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capnlinnius 's review for:

The Bright Lands by John Fram
2.0

2.5/ 5. This is hard to rate. I did enjoy this novel, but I feel like it wasn't what I had been told it would be.

It had some nice horror vibes with the whole entity beneath the wild nothingness outside of a small Texas community, and slight feels of The Faculty, and I wish that's what this story would have run with. Instead, it's more of a murder mystery thriller, which isn't necessarily bad, but not what I was expecting to read.

The last 100 pages were mostly me going "Yeah, okay." Up until that point, I was into the mystery, I was excited to see how the entity would tie into it, and I had such high hopes! In the end, it sort of fell flat for me. A bit like, rocks fall everyone dies, and it was disappointing.

I enjoyed the writing, although I feel like several of the POVs could have been cut out without any major loss to the overall story, and I thoroughly enjoyed the premise. Unfortunately, it didn't end up where I wanted it to.