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A review by prettyinpapercuts
The Sorrows by Jonathan Janz
3.0
Its girth was suffocating. Its knees pinned his arms, its scimitar teeth dripping with slaver. Ben thrashed but could not rid himself of the beast's bulk. With a swipe of its claws it tore through Ben's cheek, the blood spraying everywhere. Ben stared in dim fascination as its tongue slid out of its open mouth and licked at the droplets.
Ben and Eddie lead a crew to a deserted island castle, nicknamed The Sorrows, to find inspiration for a musical score they're composing for a horror movie. But as you can imagine, a place called The Sorrows doesn't have a happy history.
Let me first say that the writing in this novel was spectacular. It was visceral, brutal. It made the story very cinematic - so cinematic that I had creepy dreams about the story every night I read it. I could picture everything that was happening so clearly. I also really liked the inclusion of the journal excerpts from Calvin Shepherd. Something about those were very reminiscent of Dracula and Jonathan Harker's journal entries.
Things started to go awry for me near the end. There were so many things going on at once, so many evil forces coming together. It all got a little muddled and I thought it lost some of the spark. Instead of being scary, it got a little ridiculous. There was one part, where within about thirty pages, there were three different entities that were trying to murder the main characters. That got to be too much for me, even in a supernatural horror novel.
I will definitely pick up more of Janz's work in the future though - I can see a lot of greatness in his writing.
A big thank you to NetGalley, and to the publisher Flame Tree Press, for letting me enjoy an ARC copy of this book.
Ben and Eddie lead a crew to a deserted island castle, nicknamed The Sorrows, to find inspiration for a musical score they're composing for a horror movie. But as you can imagine, a place called The Sorrows doesn't have a happy history.
Let me first say that the writing in this novel was spectacular. It was visceral, brutal. It made the story very cinematic - so cinematic that I had creepy dreams about the story every night I read it. I could picture everything that was happening so clearly. I also really liked the inclusion of the journal excerpts from Calvin Shepherd. Something about those were very reminiscent of Dracula and Jonathan Harker's journal entries.
Things started to go awry for me near the end. There were so many things going on at once, so many evil forces coming together. It all got a little muddled and I thought it lost some of the spark. Instead of being scary, it got a little ridiculous. There was one part, where within about thirty pages, there were three different entities that were trying to murder the main characters. That got to be too much for me, even in a supernatural horror novel.
I will definitely pick up more of Janz's work in the future though - I can see a lot of greatness in his writing.
A big thank you to NetGalley, and to the publisher Flame Tree Press, for letting me enjoy an ARC copy of this book.