I am always happy when my new Darkfuse books arrive—I really feel that my membership has been money well spent. This one wasn’t a favorite, but with such different types of works and so many different writers, you can’t expect every reader to like every book.

I am a big fan of Gary Fry and in the internal psychological perspective that he brings to his characters. I think that he went just a bit too far in this one. Rather than simply putting his main character on the couch and letting us watch him process his thoughts, Fry actually makes a psychologist the main character; and the worst kind---one of those people that became psychologists in order to understand and perhaps “cure” themselves. It was just a bit much as the story, which started out a really promising wrong turn/creepy town situation, started to seem like a class. I also felt that the storyline itself was an attempt to teach a lesson and was rather heavy handed with the use of symbolism.

I wholeheartedly recommend him as an author and would encourage anyone interested in good dark fiction to read Fry’s Emergence, Lurker, or House of Canted Steps---all of which are excellent.
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This was not a very enjoyable book. It wasn't horrible but it is also not something that I would recommend.

Daryl is driving home from a conference. He's looking forward to returning home and spending some time at home without his girlfriend, just being alone. Traffic gets bad so Daryl takes a shortcut instead. Being a horror novel, he has no choice but to run out of gas while being lost and only a small mysterious village in sight. The rest doesn't really matter because whatever you imagine will probably be better.

The setup to the story was pretty decent; a bit cliché but at the same time, I was involved. The main character was too stodgy and not very relatable; however, I was along for the ride. Once he reached the village though, I very quickly lost all interest. The story in general struck me as being a "write by the numbers", don't do anything too risqué, overly academic, "look how smart I am" type of story. The main character spouts his personal psychology theory which came across more as the author trying to prove his theory than an integral part of the story. To tell the truth, I'm losing all interest in even thinking about and discussing the story. 2.5 stars that I'll round up to 3. ( )

Review copy

Whenever a character in a dark fiction story decides to get off the main road, for any reason, you know something bad is going to happen. For Daryl, it results in the failure of his GPS, his running out of fuel, his cell phone not getting a signal, and then stumbling upon a very strange village where everyone is disciplined. If you're undisciplined it makes you an outsider and suspect for anything untoward that may have happened in town, like murder.

Daryl is an academic, coming from a conference, and the first person narrative of the story is presented in the way such a person might speak. Frankly, it drove me to distraction. I found myself hoping Daryl would come to a bad end, just to get him to shut up.

I was a bit disappointed in Savage, it's a part of the Darkfuse novella series and I've enjoyed nearly everything I've read from them and although this is the first story I've read by Gary Fry, I've heard very good things about his writing.

If you want to try Savage for yourself, it will be available for the Kindle through Amazon.com on June 10, 2014. Plus, if you are a member of Amazon Prime, you can read it for FREE through the Kindle Owner's Lending Library. ( )