Terminal by Michaelbrent Collings Review

"If you leave, you die!"

Terminal by Michaelbrent Collings

Released April 24, 2019

Dark Fiction  |  Goodreads | Amazon 

Source: Received for Review Consideration

All passengers, please prepare for departure…

An employee, a cop, and five prisoners; a prisoner, a stowaway, and a madman.

These are the people waiting at the Lawton bus terminal. Mostly late-night travelers who want nothing more than to get to their destinations, and employees who want nothing more than to get through the graveyard shift.

But when a strange, otherworldly fog rolls in, the night changes to nightmare. Because something hides in the fog. Something powerful. Something strange. Something... inhuman.

Soon, those in the terminal have been cut off from the rest of the world. No phones, no computers. Just ten strangers in the terminal... and The Other.

The Other is the force in the mist. The Other is the thing that has captured them. And The Other wants to play a game. 

The rules are simple:

1) The people in the terminal must choose a single person from among them. That person will live. The rest will die.
2) Anyone who attempts to leave the terminal before the final vote will die.
3) The final vote... must be unanimous.

A nightmare. And getting worse, because the best way to make a vote unanimous... is to kill the other voters.

Welcome to the end of the line. Welcome to the Terminal. 

My 2 Cents For Free!

I’ve read a few books by author Michaelbrent Collings and they have all been solid horror stories as well as excellent character studies and as reader who loves a good character driven story, I really appreciate the deep dive into their psyches. I like knowing what makes people tick because I am nosy and also because so many authors don’t do it. They allow the action to take over the entire show and that’s when they usually lose me. If you’re the same type of reader, you should check out this guy’s work.

Several people awaiting a bus find themselves trapped within the bus terminal when a creepy fog rolls in. The fog brings with it death and dire warnings “if you leave, you die” and they soon realize via a text message that they’re all trapped inside of some sort of sadistic game, trick, or alien invasion and that only one of them will survive. If they don’t choose a survivor within the specified time frame they’re all going to die!

So guess what happens when you put a gang member, a junkie, a lazy good-for-nothing jerky security officer, a drug dealer, a Mary Kay pusher and a few decent people (with secrets – yes, that is my catnip and there are plenty of them here) under intense pressure like this? TERRIBLE THINGS, bloody things, messy and gory things, heehee! The intense situation brings out the best and the worst in these people and it expertly shows all of the intricate facets that make them both awful and human. And, also, what the heck is out there lurking in the fog?!

Terminal is a weird, sinister story that kept me guessing and, even though I’ve read probably too many horror stories for most sane people, I did not figure out that ending and I appreciated that. There were plenty of clues but I apparently missed them all until the reveal and then I was all “ahh, you dummy it was all there right in front of you!” I’d recommend it to anyone who enjoys getting to know a cast of characters and watching them get picked off in terrible ways, one by one!

Thanks to author Michaelbrent Collings for providing me with a review copy. As always, this never factors in to my review. If it was stinky I'd tell you but lucky for me it wasn't!

4 1/2 out of 5