/she fell”. I was really looking forward to this one, as the description and even the title was a banger for me.

Unfortunately, by the halfway point of this book I started skimming for dialogue and key actions. The amount of times I had to read “I felt terrible when I woke up after sleeping on hard rock” said in 100 different ways; the amount of times the MC just “could not right now” and demonstrated less composure than a small child; the fact that the author made the decision to go on for 2-3 pages about how heavenly the coffee was that the MC finally got to drink… I almost DNF’d this book and wouldn’t blame anyone for doing so.

Rating: 2/5 stars.

I want to thank NetGalley and Rising Action Publishing for sending me a free advanced reader copy in exchange for my honest review.

Thank you to NetGalley and Rising Action Publishing for this ARC.

Mike and his best friend Wade decide to go on a hiking trip in the caldera of Devil's Cup State Park in Ernest Jensen's first foray into horror novels with "Nameless Things:,. When a meteor crashes into the park, it sets off a landslide blocking the only trail exit out of the caldera, and, unfortunately for all the hikers inside the park, the meteor either had some alien hitchhikers or the ability to alter Earth organisms into a deadly, creeping horror.

I was initially hooked, but over time, the story just seemed incredibly repetitive. The story would make an absolutely stellar short story or 150-180 page novella, but as a novel, it falls flat, despite being a quick and easy read. The characters don't really stand out and seem like simple body fodder to add a dash of terror into what is mostly a monotonous loop of walk in one direction, get stuck, someone dies, head in another direction, and repeat ad nauseum. Again, a really tight editing into something half the length (or less) would seemingly solve this almost unnecessary repetition.

As others have noted, the language is also quite a mishmash with the American protagonist often falling into using Anglo-English expressions (torches vs flashlights being the most common). I will disagree with many of the other reviews, though, in that I see this story as much more reminiscent of Scott Smith's "The Ruins" or Stephen King's short story "Beachworld" than the movie "Tremors" (although I think a case might be made for the cult classic movie "Squirm" if you need to have a worm reference). Sadly, my hopes for the character development that made "The Ruins" so satisfying, did not pan out here in "Nameless Things". The one most positive element I will say, is that if you do push yourself through to the end, there is a great finale. It just really would have been so much better about 150 pages sooner.

A meteor strike triggers a landslide, blocking the trails leading into a volcanic caldera and trapping everyone who was hiking in the park at the time...but that's just the beginning. This is an entertaining creature feature that explores what might happen when a bunch of strangers are isolated with an unknown threat and limited supplies. I did find myself losing track of which characters were still alive (the numerous dream sequences didn't help with that.)

Thank you Netgalley for the advanced copy. I really enjoyed this book. Mike and Wade are on a hiking trip in Devil's Cup State Park when the meteor strikes. They along with others become trapped in the caldera with seemingly no way out as they began to realize what horrors now lie beneath the earth. The idea of being far away from civilization when a meteor strikes that unleashes unspeakable horrors is pretty terrifying.

I really enjoyed the body horror and the fight for survival. I liked that I saw both sides of humanity in the book, the good and the bad, the when push comes to shove what would you do type question.

This was a quick read, it was really easy to get through and it kept my interest the whole time.

There was one thing that bothered me though, which kept it from being 5 stars. However, as that is a spoiler I will not be adding it to the review. I like to keep my reviews spoiler free.

Overall this book was really enjoyable and a thrilling time.

I really wanted to love this, but unfortunately, it just wasn’t for me. The slow burn felt too slow, and to be honest, the whole worm aspect didn’t hold my interest. Sorry to say! Honestly if this wasn’t an arc reading, I would have DNF it.

Thank you to Netgalley for my arc.

When I saw the synopsis for this I instantly wanted to read it. People stuck in the woods with worm monsters? Yes! That is going to be so much fun...Only the story was really boring. I didn't care about any of the characters. They were all so flat. Things happened that should have been exciting/intense/whatever and they were just bogged down in bad dialogue. I...After the first death I thought maybe I should stop reading as it should have been fun but I was bored instead. I decided to continue on to see if it got any better, but ended up DNF-ing it along the way because it didn't. Things happened and sometimes I was like why are the people doing this? But at the same time I didn't really care because the writing didn't evoke emotions. It was not good.

One word tremors. This book was like tremors (movie) on steroids. Such a missed opportunity to name a character Burt.
Being this was Louise ( Ernest) Jensen’s first horror novel she absolutely knocked it out of the park. I laughed, cried, gasped, and there at the ending held my breath. I was so invested into what happened next.
The ending got me! My mouth dropped my heart fell out of my butt. I didn’t see that coming one bit.
To the bad part. I only had one thing I didn’t really care for. The kid. He disappeared and when the event unfolded after they looked for him there was no mention of him. They didn’t even discuss if they should keep looking for him. It was like he was never there. I would 100 percent recommend this book.
Thank you NetGalley for an ARC of nameless Things by Ernest Jensen.

The good things first: I liked the characters, the setting and the plot. That being said, the writing style almost made me stop reading it. It was too repetitive and spent way too much time on things that weren't important for the plot while things like character development wasn't happening and interesting situations were glanced over. The plot twists were also very predictable.

Having multiple POVs would have been interesting. It would have given the characters more depth while keeping the suspense about who will die high. It'd have helped with a lot of problems this book has.

The premise is fantastic. I love both survival horror and cosmic horror, so I was sold. Even the body horror is well done and effective. I read it all in one day, and never lost interest.

The execution is not as fantastic. After a great start in the first three or four chapters, the story quickly begins to stagnate. The characters slowly discovering bits and pieces of information (with lots of BIG leaps in logic) about their foe is perfectly fine, but it's the rest of the story that gets repetitive. There are endless scenes that can be summed up by 'we took a different trail, had to figure out how to dramatically cross a gulley, and then we hit a dead end and turned back.' Rinse and repeat, over and over. I'd completely lost track of the different trails they had tried, or were going to try, or maybe already had? And...couldn't they have moved some rocks around??

Also, the characters and dialogue could have benefited from some extra work. I didn't particularly care for any of the characters, and many were bland enough that I couldn't tell them apart. Unfortunately this meant the deaths had little to no impact.

As far as writing, the MCs overwrought internal narration gets tiresome after a while. And as others have pointed out, the American character does use a lot of non American slang, as part of some awkward and stilted dialogue.

Overall, there is a lot of promise here, with a strong concept and atmosphere. The weaker plotting and writing may deter some readers, but if you can push past that, the ending is worth the journey.

Okay read. I thought the atmosphere was great and had some real creepy moments but I think the plot got a little slow. I also did not care too much for the characters.

If you're looking for a juvenile version of 10 Cloverfield Lane, this one might be for you. Nameless Things follows a group of hikers who become trapped in the woods when an alien object hits earth, unleashing mysterious worm-like creatures that slowly pick them off one by one.

The storyline was interesting but I didn't connect with any of the characters. They were all carbon copies of each other and oftentimes I couldn't tell them apart. The dialogue was horrendous. I had to remind myself several times this wasn't young adult.

Halfway way through the storyline had become very repetitive but I liked the ending. There was some gruesome body horror and a satisfying conclusion.

Horror set in the wilderness sounded awfully interesting, and it was for the first few chapters, but I felt as if it went down from there. It stopped being interesting and because of that it lost the horror aspect.

Story follows a few different groups who are out hiking when things go horribly wrong and they are forced to join forces against a threat they cannot control.

I liked the concept, and I do think that with revisions it can be published as a very nerve wracking and, in some cases, disgusting story considering what the antagonist is in the story.

Explosive horror novel that features comlex and not stereotypical characters. The gore level is high and probably not suitable for younger readers. I would recommend this book for Stephen King fans that need a good horror novel while waiting for something new from the master. You will not be disappointed!