mpontiff

2.5 stars

When I read the summary of this one on Dark Region's website, I got excited because it sounded great!  As soon as I got the ebook from them, I dug in for what I expected to be a great time. 

Unfortunately, no. The book started out slowly, fleshing out the few main characters it contains before moving the antagonist into the picture. Once it appeared, things picked up a little but the conversation between the characters was very flat, especially for people that are supposed to be terrified and nearly dying every few pages. Given the total lack of emotion from them, they could have been discussing the weather, politics or what they had for supper. I certainly felt NONE of the terror and tension that they should have been experiencing. 

There were some beautiful illustrations in this advance copy but instead of adding to the story, they retracted from it. Comparing the illustrations to the story, there were several inconsistencies such as size of the creature, articles of clothing and placement of restraints. I loved the illustrations but I feel that the text should have matched them. 

Lastly, there were several mistakes in punctuation and one case of sloppy editing where a piece of equipment that was gone from the story magically reappeared. Maybe it's just me but that sort of thing yanks me right out of a story. 

All in all, I was very disappointed in this book and felt that it could have been so much better with better dialogue and another pass at editing.