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Type of bind: Mass Market Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813
EAN num: 9780843958645
ISBN number: 0843958642
Label: Leisure
Manufacturer: Leisure
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 293
Printing Date: May 29, 2007
Publishing house: Leisure
Sale Popularity Level: 41011
Studio: Leisure
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Rated by buyers 
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Jack Ketchum, Offspring (Leisure, 1989)
Ketchum returns to the small town in Maine that housed his very first novel, Off Season. He also returns to the plot, the characters, and just about everything else. I don't even need to offer a plot synopsis; if you've read Off Season, you've read Off Spring. What saves the book, ultimately, is the fact that Ketchum was a far better writer in the late eighties than the late seventies, and many of the very first book's minor problems with plotting and pace are fixed. (The characters are still just shy of cardboard, though.) This one's a much smoother read, though you won't be left with nearly as much to think about at the end.
If you've read Off Season, this is an interesting follow-up, but otherwise, you can probably ignore it. ***
Rated by buyers 
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I read some good reviews about this one and it did not dissapoint. Some cannibals who live in a cave attack a cabin in the woods and start killing the people who live there. The cannibals even have cannibal kids that eat people! It's pretty gross but fun and I squirmed at times. In their cave they have some insane beast guy they call the Cow who reminded me of something from a Rob Zombie film. Anyway, there's tons of blood and gore and I recommend this if you like gross horror films. Apparently this is a sequel so I still have to read the very first book.
Rated by buyers -
At this point I have read several of Ketchum's novels, and to be honest the very first book in this series "Off Season" really didn't thrill me. I had a hard time dealing with Cannibals who were capable of speech and yet were so overly barbaric. The two didn't mesh well in my mind.
This sequel was far less bloody, less immediate, and less terrifying. Too much information was given on the wrong parties in the book, and not enough on the ones that we should have gotten info on. The death toll is far lower in this book, and nowhere near as gruesome. In most cases the deaths are barely described and seem "skimmed over" in comparison to the extreme detail he went to describing them in the very first book. Also this plot follows the very first almost exactly. There is almost nothing new here from the very first book.
(Possible spoiler warning)
You have a group of people in a cabin beset by Cannibals who drag a few of them off to a cave and torture them, there are also some cops trying to find the Cannibals. (/spoilers)
Sounds an awful lot like Off Season doesn't it? Well you could save yourself the money and just read Off Season again because it really is the same exact book, with a lot of what was interesting in the very first left out of this one. I won't say this was a bad book, it just brought nothing new to the table and seemed rather unfocused. If you like Ketchum, read "The Girl Next Door" rather than this book, it's a much better read.
Rated by buyers -
While similar to his very first book, Off Season, Ketchum delves more deeply into the characters this time around. The events occur over one long and grueling night where our cannibal family of maniacs decide to go on another killing spree. I think this book wasn't as shocking to me as the very first simply because I had read Off Season and knew what to expect. But that didn't lessen the enjoyment of joining retired law enforcement officer George Peters once again as he tries to finally put a stop to the madness. The only complaint I really had was the character of Steven, who just decided to visit his ex-wife and son on the same day of this random slaughter. Did I mention that Steven had just murdered his employer earlier that day and is running from the law? Yeah, that felt like too big a coincidence to me, too. But it's still a thrilling read and I wouldn't mind a third book sometime in the future.
Rated by buyers 
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WARNING: MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD
I just discovered Jack Ketchum, read his very first book, OFF SEASON, and was blown away by it. Wow, I thought, here is an author who isn't afraid to go the limit. The violence and gore were truly over the top, but what set it off from similiar stories was that no one in the book, absolutely no one, was safe. The prose had a raw, visceral quality that made the reader overlook or at least forgive certain infelicities in the writing (beginning too many successive sentences with the same word, using the "said John" construction instead of "John said", etc.). In short, a masterpiece of the genre, and a truly frightening read.
I immediately picked up OFFSPRING with high hopes. Alas, these hopes were dashed. First of all, the storyline is basically a retread of the original: Ketchum assembles a group of characters in an isolated cabin in the Maine woods and sets his cannibal family loose upon them; these scenes alternate with others that focus upon the police investigation. I don't have a problem with recycling the plot; my complaint is that it's done in such an anemic way. First, the victims are not nearly as interesting as those in the very first book. Second, very few of them are killed--in fact, only two out of six actually die. Yes, two of the survivors suffer horribly at the hands of the cannibals, but the final scene shows them sitting in a hospital room smiling, as if all is right with the world once more. A typical Hollywood happy ending. The ones who really get decimated are the cannibals, but with names such as First Chosen, Second Chosen, the Girl, the Woman, it's hard to keep them straight, let alone work up any interest in them. Finally, the prose style is far weaker than in the original: pages of sentence fragments alternate with long run-on sentences that go on forever.
In short, a major disappointment. I had been looking forward to reading more Ketchum, but if this is how he's mellowed, I won't bother. One reviewer likened OFF SEASON to the film director Wes Craven's early work, and I would agree. Unfortunately, OFFSPRING reminds me of Craven's anemic later work, after he sold out to Hollywood.
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