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RE: Horror Review: Inhuman by John Russo (1986, Pocket Books)
I would concur with the review, it's been a long time but It pretty much lines up with what I remember.
Despite what the cover might have you believe, there isn't a single scaly-skinned humanoid to be found across Inhuman's 220 pages.
The funny thing is the cover and blurbs on the back made me pick it up, that and John Russo wrote it. Then to be soooooo disappointing.
If I remember right, It was half the book just getting to the actual freaky stuff, which wasn't that good then. It was almost like he was going to write a large novel and got pressed for time and publisher deadlines...
I know what you mean, @coinsandchains. I mean, I'll give credit where credit is due: Lisa Falkenstein paints a kick-ass cover, and the blurb on the back is perfect. But you start it and it's just pages, and pages, and pages of back-story and character development for characters that don't need it.
Russo spends two chapters explaining the relationship between a husband-and-wife couple heading to the marriage encounter, but this doesn't endear the reader to them in the slightest, and it's all a wasted infodump because in a matter of a page and a half, both of them get killed and their killer then commits suicide by driving their car off a hill.
That was two chapters Russo could have devoted to something else, but yeah, it seems like he either over-promised on his deadline, or severely underestimated the page count his publisher was looking for and didn't have time to re-write or edit it down. In fact, the more I think about it, the more I feel this has to be the case. Russo's a far better author than Inhuman would have the reader believe. :)