Really awful for a lot of reasons. A real disappointment from a good writer. All the signs of hack work for filthy lucre by a normally decent writer. The writing is fine, the words and sentences are well crafted as Etchison is a pretty competent writer but the plot is so derivative and so thin and the characters two dimensional that even as a short novel I had to force myself to finish it. There are two somewhat interesting protagonists and a very uninteresting antagonist but the rest of the cast are all out of the stockroom. Hence what little suspense there is is all forced.

The mess comes off as a dime store King or McCammon.

Certain to come out as an overpriced Centipede edition someday as all mmpb horror novels are destined, this one was already overpriced in its true first edition here. ( )