Scan barcode
A review by dtaylorbooks
The Nightmarys by Dan Poblocki
3.0
I’ve had this sitting on my shelf for a few years now. I don’t remember where I got it from. I want to say PaperBackSwap but my copy is an ARC so I want to say that’s not accurate but it wouldn’t be the first time someone’s broken that rule on that site before. Since I’m reviewing a pile of horror books for Funtober I slid this one off the shelf and started reading.
I have to say I’m not all that impressed with it. I think it had solid potential, especially based on the blurb, but once the horror’s source was discovered it just became rather silly to me and I couldn’t stay invested in it. Nightmares coming to life are scary. Being destroyed by something that isn’t real and only you can see is terrifying. Having the evil sourced through a magical jawbone kills that buzz. It just becomes too much of a stretch for me to stay on board with and I start checking out as I read.
The surname July is rather grating so every time it came up in the story it made me flinch a little. Timothy’s a pretty decent character and is struggling with growing away from his life-long friend and dealing with his soldier brother who was injured except his parents forbid him from talking about it with anyone so actually dealing with it becomes an issue. Throw in all of this stuff that starts happening to him and he ends up with quite a bit on his plate that he ends up dealing with surprisingly well. Bigger people would have crumpled under that kind of pressure but he really stuck in there. I liked his perseverance and his strength but it was a faulty strength. He had moments of weakness that really put him into some dire straits so it wasn’t an unrealistic strength he had and it made him more relatable.
With Abigail you just kind of skim the surface with her. She makes a subtle shift of growth toward the end but for the most part she’s the same reclusive, temperamental character from the beginning. Yes, she’s being haunted by a couple of tulpa-type dream creeps so understanding for that. But she has a bad habit of shoving help away instead of embracing it and it causes some issues instead of solving them but, of course, everything ends up working out in the end.
I really don’t mind out-there horror but the book really starts losing me when the evil’s source is a ridiculous talisman that would otherwise be nearly impossible to obtain but somehow ends up in the wrong hands and brings back the dead. I think the concept is neat, that the jawbone needed to be charged and a sacrifice was needed in order to do it and it raised a rotting corpse monster from the dead in order to suck the life out of the sacrifice but I keep really getting hung up on that damn bone. It’s just so impossibly out there that no one should really have access to it in the first place. Unless it’s the curator that’s handling the thing but in this case that dude’s no where near the shenanigans. So it makes it hard for me to suspend my disbelief for that element of the book. Too bad it’s a major piece of it.
THE NIGHTMARYS had its moments but it really bordered more on middle grade than YA (probably upper middle grade or lower YA depending on how you looked at it) so the tone wasn’t really working for me and some of the scare factors weren’t all that impressive. Like I said, it had its moments. There were a few creepy parts that hinged more on ambiance and unseen horrors than the obvious that I preferred to being chased by something but it was more about the obvious than not so it didn’t keep my interest.
I think someone younger would dig it more but it really wasn’t my kind of horror. I did think it was going a different way than it did based on the blurb so that plays into it a little bit but not a ton. I just wasn’t digging the story.
2 1/2
I have to say I’m not all that impressed with it. I think it had solid potential, especially based on the blurb, but once the horror’s source was discovered it just became rather silly to me and I couldn’t stay invested in it. Nightmares coming to life are scary. Being destroyed by something that isn’t real and only you can see is terrifying. Having the evil sourced through a magical jawbone kills that buzz. It just becomes too much of a stretch for me to stay on board with and I start checking out as I read.
The surname July is rather grating so every time it came up in the story it made me flinch a little. Timothy’s a pretty decent character and is struggling with growing away from his life-long friend and dealing with his soldier brother who was injured except his parents forbid him from talking about it with anyone so actually dealing with it becomes an issue. Throw in all of this stuff that starts happening to him and he ends up with quite a bit on his plate that he ends up dealing with surprisingly well. Bigger people would have crumpled under that kind of pressure but he really stuck in there. I liked his perseverance and his strength but it was a faulty strength. He had moments of weakness that really put him into some dire straits so it wasn’t an unrealistic strength he had and it made him more relatable.
With Abigail you just kind of skim the surface with her. She makes a subtle shift of growth toward the end but for the most part she’s the same reclusive, temperamental character from the beginning. Yes, she’s being haunted by a couple of tulpa-type dream creeps so understanding for that. But she has a bad habit of shoving help away instead of embracing it and it causes some issues instead of solving them but, of course, everything ends up working out in the end.
I really don’t mind out-there horror but the book really starts losing me when the evil’s source is a ridiculous talisman that would otherwise be nearly impossible to obtain but somehow ends up in the wrong hands and brings back the dead. I think the concept is neat, that the jawbone needed to be charged and a sacrifice was needed in order to do it and it raised a rotting corpse monster from the dead in order to suck the life out of the sacrifice but I keep really getting hung up on that damn bone. It’s just so impossibly out there that no one should really have access to it in the first place. Unless it’s the curator that’s handling the thing but in this case that dude’s no where near the shenanigans. So it makes it hard for me to suspend my disbelief for that element of the book. Too bad it’s a major piece of it.
THE NIGHTMARYS had its moments but it really bordered more on middle grade than YA (probably upper middle grade or lower YA depending on how you looked at it) so the tone wasn’t really working for me and some of the scare factors weren’t all that impressive. Like I said, it had its moments. There were a few creepy parts that hinged more on ambiance and unseen horrors than the obvious that I preferred to being chased by something but it was more about the obvious than not so it didn’t keep my interest.
I think someone younger would dig it more but it really wasn’t my kind of horror. I did think it was going a different way than it did based on the blurb so that plays into it a little bit but not a ton. I just wasn’t digging the story.
2 1/2