This one just felt dated, predictable and not terribly suspenseful or thrilling.

Decent read

Starting a new role in Tarren Tech, Blake Tanner moves his family to Silverdake, a small town which used to be a mining town. Everything is going great for the Tanners - bigger house, better paying job and their son, Mark gets to reconnect with his childhood friend too. Yet, Blake's wife, Sharon feels that there is something not right about the town and the people. Everyone is nice and polite, the store only sells healthy food, and the football team in Mark's high school are all big boys with incredible strength, in other words - perfect. Too perfect. This begins to bother Sharon and she is forced to unravel the secret of this town when Mark's life took a turn for the worse after a brutal fight with one of the football players.

The perfection of the town and the townsfolk did remind me of The Stepford Wives. It is just creepy and disturbing, but that is what I like about this story. You can pretty much guess what the plot is as you read on, so it is not something new to me. I do enjoy the writing, the pace and that the story is told in quite an engaging way. However, it did fall flat in the middle and dragged a bit before the story picks up again. Overall, it is an easy read with mild horror and I quite liked it.

This was the most spine-chilling book I have read so far!

Creature by John Saul is one of those books that starts out slow as the author builds the storyline, but halfway though it picks up and becomes hard to put down, until the very last page with an unexpected ending. Saul is good at ending with a twist, and he’s also not afraid to kill off a character or two, often abruptly. No sentimentality there. I would give this book 3 1/2 stars because the ending packs a punch and makes up for the slow beginning.

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The small mountain town of Silverdale Colorado is perfect. A company town with perfect weather, perfect neighborly citizens, and the perfect high school with a perfect football team. It is to this perfect town, run by the corporate tech giant, Tarrentech, that the family of 16 year-old Mark Tanner moves; a promotion for his father and a chance to start again for Mark. Little does he know that such perfection comes at a cost. Due to a childhood sickness, Mark is now a short, skinny kid who avoids sports in favor of more scholarly pursuits but when faced with continual bullying from school, friends, and even his own dad, it becomes harder and harder to resist what the town, and the high school sports clinic has to offer.

I’ve tried two John Saul novels before and thought them “OK” but not particularly brag-worthy. But several of my Goodreads friends have been urging me not to give up on him and so I dug this one out of my vast home library of unread books and gave him another try. Happily, I can report that this one surprised me quite nicely, keeping me engaged throughout with good narrative story-building. The character of Mark, especially, was well done and I think I will remember him for a long time to come. It’s not fine literature by any means but what would you expect from a book titled, “Creature”?

Published in 1989, the plot of this novel makes full use of the dangers and fears of anabolic steroid abuse, vitamin enhancing therapies, etc. of the time. The novel takes things to extremes, of course, in order to create a truly horrifying story but just as in most good horror, it is the nature of humans and how we treat each other that is the real horror occurring.

Amazing :)

Saul writes some far out medical thrillers but none as unbelievable as this.
An executive gets a big promotion & moves his family to an idyllic company town. But they soon find it's not so perfect. Everyone is crazy for sports, especially football. The town team is faster, bigger than any other. There is a mad scientist helping. Need I say more?
I must say it kept me reading but only to find out what happens. Not because it was such a great tale. 2.5 stars bumped up.

Easy read. Entertaining because it appears to have been written in the 80's so it has the nostalgia factor. Not overly original in its plot or concept but was written well and I don't regret taking the time to have read it.

Saul is always good for a b horror story, and this is a good one. Typically Saul, a family with two teenagers moves to a small town in Colorado for a new job. The town is basically owned by the corporation the father works for. The teenage son is short and nerdy, in part due to a childhood illness that stunted his growth. While the town seems to be just about perfect, something strange is going on in the athletic training facility run by the company. We have our typical mad doctor running experiments with the local boys, making them into football superstars, but there are some side effects and it gets ugly.

A local sports doctor experiments on company children and turns some into hideus beasts.