Easily 150 pages longer than it should have been. This book is called Devour, so most of the time, the focus should be on the monster...that's trying to...devour.

Instead, we get endless pages of set-up and narration of an illegal (and frankly, stupid) card game and its two players. We get to know far too many characters, including the unlikable Frankie, who set up the stupid card game, the ship's captain, the bartender, the other, smaller ship's captain, the waitress, the unloved little adopted girl... we get to know all their innermost—and mostly banal—thoughts, hopes, dreams, and their past. We also get to watch virtually every single one of them make the stupidest decisions possible. I can't even go into them all here, because it's simply not worth it, but trust me, you'll understand if you're unlucky enough to read this book.

We're also treated to some incredibly awful thoughts from the attacking creature as well.

In between, we get the odd, reasonably well written scenes of monster attacks.

This is obviously a book by an author more interested in writing a high stakes character driven novel about mostly unlikable people either directly or indirectly involved in a card game, then bolted on a Jaws-like plot to up the stakes.

Along the way, it's also obvious he doesn't know how to ultimately have his hero defeat the big bad, so he basically relies on luck and limps it to the end.

Not the worst I've read, but not even close to the best. ( )

Giant prehistoric sea monster wakes and goes on a rampage! In other words, delicious popcorn for me!

By the standards of most creature feature books, this one is quite well written with sketched out characters and a secondary story. The author weaves in a lot of Jaws tropes and adds in some Titanic moments to construct a very entertaining read. ( )

** I received a copy of this book for free through a Goodreads giveaway. **

Fun mash-up of thriller and giant monster genres. You don't 'see' much of the monster but this just makes the monster more monstrous and scary. The suspense built slowly throughout the book but the story never dragged so the build-up worked. I would have liked to see more from the monster's point of view and more description of the monster but the human characters were very well-drawn and the book was a fun and energizing read! ( )

I gave this book 3 stars because the writing is good. The problem is the story is boring. This could have been either non stop death, or funny crazy situations with people being killed. Instead there was way to much filler around many of the characters, and I found myself asking who cares too many times. It started off well, but dropped off from there and was just too long. ( )

Devour by Kurt Anderson is a highly recommended thriller/horror novel set on the ocean, off the coast of Massachusetts.

The novel follows several embedded story lines. Brian Hawkins is a fishing boat captain who responds to a distress call from a research ship. He manages to save the last survivor, but he also sees what they are up against and knows his ship is doomed. A primordial sea monster has awakened beneath the ice in the Arctic Circle and is starting to feed as it heads south following the current. When it discovers tasty morsels can be found on boats, it begins attacking boats and eating the crews. In the meantime, a casino cruise ship is setting out beyond territorial limits to facilitate a secret high stakes poker game and hide a secret cargo, while the rest of the unknowing guests partake of the normal games of chance.

The monster is the hook, but the novel spends a lot of time setting up the characters on the boats. Brian is a compelling, credible character. The majority of the people introduced on the cruise ship are untrustworthy and unsavory characters, with very few exceptions. Frankie Moore, who is facilitating the high stakes game and trying to keep an eye on the men in the private security details of the two players involved, is an interesting character, but not likeable. It's not that the cruise ship portion of the plot is dull, it's just that, well, you're going to want more sea monster action because that's what you are expecting, but the bulk of the novel focuses on the various cruise ship characters. This makes the novel more of a thriller than horror novel.

Devour will hold your attention and is a satisfying debut novel for Anderson. I was going along with the direction the author chose to take for Devour, until an incident that happens a little past the half-way mark that stretched my credulity a wee-bit too much. The novel manages to recover from this event. It certainly would be a great land-based vacation read and meets all the requirements of a stuck-overnight-at-the-airport book.

Disclosure: My Kindle edition was courtesy of Pinnacle for review purposes.

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