Hosts by Dylan J. Morgan

ISBN: 1934069

One snowy night Lauren Kemper, the only doctor in a small ski town, is called out to a building leased by a team of scientists doing research in the frozen hills. What she finds there is one of the scientists, sick, collapsed with her stomach bulging and squirming as if she was pregnant. But not ten minutes ago Marianne was in good health, with a stomach as flat as a board. It’s what Lauren finds inside, what Marianne’s corpse gives birth to in Lauren’s clinic and what escapes to terrorize a small ski town, that sets off this horror story.

Hosts reminds me a lot of Dean Koontz’s Phantoms, boiled down to all the action. It lands more on the mainstream side of horror, that with wide reader appeal, than with the more esoteric books available. The characters are developed enough, but remain typical, ordinary people. The danger is threatening enough to maintain suspense without losing readers with fuzzy logic, or horrendously bad science. It’s also not a completely insurmountable danger, so as not to drown readers in hopelessness and fear.

Hosts is a solid, if not short, and enjoyable read that’s probably best for readers who enjoy books by King and Koontz rather than Edward Lee. It’s a great time killer with few overt problems. A stronger touch from an editor could have helped some to strengthen the story itself, but rather than making a dismal book good it would have only made a good book better.