Title - Darkness on the Edge of Town
Author - Brian Keene
Year - 2010
Stand Alone or Series -Stand Alone (Part of
Pages - 264
Reading Time - 4 days (November 2010)
Rating - 7.5/10
Summary
One morning the residents of Walden, Virginia, woke to find themselves cut off from the rest of the world by an impenetrable wall of darkness.
Review
This is my eight book by Brian Keene. He is probably one of my favourite horror writers. My interest began in The Rising and City of the Dead back in 2005. Then it took 4 years for me to rread Castaways, Dead Sea, The Conqueror Worms, The Rising: Selected Scenes from the End of the World, Urban Gothic and now this one. I've made reviews of them all and if Urban Gothic (the last one I read) was somewhat different from what I was used.
The concept of this novel is not new. The Mist or Under the Dome by Stephen King or one episode in Twilight Zone are rather similar. With several connections to other novels like the crazy person Dez (by him we learn a lot about Keene's multiverse about The Darkness or Ob). This was the most interesting part of the book. Everything else is not new...
The plot is quite simple. Darkness surrounds the city and we've got three friends (and a neighbour) that are trying to survive. In the beginning they are only trying to survive by looting a store then they try to escape and in the end they only try to survive until some christian fundamentalists try to kill them.
As the story goes we learn that the darkness is also affecting them. The darkness is not only surrounding them but also inside them. It's making them angry and hateful. We've got murders, raping and several other disgusting activities.
Now the characters... We've got Robbie (our main character) and Christy (one of the worst characterized characters in Keene's multiverse and his long life friend Russ which is the second main character if you life. We've got several other characters but.. meh. Only Dez is different.
The ending was quite interesting and as much of Keene's novels it ends with a cliffhanger. What happened to them? If following Dez ramblings about The Darkness then they were killed by it. Most books by Keene ends not in a nice way (and in my opinion is quite good). Time to time I like to read books with a happy ending but a book with an unhappy ending for the characters are even greater. Specially this kind of endings where we don't know what happened but we know it can't be nice.
PS: I made a lenghtly review but my computer made me a prank and I lost everything. Bah...
The concept of this novel is not new. The Mist or Under the Dome by Stephen King or one episode in Twilight Zone are rather similar. With several connections to other novels like the crazy person Dez (by him we learn a lot about Keene's multiverse about The Darkness or Ob). This was the most interesting part of the book. Everything else is not new...
The plot is quite simple. Darkness surrounds the city and we've got three friends (and a neighbour) that are trying to survive. In the beginning they are only trying to survive by looting a store then they try to escape and in the end they only try to survive until some christian fundamentalists try to kill them.
As the story goes we learn that the darkness is also affecting them. The darkness is not only surrounding them but also inside them. It's making them angry and hateful. We've got murders, raping and several other disgusting activities.
Now the characters... We've got Robbie (our main character) and Christy (one of the worst characterized characters in Keene's multiverse and his long life friend Russ which is the second main character if you life. We've got several other characters but.. meh. Only Dez is different.
The ending was quite interesting and as much of Keene's novels it ends with a cliffhanger. What happened to them? If following Dez ramblings about The Darkness then they were killed by it. Most books by Keene ends not in a nice way (and in my opinion is quite good). Time to time I like to read books with a happy ending but a book with an unhappy ending for the characters are even greater. Specially this kind of endings where we don't know what happened but we know it can't be nice.
PS: I made a lenghtly review but my computer made me a prank and I lost everything. Bah...
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