![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ANOTHER bait-and-switch! Though this time, not the author's fault. My edition has this on the back cover:
Winter gripped the city. Terror gripped it, too. In a city paralyzed by a blizzard, something watches, something stalks.
There's plenty of watching and stalking, but I would not have even registered that it was snowing if the back cover hadn't told me; the only times the weather comes into play is when there's spooky cold drafts. I was expecting winter survival horror, and that is not an element.
It is, in fact, a mostly terrible horror novel about voodoo. (Almost all horror novels about voodoo are mostly or entirely terrible). If I'd known there was voodoo, I would not have picked this up.
(Spelling used to indicate the trashy horror use, not the actual religion.)
Members of the Mafia are found bitten to death in locked rooms; two cops investigate and find a trail leading to a bocor with a grudge. There's a houngan who helps the cops. You can tell Koontz is vaguely gesturing in the direction of sensitivity but it doesn't really help. I skimmed rather than DNF'd, which meant that I got to the ending where the hero hurls holy water into a pit, then closes it with his own blood which is holy because he's a good guy, yes really.
The best part is the first chapter, in which the hero's daughter hears a creepy noise in her bedroom at night. I kept reading way past when I should have given up on the strength of that first chapter. I'm not saying it's well-written, or even good, really. But it's got that grabby, compelling quality that makes you read on.
That first chapter shows the power of two techniques: having something that's scary but unknown and unseen (once we see the voodoo critters, they're no longer scary), and moment-to-moment writing. The latter is something used a lot in horror and also in romance - two genres which depend largely on evoking emotion. You follow the character in real time, getting every moment, every detail, every thought, every feeling. It's extremely granular. You might spend a paragraph describing them reaching for a light switch: every fumble, every texture, every worry that it won't turn on.
This can be done badly, but it's incredibly effective when done well. You can wring more suspense out of someone trying to reach a glass of water with their hands tied than from fifty giant explosions. Dick Francis and Stephen King are masters of this technique. And this one chapter in a pretty crummy book, in which a girl hears rustling noises and pokes at them with a plastic baseball bat, is an example of how effective it can be even when it's nowhere near that level.
If you want to take a look, here's the link to the Kindle edition which has a Look Inside: Darkfall: A remorselessly terrifying and powerful thriller
Winter gripped the city. Terror gripped it, too. In a city paralyzed by a blizzard, something watches, something stalks.
There's plenty of watching and stalking, but I would not have even registered that it was snowing if the back cover hadn't told me; the only times the weather comes into play is when there's spooky cold drafts. I was expecting winter survival horror, and that is not an element.
It is, in fact, a mostly terrible horror novel about voodoo. (Almost all horror novels about voodoo are mostly or entirely terrible). If I'd known there was voodoo, I would not have picked this up.
(Spelling used to indicate the trashy horror use, not the actual religion.)
Members of the Mafia are found bitten to death in locked rooms; two cops investigate and find a trail leading to a bocor with a grudge. There's a houngan who helps the cops. You can tell Koontz is vaguely gesturing in the direction of sensitivity but it doesn't really help. I skimmed rather than DNF'd, which meant that I got to the ending where the hero hurls holy water into a pit, then closes it with his own blood which is holy because he's a good guy, yes really.
The best part is the first chapter, in which the hero's daughter hears a creepy noise in her bedroom at night. I kept reading way past when I should have given up on the strength of that first chapter. I'm not saying it's well-written, or even good, really. But it's got that grabby, compelling quality that makes you read on.
That first chapter shows the power of two techniques: having something that's scary but unknown and unseen (once we see the voodoo critters, they're no longer scary), and moment-to-moment writing. The latter is something used a lot in horror and also in romance - two genres which depend largely on evoking emotion. You follow the character in real time, getting every moment, every detail, every thought, every feeling. It's extremely granular. You might spend a paragraph describing them reaching for a light switch: every fumble, every texture, every worry that it won't turn on.
This can be done badly, but it's incredibly effective when done well. You can wring more suspense out of someone trying to reach a glass of water with their hands tied than from fifty giant explosions. Dick Francis and Stephen King are masters of this technique. And this one chapter in a pretty crummy book, in which a girl hears rustling noises and pokes at them with a plastic baseball bat, is an example of how effective it can be even when it's nowhere near that level.
If you want to take a look, here's the link to the Kindle edition which has a Look Inside: Darkfall: A remorselessly terrifying and powerful thriller
