Circus of Blood by James R. Tuck

JTuck-Circus of Blood

JTuck-Circus of BloodHere we go again, a novella in James R. Tuck’s Deacon Chalk, Occult Bounty Hunter series that has done nothing but amp me up for his next novel that is not coming out soon enough, if you ask me. Sigh. But, if you like a good tease, then by all means you must check out Circus of Blood. It’s a split second, joy ride of monster ass kicking fun.

Anticipating the worst keeps Deacon Chalk a step ahead. But he never expected that a badly-beaten were-bat female victim would suddenly mutate and almost take him out. Or that the freak undead that infected her can’t wait to turn all lycanthropes into uncontrollable killing machines…once he’s gone. And that day is getting awfully close. Deacon may be outnumbered, out-gunned, and cut off from help, but what the enemy doesn’t know is that’s exactly when the world’s best bounty hunter lives up to his billing…

I know the synopsis says “a badly-beaten were-bat female victim”, but that does not do what happened to that poor girl justice. She is severely hurt and is hanging on by a thread, people. You don’t even know who she is, but when you learn all that was done to her, you want to cry, or at least I did. When Deacon locates the ones who hurt her, things get all hella crazy -hella is term, trust me-. I’m not just talking about his rage over what was done; I’m also talking about the bad guys! Dear all things holy, these people are freaky scary! Once again, I’m sitting here wishing I could tell you what they are but I can’t, it will kill the suspense. I can say that they are far more twisted than any bad guy we have seen so far. Anyway, the fight scene between Deacon and these guys was INSANE. I literally couldn’t sit still; my Kindle and I paced around the house until the fight was over. Then I collapsed onto the couch to finish the novella, which sadly didn’t take long at all.

And that is why I don’t particularly like novellas; they are never long enough. I like a good tease but this is just evil torment in my opinion, LOL. Though, to be honest Mr. Tuck’s novels do this to you, too. His pacing is rather quick, but it’s not so fast that you don’t know what is happening or you never catch up. Things are just so intense from the first page that you speed through hoping to come out the other side in one piece. In this series though, you can’t expect happy endings. You expect the worst, and he gives you far beyond your worst dreams. But I digress.

Out of all of Mr. Tuck’s novellas I wish this one had been a full novel. I wanted to know more about the were-bat, but we didn’t get to. I wanted, though they scared me to death, more scenes with the bad guys. Good gravy the things they could have been capable of! Oh dear me. Plus there wasn’t near enough of Tucks descriptive writing and his crass humor. Circus of Blood left me wanting so much more and disappointed that I didn’t get it. BUT that is a good thing, because clearly Tuck did his job right yet again.

Circus of Blood, is exciting, dark and twisted. It’s everything that one can expect from this series. My love/hate relationship with novella’s aside, this story was incredible. I couldn’t read it fast enough and I could not put it down. Now, I’m left in agony waiting on the next novel to devour. Oh the pain of being a bookworm.

Read Order for the Deacon Chalk: Occult Bounty Hunter series
That Thing At the Zoo (a $.99 read!)
Blood and Bullets
Spider’s Lullaby (a $1.99 read!)
Blood and Silver
Circus of Blood (a $1.99 read!)
Blood and Magick

About Nikki R 120 Articles
SAHM of 2, happily married bookworm, blogger and aspiring author. If I could read/write all day, every day, I would. Luckily I have a very understanding, and patient, husband who lets me get away with it as much as possible. Now if only the kids would understand my obsession, and the house would clean itself, then I'd be all set.