"Gimme a hug!"
Spawn of the Slime Beast is a 2015 horror novel written by Guy N. Smith, a sequel to his (much) earlier novel The Slime Beast. Forty years after the events of the first book, Gavin Royle and Liz Beck have gotten married and had a daughter, Amy. Along with Amy's photographer boyfriend Tim Tranter, the Royles return to Sutton to confront their age-old fears which have been plaguing them for forty years... only to discover evidence that a second Slime Beast has surfaced. It's up Gavin and local guide Brian Bromley, himself a survivor of the original monster's rampage, to stop the second monster.Tropes used in this novel:
- Alliterative Name: A few characters. Brian Bromley, Tim Tranter, Tommy Turner, Frank Forman, etc.
- Close-Knit Community: The town of Sutton is just as insular as it was forty years ago.
- The Dead Have Names: Gavin specifically remembers the names of Dr. Keen, Liz's uncle Professor Lowson, Manton Haywood, wildfowler Mallard Glover and Tom Southgate, landlord of the Bull, who all died in the first book.
- Evil Smells Bad: Just like the first monster, the second Slime Beast stinks to high heaven. The smell is enough to make multiple characters vomit.
- Coitus Interruptus: The Slime Beast kills teenagers Tommy Turner and Laura Brindley after they sneak out in the middle of the night for a tryst.
- Good Parents: Brian Bromley, a father of two, experiences the very real fear that his children might have to live through a Slime Beast attack like he did, or - worse - be killed by it. His motivation to help Gavin kill the second creature is primarily based on a desire to ensure his children's future. Gavin and Liz themselves also spend a good chunk of the book concerned for his daughter Amy. And then there's the Turners and the Brindleys, the families of horny teens Tommy and Laura, who got killed by the Slime Beast sneaking off to have sex. Imagine waking up to discover your son or daughter is gone and you have no idea if they've eloped or been brutally slaughtered.
- Gutted Like a Fish: Many of the Slime Beast's victims. See Picky People Eater below.
- High-Voltage Death: How the monster dies. A stray powerline lands on it and fries it, causing it to melt into a puddle of glop.
- Immune to Bullets: Once again, the Slime Beast cares not for ordinary ammunition, as wildfowlers Forman and Scott discover to their extreme misfortune.
- Multiple-Choice Past: Averted. We finally get something of a concrete origin for the Slime Beast(s). The coincidence of the meteorite landing in the first book notwithstanding, Spawn of the Slime Beast more or less ends up agreeing with Gavin Royle's original theory that the Slime Beasts are ancient creatures native to Earth. Specifically, they appear to come from the sea.
- Monster Is a Mommy: A Retcon in this book turns the first monster into a female whose offspring terrorizes the town of Sutton forty years. This Slime Beast ends up being female, as well; the book suggests the Slime Beasts are a Single-Gender Race and reproduce asexually.
- Non-Indicative Name: As before, the creature isn't made of slime, just a reptilian beast covered in it.
- One-Steve Limit: Averted. One of the creature's victims earlier on is wildfowler Frank Forman, and later on it also kills squatter Frank Hardman.
- Picky People Eater: The Slime Beast only likes eating human entrails, to the exclusion of every other body part. More than once, it kills someone, eats their intestines, and leaves the rest of the body to rot.
- Police Are Useless: Played straight and then subverted. Inspector Gittings and his men aren't much help to Tommy and Laura's families. The most he can come up with is that the pair have eloped. Gittings' superior Chief Superintendent Waller on the other hand is a Reasonable Authority Figure aware of the original creature's rampage, willing to listen to what Gavin has to say, and even provides some of his men to assist him and Bromley. Their bullets still fail to hurt it.
- Remember the New Guy?: Brian Bromley. His backstory involves having been a child during the first monster's rampage in Sutton forty years ago. Except there's no kid named Brian Bromley in the original book - and in fact no children appeared at all.
- Screw This, I'm Outta Here: With a dash of Out of Focus and just a dab of What Happened to the Mouse? Tim Tranter bails from the expedition very early on and is never seen or mentioned again.
- Sensitive Guy and Manly Man: Gavin Royle is once again the sensitive one, with Brian Bromley playing the manly man.
- Sequel Hook: The first book didn't really have one, but Spawn of the Slime Beast has the second creature lay an egg, setting up a potential third book.
- Shout-Out / Take That!: To Smith's magnum opus, Night of the Crabs; Gavin and Tim have an argument about reports of giant grabs attacking people along the coast. Gavin dismisses the whole thing as a hoax, insisting a crustacean that huge would be incapable of moving under its own weight, meaning Guy N. Smith just did a Take That! against himself!
- Twenty Minutes with Jerks: Mostly averted. The people of Sutton have mellowed out a lot after forty years. The only jerkish characters are Tim Tranter, who exits the story pretty quickly, and Frank Forman and George Scott, who eventually die horribly.
- Too Dumb to Live: Despite being repeatedly warned not to venture out onto the Wash without an experienced guide, Frank Forman and George Scott are so hellbent on bagging a goose that they do precisely that - and get slaughtered by the Slime Beast pretty much immediately.
- The X of Y: Spawn of the Slime Beast.
