Rom Hardy is an explorer. An Egyptologist by profession, he is nearly always willing to investigate something unusual. When he is contacted by an old friend, a bounty-hunter by the name of Rex McTroy, Rom and his associates soon find themselves in the mountains of New Mexico tracking a savage beast that has been killing with reckless abandon. Tracking shouldn't be too hard since there are bodies everywhere, a sign that the beast is quite active.

A big game hunter has offered up a prize for the capture of the beast and Rom's wealthy patron signs him up. Soon there isn't just the beast to worry about, but a bunch of crazed, prize-hungry hunters with guns to be concerned about as well.

Just as with the previous book in The Institute for Singular Antiquities series, this has the sense of intentionally being the literary equivalent to a "B" movie. High on adventure and action with a stock set of characters and where we probably know what the outcome will be but the journey is half the fun and seeing who, in addition to the main character, will survive to tell the tale. Publisher Angry Robot apparently has the same thought as the book cover artwork also has that B-movie poster look to it (and I can't help but wonder how much that has influenced my reading of the book).

This book moves from that Indiana Jones-style adventure of the first book, into more of the Roger Corman horror flick-style. Still it works, and for those who want something quick and dark (but not too scary) then this is probably what you are looking for.

I miss the more obvious threat of Egyptian mummies (just writing "Egyptian mummies" brings to mind an immediate image of terror). Moving to a 'beast' of unknown likeness means that author S.A. Sidor has to work harder to bring the terror to mind, and in that, he maybe isn't quite as successful. But the action surrounding the hunt and the ending somewhat make up for this.

Looking for a good book? For a quick action/horror read, like watching a 1960's B-movie, check out S.A. Sidor's <em>The Beast of Nightfall Lodge</em>, the second book in The Institute for Singular Antiquities series.

I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher, through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review.

It's 1920, and Evangeline Waterston is visiting Dr. Romulus 'Rom' Hardy at the Waterston Institute for Singular Antiquities. She pushes Rom to tell her what he can remember of the events at Nightfall Lodge. Thus begins our story as Rom recounts the events of thirty years ago when he, Evangeline, Rex McTroy, and Yong Wu agreed to accept Oscar Adderly's challenge to hunt and trap the beast that was killing hunters on his mountain.

Stories within stories, especially when you've just been told what some of the major characters are doing in the book's present time period. It takes away the anxiety for any of the characters when you know who survives and who doesn't. In this case, once the narration starts you, the reader, are a quiet observer of the events which play out much like old-fashioned pulp adventure movie similar to the Indiana Jones movie series only with an ensemble rather than a single hero.

There is a beast that is killing hunters on Adderly's mountain and eating them. No one has seen it. They only know it exists because of what's left of the bodies and it is not just a wild animal. The whole story has a very dark Lovecraftian vibe to it in many ways. Forget what I said about not having to worry about the main characters because this is a retelling of earlier events where we know they survive. What we don't know is the condition of their survival or if surviving was worth it.

There's the beast, were-creatures, a crashed spaceship (maybe), adultery, witchcraft, and enough subliminal touches of myths and legends to make your hair stand on end. This is a very quick read but hard to explain without giving too much away so, I think I've given a taste of the emotional subtext of the story that will get you interested provided you enjoy things that go bump in the night.

First of all, I must give homage to creator Daniel Strange to the cover artwork. After all, that's what drew me to want to read The Beast of Nightfall Lodge.

I came for the art. I stayed for the story.

If Indiana Jones and Clint Eastwood had a love child, it would be this book. With plenty of adventure, horror, and action, this western-horror mashup is gleefully and unabashedly fun.

Rom Hardy is neither Indiana Jones nor Clint Eastwood. In fact, he's more like Indiana's father, but with less excitement. Ok, Rom is boring. Kinda stodgy in fact, but that was part of his charm. He's the sleuther here. The "who-done-it" finder-outer. The rest of his team have their own niche as well. Rex McTroy is the rough and tumble, adrenaline junkie; Dr. Yong Wu, the medical researcher; Evangeline Waterston, the benefactor. Together, they form the Waterston Institute for Singular Antiquities, and they have a mystery to solve.

There's no denying the action and adventure lure of The Beast of Nightfall Lodge. It begins placidly enough with a comfortable setting, some drinks, and Evangeline coaxing Rom to recall what befell them at Nightfall Lodge. From there it quickly escalates into a grand adventure filled with a myriad of colorful characters, suspenseful situations, thrills, chills, and quite a bit of gore splashed throughout. Hurling the characters from one peril to the next, the plot speeds through at a breakneck pace only to be brought plodding down occasionally by Rom's internal monologues.

If you're looking for a new take on pulp adventure, you can't go wrong with S.A. Sidor's The Beast of Nightfall Lodge. I had not read The Fury from the Tomb, which is the first novel of Rom and his crew, but you'd better believe it's on my TBR!

Please note, though not a direct sequel to Fury From The Tomb chronologically The Beast of Nightfall Lodge does occur after the events in that book. Due to that it is possible that what follows may include some minor spoilers.

When Egyptologist Rom Hardy receives a strange letter from his old friend, the bounty-hunting sniper Rex McTroy, he finds himself drawn into a chilling mystery. In the mountains of New Mexico, a bloodthirsty creature is on the loose, leaving a trail of bodies in its wake. Now, a wealthy big game hunter has offered a staggering reward for its capture, and Rom’s patron – the headstrong and brilliant Evangeline Waterston – has signed the team up for the challenge. Awaiting them are blizzards, cold-blooded trappers, remorseless hunters, a mad doctor, wild animals and a monster so fearsome and terrifying, it must be a legend come to life.

The brave souls who make up The Institute for Singular Antiquities have returned with a new adventure. Dr Romulus Hugo Hardy, Rom to his friends, is the brains of the operation. Evangeline Waterston is the Institutes benefactor and occult expert while cowboy Rex McTroy is the action man. Finally, there is Wu the orphaned boy who McTroy took under his wing after the events in Fury From The Tomb. Once again, the plucky group of adventurers are called upon to unravel a potentially supernatural mystery. On a lonely mountain, a fearsome creature is stalking human prey. Is what haunts the woods merely a vicious grizzly bear, or something far more sinister and otherworldly?

Rom remains the very definition of an academic; studious and natural inquisitive. Myths, magic, monsters and history always hold his attention, to the point where he is often entirely oblivious of anything else. Fortunately, when thing go awry (which they often do), Rex McTroy is on hand to protect the good doctor. It would be easy to dismiss McTroy as the archetypal gunslinger, but there is more to him than that. His relationship with Rom has an almost brotherly feel. McTroy gently mocks the doctor regularly in that good-natured way that sibling often do. You get a real sense that the dynamic between the two men, experts in their respective fields, is evolving.

Wu and Evangeline Waterson also return, but sadly they don’t have quite as much to do. The Beast of Nightfall Lodge is very much Rom and, to a lesser degree, Rex’s story. I hope in future Wu and Evangeline get the opportunity to move forward to centre stage and we get to learn more about them both. Even after two books there is still an enigmatic air that surrounds Evangeline and her intentions for the Institute. I’d love to know more about what is going on.

Of the new characters that appear I have to admit Orcus was an immediate favourite.

I’ve been trying to think of what I can best compare The Beast of Nightfall Lodge to and I think the most appropriate response is The Thing by John Carpenter. Think about it, a small group of characters, trapped in an isolated locale, up against a malevolent creature driven to kill. There is also that similar wonderfully dark sense of paranoia and unease that escalates with each passing chapter. Who can be trusted? What is motivating the various people at the lodge. Are all of them exactly who they appear to be?

As with its predecessor, a nod of appreciation must be directed towards the artist Daniel Strange for the wonderfully pulpy cover design. I can well imagine readers are going to be drawn to the novel just by the cover art alone. I know if I spotted the book in a shop or for sale online, I would be curious enough to learn more.

I enjoy the episodic nature of the books in this series. Each are perfectly serviceable as standalone reads but also reference one another just enough to create a sense of continuity. Who knows where Rom Hardy and co will end up next? I look forward to finding out.

What of my musical recommendation then? Well, there is a western vibe to the novel, what with Rex McTroy and all, so Red Dead Redemption’s soundtrack by Bill Elm and Woody Jackson has got just the right sound that dovetails nicely with the story. It has long been my opinion that gunslingers and monsters need more jangly guitars.

The Beast of Nightfall Lodge, Book two of The Institute for Singular Antiquities, is published by Angry Robot Books and is available now.

Outstanding!

This was a terrific and unusual western style adventure and horror story with a touch of fantasy all wrapped up in an "edge of your seat" thrilling story.

The story begins on New Year's Day in 1909 with Egyptologist and historian Rom Hardy telling his associate the lovely Evangeline the story of his fearsome and fateful experience at the Nightfall Lodge which stood on top of a mountain and took place thirty years earlier in the dead of winter around the year 1879.

Up in the mountains roams a beast that has brutally killed seven men in ways that are unnatural to any predatory animal and the owner of Nightfall Lodge is offering a small fortune for the live capture of this elusive and deadly beast.
There will be a total of 9 recruits not including the owner of the lodge, his wife and two grown children who also want to participate in the hunting party competition. Among some of the characters you will find a couple of gunslingers, a medium (possible witch), a bounty hunter, a young Chinese-American cowboy, a mountain man with a pet bear, a blue eyed Indian guide who also happens to be mute and a travelling medicine man whose companion is very young but he calls himself "Billy The Kid" even though the real Billy had been deceased for many years and there is another colorful character named Orcus and a few others who I will let you discover on your own while taking this wonderful reading adventure.

I enjoyed this book tremendously and I hope there will be other Rom Hardy adventures to to be read. This book was so well-written and took me to another time with it's descriptive imagery and wonderful prose. I loved that the book kept me on the edge of my seat and never failed at keeping my interest and curiosity since this was such an unusual and extremely flavorful story.

I want to thank the author SA Sidor, the publisher Angry Robot and Netgally for allowing me the opportunity to read this ARC and I am happily giving my honest and unbiased review of this terrific story.

I highly recommend this wonderful and stylised horror story to any reader who would like to enjoy a rare treat!
I have given this most unusual book 5 Outstanding 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 stars!!

The Beast of Nightfall Lodge is some of the most fun you’ll have this winter. Filled with adventure and danger, murder and mayhem, it’s a wonderful fantasy novel that inches you closer and closer to a monster you grow to fear. I heard great things about Sidor’s first book, Fury From the Tomb, and this second book in the series lives up to that hype.

It’s the writing style that stands out most to me. The book embodies a great action-adventure-meets-detective tale in the vein of Sherlock Holmes and Indiana Jones. The lead character, an Egyptologist who is delightfully proper and stuffy, finds himself in yet another adventure searching for a monster nobody has lived to tell tales of. The timing is perfect, with details emerging at key points to add further pieces to the puzzle. Beyond a search for an epic beast, there are dark forces manifested in foreboding dreams that end up being true and a woman with powers to speak with the dead. It’s all very exciting and gives the book a fun cadence that propels you forward.

Horror is used to great effect. Tales of the beast are gruesome, with descriptors that paint a horrifying picture. This is a monster I wanted to discover. Expect an adventure that takes you to the mysteries of the wilderness and the dark forces lying in wait to devour mankind.

Egyptologist Rom Hardy receives an invitation from a old friend to take part in a hunt in New Mexico. The prey is a strange beast that is haunting Nightfall Lodge, the home of a wealthy hunter and his family. The winner of the hunt will receive a prize of unimaginable value and something an Egyptologist couldn't possible pass up. But Rom and his friend aren't the only invitees and the beast is not the only dangerous creature they will have to face.

The Beast of Nightfall Lodge by SA Sidor is an enjoyable read for the most part. It's an interesting combination of the late 19th c American west and cryptozoology including werecats and a possible Wendigo. Unfortunately it didn't always seem to work at least for me. There were elements of the story that really didn't seem to do much to move the story along and seemed only there as filler. Still, overall, it kept me reading and for anyone who enjoys paranormal tales with supernatural beasts and a legendary outlaw or two, this might be just what you're looking for.

<i>Thanks to Netgalley and Angry Robot for the opportunity to read this book in exchange for an honest review</i>

A roller coaster ride of an adventure story told as the memoirs of one of the "beast hunters". Were cats, a medium, a wendigo and a rag tag band of adventurers populate this paranormal big game hunt set in New Mexico in 1890. There's plenty of terror, action and intrigue, and Sidor weaves together a story that will keep you guessing until the closing pages.
If you're looking for something a little different in your paranormal or historical reading material, a visit to Nightfall Lodge might be just what you're looking for. (

If I was allowed to save just one book from a fire in my apartment, it would be my annotated HP Lovecraft collection. Nothing enthrals me quite like a story about a terrifying monster in some weird and remote location. So when I heard about SA Sidor’s The Beast of Nightfall Lodge, I immediately requested an advanced reader copy, as it’s description promised me exactly that;

When Egyptologist Rom Hardy receives a strange letter from his old friend, the bounty-hunting sniper Rex McTroy, he finds himself drawn into a chilling mystery. In the mountains of New Mexico, a bloodthirsty creature is on the loose, leaving a trail of bodies in its wake.

The eeriness and suspense that I hoped for was intense from the moment the story arrives in New Mexico. Sidor’s descriptions of a desperate and hopeless New Mexican frontier town, coupled with the intense paranoia and worry that have a near constant hold on the protagonist, stoked my own sense of apprehension and concern about what was in store. Furthermore, as the plot develops and Rom’s sanity becomes more questionable with each chapter, it becomes harder to have faith in what you believe is actually happening up on the mountain. Rom himself encapsulates this best;

That is what is so insidious about this whole affair. We stop trusting each other. Everyone hides a monster inside. This is what we come to believe. We are the monsters. It eats away at us.

The combination of supernatural and cryptozoology elements worked well. In hindsight, the book has plenty of clues (and red herrings) as to the nature of the beast. However, with there being so much uncertainty about what is real and what is actually happening, these clues get lost in the fog and snowstorms that subjugate everything. Indeed, it is not knowing what it is that is being hunted (or, rather, what is doing the hunting) that brilliantly cultivates fear and uneasiness throughout. Ultimately, I found the truth behind the monster to be quite satisfying.

SPOILERS

I really enjoyed the book, but there were a couple of elements of the book that irked me to varying degrees. The story is actually recounted by Rom himself, some 30 years after the fact. I thought that it was a strange decision and even once it became clear why Sidor had done this, I still found that it rubbed me the wrong way. The ‘revivication’ arc of the story also didn’t work for me. Even in a book featuring demons, séances, and people transforming into animals, a severed head covered in green, life-giving ooze felt ridiculous. Even the story behind its origin failed.
END SPOILERS

Despite these issues, The Beast of Nightfall Lodge was great fun to read. For those of you who enjoy mystery, fear, and monsters, grab a copy and head off into the wilderness. You’ll have a great time.

Egyptologist Rom Hardy finds himself on the hunt for a bloodthirsty creature in the mountains of New Mexico in this fun monster hunter title. The sequel to Fury of the Tomb clips along at a fair pace and plays out like a darker Scooby Doo adventure, full of plot twists and turns and a dose of native American mythology. With likable characters and an early 20th century setting this is a fun, if disposable, fare in the vein of pulp adventure stories.

Like the first book, this is Rom retelling events that had happened years prior. In this adventure, Rom receives a letter from McTroy and finds himself thrust into a mystery of a blood thirsty creature that's prowling through the mountains of New Mexico. A big game hunter who lives on the mountains has promised a huge reward for whoever can capture the beast, so of course headstrong Evangeline has signed the gang up. What follows is a wild adventure through the snow fighting everything from mad doctors to wild animals and a monster so terrifying it's not of this world.

I was a bit hesitant to jump into this after not really loving the first, but I was pleasantly surprised by it. I definitely found it faster than FFtT, but it still had its moments where it dragged a bit. Again, no one thinks twice about the supernatural elements, which I just find strange. I did think some of the new characters were interesting, especially the twins, but my favorite was Orcus the talking dog. I thought he was adorable. Some of the plot points were a little predictable, especially in regards to the twins. The ending was very sad, but I liked it. It had everything come full circle. Even though I didn't fully love it, I did think this one was better than the first.

I'm not sure if maybe I just went into these books with higher expectations but I was expecting a rough and tough charming leader like Indiana Jones, but that just wasn't the case. Rom has his moments, but for the most part, he's just so boring. I'm not sure if seeing things from a third POV rather than Rom's would've made the stories any better, but it probably would've quickened things up a bit. I found both books to be very pulpy and very much those typical action adventure books you would find during the late 1800s-early 1900s, so they nailed it on that respect, but they just weren't for me.

This book was a really fun read. Sort of a "B-Movie" type of book. It seems well aware of it's silliness, so that keeps it out of the "so bad it's good" category, but it definitely playfully toes the line. I wouldn't recommend it for anyone looking for a serious read, but if you're looking for an adventure complete with monsters, cowboys, telepathy, and outlandish characters, then you couldn't do much better than this one.

I have to admit that the cover and the fabulous blurb made me eager to read this book. Alas, I did not love the book as much as I had hoped I would do. I loved the idea of the book, about a monster terrorizing and killing people in the mountains of New Mexico and the prologue that takes place 30 years late really piqued my interested. However, I kind of struggled with the book. Partly it was interesting and partly very slow to get through. It did end on a high note. Fabulous albeit sad ending I must say.

4 stars

Romulus “Rom” Hardy is the chief investigator for an institute run by Evangeline Waterston. He calls his enterprise the Institute for Singular Antiquities. It soon morphed into the Waterston Institute for Singular Antiquities. They also have a friend and fellow adventurer named Dr. Yong Wu. He is also their researcher. They are assisted by a bounty-hunting sniper called Rex McTroy.

Rom and Evangeline are discussing the adventure they had with “the beast” some thirty years earlier. And so our story begins. Rom begins to recall what happened during that fateful adventure in New Mexico.

Oscar and Vivienne Adderly invite Evangeline, McTroy and Rom to New Mexico to hunt a beast of unknown type that is killing hunters in the area. Yong Wu tags along. Vivienne is a medium and channels one of the killed hunters. He tells a chilling story. The odd thing is that not only can Vivienne apparently see the hunter, but Rom can as well. He is mesmerized and almost fails to escape the fire that engulfs the saloon shortly after the presentation. Also there are eerie sounds accompanying the séance.

The hunt begins when all of the principals gather. Death and destruction follows on their heels. What seems real may not be…

This is a well written and plotted novel. It is filled with interesting and unusual characters – each unique in their own way: some are arrogant, some are stupid and some are unbelievable. I liked Rom and his friends, but the rest of them…mmm…not so much. The story was interesting, action-filled and adventurous and I enjoyed it very much. I immediately went to Amazon and put SA Sidor’s first book on my “wish” list.

I want to thank NetGalley and Angry Robot for forwarding to me a copy of this unusual book for me to read, enjoy and review.