Bibliophile

Bibliophile

Thursday 6 February 2014

REVIEWS...Dog Days/Deadly Passage


Any reviews I post on this blog are purely my own impressions.



DOG DAYS - JournalStone's Double Down Series Book III eBook

by Joe McKinney





Though this is not a genre I would normally choose, I decided to see what the attraction was.


From the perspective of a young teenage boy, Mark, the reader is taken through numerous experiences that perhaps wouldn't be as major if they had happened to an adult - the excitement of a storm that dumped a shrimp boat in a tree, seven miles inland; 'borrowing' a gun from the locked gun cabinet belonging to his policeman father ; curiousity overcoming obedience, but then, the unreality and discovery of several horrifically mutilated bodies.


From there, the author meanders through a teenage crush, friendships and fights with the bad boys - none seeming to really be of great interest even to Mark, till more bodies start appearing, many bodies...  Eventually it all links together and you discover why and how, but it takes an awfully long time to get there.


I appreciate the opportunity of reading this book, kindly supplied by Journal Stone, but still came to the conclusion that this genre is not for me.


It took me a while to get to reading the second story in the book, but as this is a Double Down Series, I continued on.



★★✮✩✩





DEADLY PASSAGE - JournalStone's Double Down Series Book III eBook pt. 2


by Sanford Allen



This book held my interest longer, not for the story as a whole, but for the portrayal of the conditions on board a slave ship, the cruelty of the time and the decency of some, which was undermined by being forced to eke out punishment by whipping. Some were forced to watch such punishment, no matter how galling, in fear of receiving the same treatment.


It lost me when the bodies kept piling up, each more grotesquely dealt with than the last. Not even the fact that some of the 'bad guys' were killed, justified the numbers.. it was gratuitous to say the least.


If you like horror, a touch of the supernatural and an involved story, then this may be the book for you. I puzzled at parts as the 

' huge creature' could somehow fit into very tiny spaces... and it became a guessing game as to who was next. One way to tie up loose threads I guess, kill off all the characters.

I feel it is slightly better written than DOG DAYS, but that didn't save the story...


★★★✩✩






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