Just because the Shotguns & Sorcery Kickstarter sucked up nearly all my attention last week doesn’t mean that everyone else in the world stopped reading. Many of those folks even read Carpathia and were kind enough to say several nice things about it.
At the San Francisco & Sacramento Book Review, David Marshall gushes over the book.
This is a beautifully constructed horror novel with the tension ratcheting up inexorably as night falls on the Atlantic. A good word to describe it is relentless. You may not learn a great deal about true history, but the vampires, like the Titanic, are first class.
At Warpcore SF, Ros Jackson loved the book.
It’s not a relentless disaster orgy of fangs, blood, and people leaping to their deaths or drowning in icy water. It’s much more civilised, yet during the quieter passages I was on tenterhooks just as much as I was when the stakes came out… However at heart this is a thrilling disaster story and bite carnival, with vampires that sizzle like sausages at the touch of a cross but keep coming back, and it’s never too serious for its own good.
On his blog, Tony Lane gives the book high praise.
[T]his could well be Matt’s best work to date, and it certainly has the chance to capture the imagination of a wide audience. It is easy to read, has violence and bloodshed that is vital to the story and not just to shock, and most importantly in my eyes it is a very hard book to put down. I loved it start to finish.
Karen Conlin (formerly Karen Boomgaarden of TSR fame) heaps compliments on the book on Amazon.
For sheer creativity and excitement, this book deserves five stars… The pace picks up steam until it hits that breakneck speed at which if you can put the book down, I’ll say there’s something wrong with you… With just enough levity to break the tension, and tension crafted from word choice, dialog, mood, and more, Carpathia should be at the top of any horror aficionado’s “to read” list.
At Goodreads, Chris Bauer (who won an ARC of the book from me through the Crossing the Streams contest), wrote many kind things:
In the spirit of “taking your protagonists from the frying pan into the fire,” Forbeck does a fantastic job of creating tension and drama with subtle overtones, rather than ANY bludgeoning “shock-gore” scenes. It’s obvious significant research went into this work, and the attention to the little details really pays off… [H]is undead are classic apex predators based on Stoker’s Dracula and were strangely refreshing to read about.
Finally, Upstart Projects gives the book a sharp rave too.
Carpathia is cinematic in its scope… It has an intriguing premise, great characters, and is plain well-written. If you’re looking to satiate your bloodlust for vampires,Carpathia is a good diversion from the recent crop that harkens back to the monster’s pop culture roots.
