Taking place 13 years after the events of GRIMM MEMORIALS, R. Patrick Gates’ GRIMM REAPINGS sequel again finds the Nailer family at the mercy of Eleanor Grimm. The witch tried to attain eternal life by sacrificing the lives of the Nailer family, but they killed her. Unfortunately, her soul awakens when the baby Steve – born at the end of MEMORIALS – hits puberty. ‘Tis a ripe time for possession.

Bad memories of the past already are stirred up with a network TV special on Eleanor’s grisly crimes. Mom Diane shelters Steve from the truth, as well as the outside world, resulting in gender identity issues with the young boy. Son Jackie is in college and has a Goth girlfriend named Chalice. And daughter Jen is happily married to Jeremy, and they’ve bought the old Grimm funeral home – the site of so many child sacrifices, almost including their own – and are renovating it into a charming bed and breakfast.

Wait, say what?!? If you and members of your immediate family bore witness to unspeakable crimes of horror and perversion in a house, the absolute last thing you’d want to do is buy that house and live in it. That’s entirely unrealistic – even with the proper amount of suspension of disbelief for this type of novel in place – and Gates’ story is built upon accepting the unacceptable. I’m sorry, but I just couldn’t buy off on that premise, so it’s hard to take REAPINGS seriously. Besides, there are plenty of other factors to keep you from doing so – namely, other incredible gaps of logic. Who makes 24 different menu items for a Thanksgiving dinner for eight? Who makes enough money doing minimum-wage jobs over one week of Christmas break to pay for college? Who talks like this?

Most annoying, Chalice slips in and out of saying “ya” instead of “you,” but it seems to be entirely arbitrary. Gates also needs to learn the difference between “affect” and “effect.” And would it have killed him to take a minute to look up the correct spellings of Ozzy Osbourne and PUNK’D?

Yet despite all this, I have to recommend GRIMM REAPINGS to horror fans, because what Gates lacks in believability and proofreading, he makes up for in crafting outlandish scenarios of the grotesque that at least shock when they fail to scare. After all, this is a novel that finds ways to involve man-on-turkey copulation, a killer Power Ranger and, well, this: “The pain in his ass was awful but not nearly as bad as the pain of humiliation he felt at being gang-raped by a faggot munchkin motorcycle gang.”

The nursery-rhyme motif that permeated MEMORIALS is jettisoned, but REAPINGS neither misses nor needs it, chock full of its predecessor’s penchant for deviant sex, whacked-out hallucinations and an over-the-top atmosphere that mitigates much – but not all – of its shortcomings. –Rod Lott

BONUS XXX-CERPT: “Twisting on the sheets, Steve rode Spongebob between his legs, grinding his groin into the soft, yielding, plush toy. In the Land of Nod Steve looked down to realize he was riding the giant dog naked. The fur rubbing against his privates was giving him the most incredible sensation he’d ever had. The rubbing of the fur against the naked flesh, the rhythmic movement of the powerful dog beneath him, between his legs, was making Mr. Johnson stand at attention. He dug his heels into the great beast’s sides, stabbing his erection harder and harder into the animal’s furred back. The dream-canine leaped into the air at the same moment that Little Steve’s first orgasm leaped from his erection.”

Buy it at Amazon.