So the first one, "Mother's Day," picks up right after the ninth "Friday" film, "Jason Goes to Hell."
Good news: Jason's been dragged down to Hell. Bad news: His mask didn't make it all the way with him.
So a hunter's dog digs up the mask, the hunter puts it on, and boom- he's possessed and running around and mayhem ensues.
I'm pleased to report that it's creepy and intense. There are giant slimy white worms crawling all over the place,2 setting the stage for the second book's leeches and the fourth book's bats. Everything and everyone in Camp Crystal Lake is trying to kill you.
I'm displeased to report that the teens are all generic dominoes. And there are way too many fake-out jump-scares and the book pulls its punches until the final act, when things get mucho messy.
The third book in the series, "The Carnival," is pretty great. It expands on Crystal Lake's mythos, establishing that even short-term exposure to the town's air can turn people bad. Everything that was great and ominous about "Jason's Curse" is greater and ominouser here.
So the core story is: a carnival comes to town and a carny finds Jason's mask and off he goes with the possession and the mayhem.
That would have been enough, but we've also got the entire carnival getting possessed by the town's evil! The horses on the carousel start biting people. Things in the fun house come to life and attack.3 The rides collapse or go so fast, they fall apart. The front gate gets locked and the carnival burns down as its enclosed electric fence cooks anyone who climbs it to escape. It's a cavalcade of horror that will leave you exclaiming "HOW did this make it into a book aimed at kids?!?"
"Jason's Curse" remains the only book in this series where everyone dies. But these other books are more than grim enough. If you're the type of person who cares enough to track these books down, you will not be disappointed.
* * *
1. Technically, there's a fifth one and I read it, too. But that's such a tangled web, I'll probably write a whole new blog on it someday.
2. The worms bite folks here and there, but the only time they do serious damage is when they eat a guy's legs down to the bones...but then that ends up being only a dream. Watch out for the spoiler in the previous sentence.
3. Bonus: in this scene, the mechanical vampire bats come to life, Pinocchio-style, then fly off to the darkness, thus explaining their presence in the next book, "Road Trip." I deeply apologize for complaining about those bats in in my uninformed review of that book. Author Eric Morse, if you're reading this- my bad!
-Phony McFakename
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