There are elements in this something-bad-happens-in-this-house, children-go-missing tale, teasing parts of some scenes that I enjoyed (enough to keep me reading). Particularly the author's attempt to blend some Lovecraft (!!Cthulu!!) mythos and cosmic energy.

What ruined any significant momentum was how I kept getting hammered over the head with the whole "God's Eye"/time alteration goal for the central antagonist. I understood Suman's grand scheme the first couple times and began to get annoyed being reminded the third and subsequent times.

The Children Are Missing subplot has been done so many times (John Saul, anyone?) that there has to be unique, strong parent character building to make it truly scary (at least for me any more). The author tried to do some of that in this story, but there wasn't enough depth or continuity in this department to pull me deep into the narrative. More missing thumbs, please! Once I'm fully immersed in a story, I'm putty in the author's hands.

But that rarely happened here.

Once I'm fully immersed in a story, I'm putty in the author's hands. They can do all sorts of odd things stylistically and I'll stay with them.

But that rarely happened here.

Speaking of buts, I've only read one other work by the author and don't remember as many sentences in that story beginning with 'but'. But it was overkill in this book. I wouldn't have minded if it had been done intentionally--or at least I could tell it was. But I don't think it was done that way like I'm doing here for dramatic effect in this paragraph. But I don't know. But if it was, when too many sentences too close together start with 'but', it's sure reader distracting, isn't it?

Anyway, I liked pieces of this story, just not the sum of the parts nor very much how it was all glued together and told. This is the 46th book I've read in 2013 published by DarkFuse or one of its imprints. To say I'm a huge fan overall of what they're currently publishing would be an understatement. This story, unfortunately, disappointed me. 4,065 Kindle locations. Approximately 326 pages.

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Created Aug 22, 2013 at 2:13pm • Submit your own review...