INTO THE CRUEL SEA REVIEW

Rich Ristow’s new novelette, Into The Cruel Sea, is about a young woman named Beth who is dealing with several issues.  She has an abusive father, a checked-out mother and a boyfriend Wade, who recently killed his parents before walking into the sea and disappearing.  Wade was always obsessed with the water, even claiming fish spoke to him.  By brutally slaying his parents, he was transformed into something as much fish as man.  He now wants Beth to join him by repeating the ritual.

The novelette is a quick read at only 55 pages, but Rich manages to create interesting, believable characters along with a nice eerie story with great economy of words.  It is set in Bermuda in the early 1980’s and contains several pictures throughout that help set the mood.  There is one picture of an actual (although creepy looking) fish underwater that seemed extra evocative in correspondence with the story at hand.

In 2007, Rich Ristow won a Rhysling Award for Best Short Poem from The Science Fiction Poetry Association.  Into The Cruel Sea is his first published work of horror fiction.  Hopefully more will soon follow.    

You can purchase a copy of Into The Cruel Sea over at:

 http://www.skullvines.com/main/page_bookstore.html