#Bookreview Dark Passage by Griffin Hayes #amreading #kindlebook


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liked it

Actually I give it 31/2 Dark Passage was entertaining and a nice break from the paranormal, romance, love triangle books I’ve received. If you’ve had your fill of the books reminiscent of Twilight you may want to pick this book up, if you enjoy horror and gore like I do. The kindle formatting of the mobi file the author gave me was a little wonky with beginning paragraphs in a larger font than the rest of the chapter and occasional larger fonts at random. I downloaded the free sample on my kindle fire and saw none of these problems so it may just be the mobi file I received. I did find about 30 or so editing issues. I know the author is currently hard at work getting those fixed so new purchasers will get a cleaner copy. The issues were few enough that it didn’t affect my reading experience in any major way.

The writing style is easy to read and follow and for the most part is done well. The one thing I’d like to see changed, take out the overuse of “had”. The author writes almost everything in past perfect instead of past simple. It creates the effect of separating the reader from the action, more like a friend telling you a story instead of the reader being apart of the story. For example, “He had found them in the maintenance lunch room and tried each key until he had found the one that worked.” Take out the “hads” and it reads much clearer and brings the reader closer to the action. another example,”If seeing those bodies had convinced him of anything, it was that he needed a weapon.” The words “had” and “that” are not needed. There is a lot could “coulding” too, I could see, I could taste, I could smell, when I saw, I tasted, I smelled brings the reader in closer to the action. Great books to read on these problems are
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I liked the idea behind this book, pulling things from your dreams into reality, even though it’s not a new idea. I hoped to see a new spin on it. This concept isn’t really the main focus of this story, more like a catalyst. I’d say Tyson’s strange past with his mother and everyone’s strange interest in his mother is the main focus. Some of the reviews on amazon said that many of the plot items are never resolved. I partially agree. The reader never learns why Tyson’s mother did the things she did and why she continued to do them in the present. Every horror monster does what they do for a reason. Freddy kills children for the power of their souls, Jason kills to get revenge for what happened to him. I think that’s what was missing for me, a back story about the mother. Why did she put a bag over her son’s head, why did she keep a corpse? More info on Dr. Hunter would have been nice, too. Was he already insane or was the mother’s influence making him insane?

The plot is typical of a horror, monster problem is created, monster must be fought and killed, an unexpected twist at the end. Unfortunately, the twist was expected by me, too many clues before the twist gave it away. This may not be the case for every reader. I’ve read and watched many horror books and movies and I study writing. I can see a plot device. I won’t say any more about it because I don’t want to give anything away for other readers. If you are new to reading horror, I think this is a great book to start with, but if you are saturated in horror like I am, well, this book might be too old school for you.

If you’re not into sex in your horror then this book is a good choice. There were no explicit sex scenes. There was very little adult language, too. Actually, I don’t recall any, but I may have missed one or too colorful adjectives. Bad language doesn’t bother me so I tend to not notice it unless it’s poorly used, over used, or out of character. This novel mostly uses gore for its horror so if you don’t like gore you may want to pass. However, for me, it wasn’t super gory, just enough to be horror.

I thought this book had some good moments and is worth checking out if you are not heavy into horror and want to get into it. It does need some editing and that is getting worked on as we speak. At least download the free sample and judge for yourself if you think it’s worth buying. I’d say once it’s fixed, it’s a great horror book to start with.

Biography

I grew up watching grainy reruns of The Twilight Zone and rereading worn-out copies of Raymond Chandler novels. Eventually, my taste for the unsettling and the inexplicable found an outlet in my short stories; two of which have been published: The Grip with Black Ink Horror and Last Call with Alienskin. I've written a handful of books to date. The latest is a post-apocalyptic series called Primal Shift about a worldwide amnesia that sends humanity back to the dark ages.

I'm always thrilled to hear from readers, so feel free to drop me a line at: griffinhayesbooks[at]gmail[dot]com.

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