The Preserve
Patrick Lestewka
Necro Publishing
scribbled by LM Campbell
Five surviving members of a long-disbanded group of black/special operations unit are reunited after 20 years. All have received an unusual letter requesting their presence in Toronto, Canada. Their host, one Anton Grosevoir, is the ideal of imperfection; this simulacrum of misshapen humanity is a dwarfish imp with peculiar physical abnormalities making him repellent, yet engrossing to observe. Grosevoir has a job that needs to be done discreetly and without mercy; he wants the reformed unit to hunt down and kill a group of prison escapees. It is under this assumed pretence that group-leader Odysseus and the former members of his crew leave for the barrenness of Canada’s northern wilderness. The men are now in their 40’s and seem ill-prepared to capture a group of desperate escapees, let alone stave off the real reason they have been paid to trek through the sub-arctic climate.
In The Preserve Lestewka unleashes a barrage of carnage perpetrated by all manifestations of evil that dwell within The Preserve. Can the aged soldiers repel the cold as well as the nefarious inhabitants of the frigid climes? It is indisputable that Lestewka is a pupil of the Edward Lee school of deep-red, hard-core ill-literature; he uncovers new, innovative ways to savage the human body and is a welcome addition to the extreme horror-fiction cabal. The potential and talent of this young Canadian writer is unmistakable, but The Preserve is not as taut as his previous work, Confessions Of The Archivist; The Preserve’s text is not as concise or as horrifyingly iniquitous as his previous, more savage tale of torture and death. However, on its own Lestewka’s first novel still out-horrors most of the detritus you will find published in mass-market paperback.
I look forward to reading more of his work in the future…
