Book Review: Teeth Of The Sea by Tim Waggoner

They glide through dark waters, sleek and silent as death itself. Ancient predators with only two desires – to feed and reproduce. They’ve traveled to the resort island of Las Dagas to do both, and the guests make tempting meals. The humans are on land, though, out of reach. But the resort’s main feature is an intricate canal system . . .

. . . and it’s starting to rain. 

My Review: 
A perfect resort is built on an isolated island, linked by a series of canals that stretch through it and home to a luxury resort for rich people looking to get away from it all. Echo, the famous pop star is shooting footage there for her social media accounts with boyfriend and wannabe action star Shayne. Rich kids are enjoying a vacation and messing around beside the water. None of them know that a family of anceient beasts long thought to be extinct are staking a claim in the area, the island where the adults themselves were born and where their offspring manage to get into the canal system ready to feast on the unwary while their parents stalk the many pleasure boats just off shore...

When the monsters start to attack people, the resort manager hopes to keep it quiet and deal with the problem but video of the attacks is about to leak online. Now Lara and her scientist father arrive at the island, searching for the beasts similar to the one that killed her mother years ago. Joel's team of cryptid hunters are also there looking for their biggest break after chasing countless dead end stories and legends. But this is no shark, confined only to the water. They are beasts that can come out of the canal like deadly crocodiles in search of food and with the storm coming in, the water levels are rising and threatening to flood the streets of the resort. 

This is one of the best horror creature features that I've read this year. The action is non stop throughout the book, starting with the attacks on the guests-the death of faceless people doing dumb stuff is always a lot of fun for me! It's an 'ooh there's a deadly beast killing guests that go into the canal so let's lie on the bank and stick our heads in the water for a giggle like the idiots we are!' sort of thing. There is the hunt on boats in the canal system where the teams have no clue exactly what kind of danger they are in, the boats off the island being attacked by things from their worst nightmare and it all comes to a very dramatic showdown at the end as the resort begins to flood. It keeps the reader interested the whole time, and the body count was high enough which is why I enjoyed it so much!

My favourite character in the book was Tomas, the kickass get it done kind of guy who is head of security for the resort and in charge of hunting down the beasts. I also liked the Cryptid chasing team that work for The Hidden World tv show, who are tired of dead end stories and happy to be actually trying to find real monsters for a change. Joel, Ricky, Pam and Owen have no idea just how deadly the hunt is going to turn. Then there is the obsessed scientist and his daughter, looking for confirmation of the creatures and a bit of revenge, while nursing a grudge against the Cryptid team leader. We also get the viewpoints from the monsters themselves which divides opinions in the reviews but it gives an insight into the behaviour of this family group and how feeding on each other will come before any kind of family bond if the food gets scarce. I found it quite interesting. 

I also enjoyed the setting. I'm always a fan of the isolated island with deadly monsters kind of thing and this was one of the better ones. At first you're safe if you stay away from the water as security tells you to do but as the inevitable storm moves in, the rain starts to unleash on the resort and flooded streets prove to be the perfect environment for the creatures to start hunting those that were hunting them. I always like the storm causing things to go really wrong element in these books too. I think this plot might put you off this kind of holiday resort though! Don't get too attached to the characters as you never know what is coming next for each of them.

I had read and abandoned Necropolis by the author and hadn't enjoyed it at all but I can never resist a good sea monster horror offering which is why I tried it. I'm glad that I did and would certainly look at similar books by Waggoner in the future if he has other straightforward non weird creature features to enjoy. He just got on with the story with little fuss and just enough description to tell the reader what they needed to know. The attack scenes were tense and exciting, and there was enough gory death to make most people happy. This is very much the kind of film I'd like to see on the SF channel with mindless death filled entertainment and most fans of this kind of thing with dinosaur sea monsters should enjoy the book.

Read June 2018.
5 stars.