I hate doubling up books in reviews and I've only done it once before, but it seems like the correct approach in this instance, for a few reasons. One is that 'The Slime Beast' and 'Spawn of the Slime Beast' constitute a duology, even though they were first published a long time apart, the former early in Guy N. Smith's career in 1976, only his third novel for adults, and the latter almost at the other end of it, in 2015. Another is that they've just been brought back into print almost together in delightful new editions from Black Hill Books, with consistent layout and choice of artists.

And, while every such edition thus far has featured a new foreword, which is a large part of what I tend to talk about in my reviews, the latter omits that. Fortunately, the foreword for the former kind of covers both of them, even though it was never technically intended to do so. The reason I know that is because I wrote it, after Tara at Black Hill Books kindly asked me to give it a shot. I'm not going to review what I wrote, other than to rail at how I slipped up by not catching a duplicate word before sending it in, so you'll have to buy a copy to read that foreword.

I will say that I called it 'Welcome to the British Countryside' because Smith lived there, wrote the vast majority of his books there and set almost as many there too. 'The Slime Beast' is almost the epitome of that because, if you take the sci-fi/horror component out, which is of course the titular monster, you have a relatively calm but insightful look at life in the British countryside. Restore it and you have something very different and that's something that you can apply to a good deal of Smith's horror novels, if not quite so overtly as here. I also grew up in the British countryside and novels like this make me miss it all the more. Sure, life in the big city has its perks but it's not the same.

So, instead of talking about the forewords, I'll talk about the art, which is stellar. I must say that I prefer the cover art on 'The Slime Beast' to the sequel, because it's up front and in our faces, with a glorious backdrop of rushing colour. However, we only see the monster of the title threaten. The cover of 'Spawn of the Slime Beast' pulls back so we can see more of him, but it also showcases his most recent kill, an almost hidden bloody skull discarded in the mud and a heart squelching in his hand. It's a much darker cover, both literally and metaphorically, but the red of his eyes and that blood pulls us into it.

The artist is Mike McGee, who had done such good work on the Black Hill Books reprint editions of 'The Werewolf Trilogy' and the unrelated except for subgenre, 'Night of the Werewolf'. Those are wonderful covers, especially 'Werewolf by Moonlight' which cleverly puts Smith himself to use as a template for the title character. However, I think I adore his cover for 'The Slime Beast' still more. It's more cartoonish, very much a comic book style cover, but it's such a glorious character design, part Vogon, part Hellboy foe, that it's hard not to root for the monster. The dripping slime in the background is just icing on the cake.

I don't know if McGee was responsible for the text on the cover too. He may well have been, as he seems to be credited for cover design as well as cover art, and the typeface looks consistent with that used on the werewolf books. If he is, then extra kudos is due, because the titles are outright bliss. If you'd have told me that he'd thrown them at these covers in yellow on pink, I'd have been horrified, but it works. On 'The Slime Beast', it plays well with the bright pinky purple background and, on 'Spawn of the Slime Beast, it serves not just as a bookend but as a neat contrast to its far more dark vision. It's also a quintessential pulp font that looks like it might drip down the page.

Inside, there's more art, because Chris Hall, who drew the wonderful image used before chapters in 'Bamboo Guerillas' did the same job here. This one's just as good, if not quite so posed, with an agreeably threatening Slime Beast claw emerging from the mire of the Wash with a bothy behind it in the background. I believe the original of this artwork was also under the hammer at the Guy N. Smith Convention in September and whoever won that is a lucky devil indeed.

If there's a flaw, it's the choice to go with a sans serif typeface for the text, but it's a notably clean font that looks great in italics, so it's only a minor flaw. I've complained about sans serif fonts for body text in other books, where it was a much bigger problem. Here, it about as forgivable as it's ever going to get, even playing a little into the pulp mindset behind the Slime Beast. Beyond that, these are gorgeous new editions for books that have been long out of print, one reason for every one of this reprints to be thoroughly worthwhile.

'The Slime Beast' has gone through many editions over the years. The original was published by New English Library in 1976 and reprinted with a new cover in 1979. In between, it was lumped into the 'Bargain Bumper Treble', along with 'The Sucking Pit' and 'Bats Out of Hell'. Erich Pabel, the sole publishers of 'Night of the Werewolf' for decades, put it out in German in 1979, and Phantom Press followed suit in Polish in 1991. Grafton reprinted it in the UK in 1989 with the infamous Luis Rey turkey monster artwork and Centipede Press put out a collector's hardback edition in 2015, a book I didn't own yet when I met its cover artist, Alan M. Clark at TusCon. By comparison, 'Spawn of the Slime Beast' has never been reprinted until now, making it a tough one to find on the used market. ~~ Hal C F Astell

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