Kealan Patrick Burke

This is a fun, fast horror novella that I sped through in one sitting. The images are creepy, the story is engaging, and there's just enough build-up to make the final climax and pay-off all the more powerful. And yet... all that said, I have to admit that I've enjoyed Burke's short stories quite a bit more than I enjoyed this novella. Part of it was feeling like it was too clear where the book was going, because of its set-up--to the extent that even once I realized there was more to it, enough of the tension had been lessened that I still wasn't all that surprised.

Novellas are a tricky beast, and I used to avoid them because I always ended up feeling as if they were either over-extended short stories that would have been better off shorter, or else under-developed novels that would have been better off as novels. More than once, I've felt that a novella could have been better off as either a novel or a short, but ended up in some no-man's-land where it almost worked for me, but didn't quite. Since avoiding novellas for this reason, I've been pulled back in and discovered quite a few that I love... Unfortunately, though, this novella reminded me of why I used to avoid them. I could see arguments for this being much shorter or much longer...but as is, I just didn't enjoy it as much as I wanted to, especially after already being a fan of the author from other works.… (altro)