The Underdwelling by Tim Curran; Delierium Books; 2011; 237 KB pgs; $4.99 US

With what seems like hundreds of new horror books released every month, how in the hell does anyone make the decision on which novel to click the order button on?  Whether its 50 or 500 horror novels a month released, if one if them is by Tim Curran it gets loaded into my e-reader faster than you can say Amazon One Click.

Tim Curran has been making good impressions since at least 2003 with his urban crime novel, Street Rats.  Though he’d published other novels since then, it was when his masterpiece of a novel, Dead Sea, was released in 2007 when a genuine buzz really started to accompany his work.  And recently, his short story output was given a superb nod in Tasmaniac’s beautifully produced hardcover release, Bone Marrow Stew, containing not only some his best short horror stories, but loaded up with hard to find and never before published material.

And what you may ask, separates Curran from the many horror author’s who’ve busted a gut writing and releasing their own works into a crowded market?  The answer is monsters.

There is not another author in these times that can create a monster that is as horrifying as the ones Curran creates.  Whether it’s the ocean dwelling creatures that that assault the survivors in Dead Sea or the “things” that decimate the Artic Scientists in his Hive series, Curran’s creations are guaranteed to make your jaw drop and your mind numb.

In The Underdwelling, Curran takes a page out of recent headlines and drops us deep into a coal mine where we discover that not all cave-ins might be the result of human error.

We are introduced to a man named Boyd and it seems coal mining runs in his family.  His Dad was a coal miner who was killed in a mine accident when Boyd was younger, and the thought of his Dad’s death is never very far from Boyd’s mind.  Despite his Dad’s tragic death, Boyd sign’s onto a mine dig even though he’s got a bad feeling about it.

Being the new guy he gets razzed on quite a bit.  Most of the hazing is good natured, except for the crap he’s getting from one of the men who has taken a dislike to him.

When Boyd and the miners are dropped down into the mine, it’s not soon after when they stubble upon an opening in one of the tunnels.  This opening leads straight down into a black pit, and an engineer and a supervisor want two men to accompany them down into the hole to investigate it.  Guess which two men get picked.

What follows is the discovery of a cavern complete with petrified tree’s, that’s been preserved due to the lack of oxygen for over hundreds of millions of years.  And the men also discover that the cavern is home to something else.  And this is where Curran shines once again in his ability to create a monster that is not only wildly grotesque, but is as scary as any creature we could conjure up in our nightmares.

The level of tension in The Underdwelling is nail biting.  Curran chills our spines from the start of the story with tales of the work in the mine and the accidents, and then he ramps it until our eyes are wide and our hair is sticking straight up when the creature decides it wants to meet its new guests.

Curran does everything right in The Underdwelling from giving us enough background on Boyd to allow us to sympathize with the character, to providing a believable motivation for the creature’s actions, and giving us an ending that will stick in our heads long after the last page is turned.

As with everything Curran releases, The Underdwelling is not to be missed.

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Jan 19, 2012

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