Joseph Duncan

I love haunted house and bad house stories, and I was really excited to stumble onto Duncan's work. The concept is a little bit different, which is always good since these subgenres lend themselves to stories that are a bit formulaic, and digging into it felt fresh, with strong writing and great depth to the characters. The first half of the book read fantastically, actually, and I really enjoyed it... but then the pacing started feeling rushed... and more rushed... and more rushed, leaving me feeling like I'd read a fairly uneven book in the end.

It really did come down to pacing. The first half was carefully developed and read really well, but then the action picked up, and the second half of the book became a roller coaster that desperately needed a bit more space and depth. I hate to finish a review by saying that a book needed to be much longer in order to work, but that really is the case here just because it ended up being so uneven.

I'd certainly try Duncan's horror again, but I'd be prepared for the same pacing issues, and I'm not sure I'd rush it to the head of my reading line if it had been self-published. There's a ton of amazing self-published work out there, but this is one book that needed more time and development and revision, and if he rushed it to completion as appears to be the case, my worry is that the same would happen with his other works.

Still, for lovers of haunted house and bad house lit, this is a nice little escape if you're prepared to deal with the caveats above.… (mehr)

Sigh... it is so hard to rate a book when certain parts of it drive you crazy but overall it is a decent concept/story. Do I subtract points for the long-winded conversations within the main character's head, or for the dream sequences (man, oh man, I really really dislike dream sequences - a novel is already fiction/fantasy, why add another lame layer to that?)

Way too much conversation among characters and way too many words... it is a zombie novel but it has a feeling as if the author thought he was writing literary fiction...

It could have been better if there was some action and less "author trying to make some point/moral", and characters that felt real. And a plot/goal would have helped too... most of the story has no forward momentum, just descriptions of XYZ...… (mehr)