Tick Town by Christopher A. Micklos
Castle Bridge Media (June 2025)
Reviewed by W.D. Gagliani
Giant bloodsucking beasts invade… screams the cover copy, and if you’re like me, that’s about all you need to crack open this short novel and wait for the fun. So you may know going in what you’ll get, and the question is: how rip-roaringly entertaining will it be?
Draw a line from ’50s-’60s-’70s atomic war and genetic engineering cautionary tales and eco-horror, low- and big-budget creature features from, say, Them! to Tarantula, to Night of the Lepus, Piranha, etc., all the way to Jaws, Lake Placid, even Alien and a hundred more… and you’ll have a pretty accurate geneological chart that leads to Christopher Micklos’s Tick Town. And when seeking the novel’s literary ancestry, look no farther than Guy N. Smith’s giant Crabs novels, which are referenced both in a blurb by the legendary Ramsey Campbell himself, and in the book’s back cover copy.
Armed with the Guy N. Smith reference, plus the perfect throwback cover art, it’s then no surprise that Tick Town “ticks along” like a barreling B-movie… and mirrors those movies’ best qualities in plot and style.
Of course the most perfect analogous example might well be Jaws, due to the plots’ superficial similarities: a resort town holiday (or, in this case, festival) threatened by an inconceivable monster, while a heroic police chief and brave assorted citizens defy the glad-handing mayor to attempt to save as many townsfolk as possible. In the northern Wisconsin resort town of Tomahawk Hollow, the Harvest Moon festival is about to get under way, but this year the local fauna includes something new and horrific. Everyone whose spare time is spent cavorting in the woods knows about ticks… and here these tiny monsters are blown up in fine pulp fashion. The ticks aren’t gigantic in relation to humans, but they are in relation to normal tick size, they move deceptively fast, and their slashing chelicerae (jaws) are razor-sharp. And if that’s not frightening enough, there’s a nestful of eggs… and a queen.
The cast includes Chief Tim Donovan, an earnest cop trying his best to keep his farmers and townies safe, Jackson Reed who owns the town’s tiny newspaper, and Emmaline Blackdeer, driven young journalist and Jackson’s only employee. Mayor Silas Cankerby (whose name tells you most of what you need to know about him) is highly focused on making the festival “the best ever.” Besides being unctuous and sleazy, there’s a strong subplot about how the mayor’s corruption has led to the current crisis, and how it has caused the “solution” that will prove as fatal to the townsfolk and tourists as to the giant ticks, who are just hungry after all. It’s no stretch to see a throughline from Amity’s Mayor Vaughn to Cankerby and he fulfills the need for a stealth antagonist. When the upgunned guys with the foreign accents and shadowy motives show up, though, that’s when the book picks up steam and the stakes escalate toward a satisfyingly savage climax.
Trying to guess which cast members are redshirts will always be part of the fun of pulp-style horror, and Tick Town delivers enough oh no! surprises in this department to keep you turning pages. If you’ve been to Wisconsin’s North Woods you know exactly what Tomahawk Hollow looks like and how its industry is almost completely reliant on the tourist trade, making Tick Town especially relatable summer — or perhaps campfire — fare. Readers will find it’s a near-perfect, creature-driven pulp horror extravaganza with a subtle but serious message lodged in its stinger. Despite several gun-related gaffes in key scenes, Christopher Micklos’s first novel is entertaining indeed, and will surely inspire me to check out what he comes up with next. Recommended especially for summer reading, and during small town fall festival season.
