This book has a lot going for it. Ancient evil, witches, Pan, and good old Rock N Roll. How could you go wrong?

As a huge fan of rock music and the blues, I'm on board with the whole Robert Johnson "sold his soul" train. This book was an original twist on that story, with the modern day accoutrements of an evil record producer and an ogre of a music label.

For a while in the middle portion, the pacing slowed down a lot, (technical stuff in the recording studio), but then the story began to get more complicated and from there this tale came alive. That's also when that originality kicked in and delivered some spice and surprise.

Overall, I enjoyed this book. I would recommend it for horror fans that don't mind a slow burning story, without much gore, and for fans of old school stories like The Great God Pan. If that person is you, I wager you will enjoy this novel.

I was provided a free copy of this book to honestly review for: http://ravenousreads.blogspot.com/ ( )

The Basics

Billy Moon is an international rock star. He should be happy, but he’s haunted. He’s fairly sure he might’ve forfeited his soul when he agreed to become famous, and with his next album in the works, he feels like the devil himself is on his heels.

My Thoughts

I feel like I should’ve loved this book, but it lacked something. Partly in this being a debut novel, it has that “first time out” feel. There’s nothing particularly wrong with the writing style or characters, but none of it sang. It feels like Wynne is an author that wants to be the next voice of horror, but he ends up being a pale imitation. “Imitation” feels like a keyword here, because this book felt a lot like Joe Hill’s Heart-Shaped Box. Once you read enough horror, it starts to feel like everyone is mimicking someone else, but to this degree, it’s bothersome.

The Devil of Echo Lake is trippy in its horror at times, but it’s never flat-out scary and rarely visceral. Studio time spent in descriptions of the technical aspects of the industry could’ve been interesting and impressive if the book had delivered on any other level. Instead, it makes those passages seem slow and plodding because there’s generally no horror payoff to be found. I don’t mind story-driven horror whatsoever, but the story was flat.

The one thing that does deliver is the twist. I won’t give it away, but it was a great direction to go in. It’s the strongest thing about the plot, but it sadly doesn’t compensate for the so-so characters. Especially when calling it a “twist” is probably generous. It’s more just a change in pace from one possible plot-point to another. So even that fizzles when I wish it had popped.

It passed the time. It was all right. That’s really the most I can say.

Final Rating

3/5 ( )

Pretty deeply mediocre on all levels - writing, plotting, characterization. Protip: If your main character is going to spend a lot of time complaining about how unoriginal his own art is, don't make the reader think, "yeah, you'd know." ( )

I received this book from a librarything.com giveaway.

I really enjoyed this book. The characters got better as the story went on. It kept a good pace for me and there was never a dull moment.

The only thing that was weird for me was the scene between Billy, Rachael and Rail towards the end of the book. I won't give it away, but I am not sure it really needed it to be in there, or it could have been written by using a different situation. It just threw me for a loop not expecting that at all.

Would definitely read more of Douglas Wynne's books in the future! ( )

I started reading this recently, but found that I could not get into this at the time. I do not think it was from bad writing though, so I fully intend on trying to read this again, and will leave a proper review at that point if I can get into it enough to read it. My guess right now is I just was not in the right mood for this story, which happens from time to time.