Brian Asman

This was a fun quick read. Too quick maybe even.
While the beginning set a real nice mood, with heart break and the occurring slipping into a slight madness, it tapers then sadly off a bit, with too much skipping over details that would have made a more rounder story and would have maybe made some things more easier to understand at once.
Like, letting Michael visit "occult experts" while he tries to figure out what he had done, and so letting the reader get an introduction of how the occult in this world works in smaller pieces than in the one huge monologue later in the book.
In that regard the story felt kind of rushed once he made the deal and personally I would have thought drawing it a bit out could have had a benefit.
Overall though I liked it, the writing style, the setting of the universe and the characters even if they were not all too deeply developed.… (altro)

Mike Mallory, frontman of the rock band Modern Love, comes home one night to find his girlfriend is leaving him. Mike spends nights wandering the city looking for some way to relieve his pain, stumbling upon an occult underbelly that seems to provide him a solution.

Overall, I enjoyed this as a story of loss, pain, and that feeling like you'll never recover from the heartbreak. However, the horror/occult aspects didn't grab me as much as I would have liked.

Mike had potential to be a great character but fell slightly short for me. I feel like the only things I learned about him were he made music and had an (ex-)girlfriend. The descriptions of his emotional state following the break-up and throughout the story were good though, and I understood his motivations.
I found the occult aspects great in the beginning, but they started getting a little confusing. There was a chunk of mythology explanations in the middle that I had to re-read a few times before I understood what was going on and even after that I lost the thread a little.

The pacing of this book also felt a little rushed. It's a short book, that could have been improved by becoming longer with more character building and slowing the pace down.

Summary - I wanted to enjoy this more than I actually did. It's got some great potential but it just felt too much, too fast.


Thanks to NetGalley and Mutated Media for the copy to read and review.… (altro)