There was a hint of Jack Ketchum's Off Season about this inbred cannibal tale set among a backdrop of isolation and ignorance. Not only is there stomach churning gore and nightmare inducing feeding scenes but there's also a deranged and disturbing form of copulation and an omnipresent threat of dread throughout; some of the hallmarks of Ketchum's similarly-themed book.
I'm a big fan of Guy N Smith's horror (Accursed is one of my favorites) and this book did not disappoint. The tension was intense, the characters developed just enough to care about(only just - but that's okay given most end up as dismembered meat set to boil), and the setting and plot equally well defined and written.
The sheer ignorance of the small town community which, for hundreds of years harbored the deformed inbred populace is at once frustrating to read and a brilliant plot device (you really want the cannibals to eat each and every one of them). When some of those townsfolk meat (get it?) their end, the result is nothing short of satisfying.
The stars of the show, those crudely malformed and murderous mountain dwelling cannibals, are truly menacing. Everything about them screams scary; the way they look (the cover to this edition is 100% accurate), their limited forms of communication and intelligence, to their hunter-gatherer nature; it's a brutal and efficient storytelling technique to scare the living daylight out of the reader.
Cannibals is one of the best horror novels I've read - I only wish Guy N Smith wrote more!
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