[This essay was originally posted on February 12, 2011.]

You know a novel is going to be bad when the main endorsement on the jacket comes from the movie producer who is trying to turn the pulp horror story into a film. It’s the literary equivalent of saying “Well, my mom thinks I’m handsome.” All the same, I just couldn’t resist picking up James Robert Smith’s The Flock.

What drew me to Smith’s debut novel was his choice of antagonist. Instead of yet another bloodthirsty fish from depths unknown or a genetic experiment gone awry, he settled on Titanis walleri, one of the great ‘terror birds’ from the recent