One Last Gasp (The Cosmic Horror Cycle) Paperback – August 20, 2013

The author does a superb job of making us feel engaged in battle, first against the Nazis, and then against something out of our deep imaginations. I read a lot of books and it’s rare to find one that lets me deeply know its characters and care about what happens to each of them. I definitely plan to read other works by this author and recommend this book to anyone who likes well paced action, engaging characters, and a touch of the supernatural

This book was amazing. I've never been big on war stories, but I've seen the movies & have an interest in history. I do love cosmic horror though & it certainly delivered on that. It takes a bit for things to get going, but it's all part of getting you immersed in that time in history & the author does a phenomenal job of that. The characters are well fleshed out & there were quite a few times that I caught myself biting my nails b/c of the built up tension. There were a few times that tears rolled down my face after reading a page. This is an emotionally powerful read as well.I would highly recommend to anyone that enjoys cosmic horror, rich characters to root for, war/military settings- all or any of those aspects. I am looking forward to reading Song for the Void next by this same author.

This is the best book that I have read in years. The setting is engaging and well-researched. I felt like I was reading an episode of Band of Brothers. They were great characters and I loved the relationships between the characters. It was a brutal war story and then the real horror began. Piazzo came up with a fresh and horrifying creature that was unstoppable. I really didn't want this novel to end. 5/5 stars

Such a vivid book, with a great story up to the final chapter. Not what i expected. You could really connect with the characters. Hope to read more, thank you Andrew C. Piazza.

The combination of focus in this book is done so well. I am fan of war history and horror, so this was a perfect match, and a well told and narrated story. Loved the characters. The Geist reminded of something from the movie The Cabin In The Woods. Very creative and spooky. Dark, but didn’t get too carried away. Highly recommend!

Fantastic novel. From the very first page I was hooked. There was no lull in the story. It moved logically with great detail about World War II. Such diverse and likable characters throughout the novel that you wished they were real. Great blending of a war story with a horror story. Completely unique. Highly recommend.

I don't normally write reviews, but here it goes. I was looking for a world war 2-esque horror story and I got it with this book. This book scratched the exact itch I had in all the ways I wanted. The story is filled with twists and turns and really makes you connect with the characters. I could not put the book down and ended up finishing it in 2 days.

I thought the WWII combat part was well written and researched. The horror part though, while promising and good at some parts, seemed a little haphazard with too many different concepts or themes going on (I thought it started out promising but lost it some once they got to the Manor). Too many things just didn't make sense and were distracting from the "scariness".If we could give half stars I'd give it 3 - 1/2.

Man kann mit Fug und Recht behaupten der Autor versteht es, das kalte Grauen des Krieges in seiner Geschichte lebendig werden zulassen.Und leider ist seine Horrorlegende einfach Lachhaft. Ein wenig mehr Recherche zu den deutschen Legenden hätte Wunder vollbracht.Leider nur 3 Sterne.

My list of great WWII horror novels stands at 2: “The Keep” by F. Paul Wilson and “The Devils of D-Day” by Graham Masterton. Well..now it’s 3 with “One Last Gasp!” There are significant differences between the books. And that is what makes them so great.. I do not want rehashing of the same story. I delight in the wondrous differences. Two of them use suspense as a great weapon, ratcheting up the anxiety slowly, agonizingly. Another uses action as its key plot point and the author does it extremely well. On the whole this book belongs on any horror shelf. Well done!

I ordered One Last Gasp on impulse when I found myself browsing for a book that fell broadly into the cosmic horror genre; and I’m delighted that I did.This is a genuinely terrific book; the characters are both believable and sympathetic, the pacing is excellent and the horror elements evoke both shock and a creeping sense of dread. I tore through this book in a couple of days as a result of how compellingly it is written; but I suspect I will continue to think about it for a long time to come. Easily my favourite book of the last couple of years.

Loved this exceptionally well written war horror tale. Great characters you'll grow to love in a story you'll burn through in spite of its length. This one really gave me the feels. 5 Stars.

This writer can spin a good story. Just on its own the theme was attractive enough to sell me the book from new, because the theme seemed to resemble that of The Keep by F Paul Wilson. The setting was an impenetrable forest and the date of the action was 1944 or 1945. The forest harboured a Large Nasty in a large remote castle or such like, and the advancing Allied troops were on their way to deal with it. Very promising for those who like that sort of thing, but alas The Keep did not keep its promise, and the latter half of that book (and of its TV transfer) was pretty deplorable.So I read eagerly. This author was master of his craft, and his account of the tank battles with the SS held my attention in a way such a narrative would not normally do. There was a lot of it, but even when the heroes reached the sinister Dom Caern it was taking a long time to locate the Geist, the Lovecraftian (or worse) fiend that awaited them. I was starting to experience a twinge of restiveness at that, and sure enough after the release of the Geist there is another long sequence of tank warfare that was very much like the earlier one. This kind of thing is Mr Piazza’s comfort zone, I suspect. This is what he’s good at, and this is what spins this novel out to 500 pages, albeit quite readable pages.However I was starting to spot other, similar, features. In particular there are occasional digressions that neither advance the action nor are of much interest in themselves, even if cleverly dressed up as the ramblings of one amiable pedant among the men. Even in 1945 (when Einstein was already old hat) this elucidation of the structure of the atom was baby-stuff; and the long tirade that the girl prisoner discharges at the captured German doctor on the theme of his alleged failure to depose Hitler was trite beyond words, especially the many words it takes. Another feature of the story that I found a bit of a let-down was Mr Piazza’s resort to the hackneyed device of locating the lair of the Geist in some alternative universe. This makes things too easy for an author, because there are no restrictions on time or action, and it is all more of a substitute for true imagination than an exercise of that faculty. In particular the Geist has a bewildering range of powers far beyond what I remember seeing in the comics my son used to read at age 7. And in passing, what became of the supposed ability of these SS to see in the dark? A lot was made of that in the early pages, but unless I missed it somehow it disappears later.Nevertheless I finished the book in three days, and that is a real tribute to the quality of the writing. It is good in an even sort of way, although I can’t remember any outstanding phrases or speeches. What is much better than even is the characterisation. A good number of the officers and men (not to say the solitary woman) come across as real personalities and not as waxworks or dummies. That helps right at the end which, greatly to my own surprise, I found to be the best sequence in the whole volume. The first-person narrator takes us through a touching and affecting resume of his surviving fellow combatants at Dom Caern. He tells us what had become of them all, and I found that he made me care about that and them.