Title: The Enochian Wars: Armageddon Unleashed
Publisher: Caliburn Press
Author: Frank Julius Palumbo
Pages: 284 pp
Price: $10.00/$2.99

If you are looking for a fast-moving, action-oriented horror novel, then I would highly recommend Frank Julius Palumbo’s The Enochian Wars: Armageddon Unleashed. And, yes, it does exactly what it says on the can:

Armageddon? Check.
Unleashed? You better believe it.
Enochian? In spades, baby.

Here’s how cop-hero, Jack Savage explains it: “I practice Enochian magic, invoking angels for specific, benevolent purposes.” — “Enochian Magic? Like Enoch from the Bible?” So, we have got a hero who is literally on the side of the angels, but grounded in New York City gritty reality.

Wars? Well, we get the first skirmish, the setting up of an alien beach head pretty much all over the Earth. And just because it rates as a skirmish, don’t think you are going to miss out on the action.

An electro-magnetic pulse destroys most of the modern structure of human civilisation. And with that — settles the ultimate darkness. The darkness comes from within and without, above and below.

Sewer-crawling give you the heebie-jeebies? Check.
Tough cop action? Check and double-check.
Gargoyle-like demons, winged and deadly, and looking for human blood and human flesh — pop! It’s, like, the worst ever ugly combo of werewolf and vampire, with ugly thrown in as a side, starter, main course, and dessert. And they are U G L Y — ugly of mind, spirit, and intentions. But these are just the foot-soldiers of the invasion.
There are overtones of Cthulhoid cosmic nastiness with promise of more to come.

The narrative pursues several viewpoints, switching from scene to scene and ramping up the tension. The Enochian elements come into play in the final showdown, where our cop-hero owns up to his inner gnosis and fights back on a physical and ‘mental’ level. I put the word ‘mental’ in quotes because: is it really a spiritual fight, an astral fisticuffs, an angelic smack-down?

Is there a downside? Yes, ‘fraid so. It’s too short.

My sanity hasn’t been blasted to absolute smithereens — not yet.
So, Mr Palumbo, get writing and dreaming up more dark nightmares for your hero and your readers to share — and shudder (and, maybe, retch).

[T J O’Hare is the author of Amnesiak: Blood Divinity (Spero Publishing).]