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A review by eiion
A Monster Escapes by Lewis Wolfe
Did not finish book. Stopped at 16%.
DNF at 27%
I wanted to like this book. The concept was really good, and the first few chapters did hook me - I really was excited for where it was going to go. Unfortunately, it went really downhill really fast.
The writing style is fine. It's easy to read and isn't objectively bad, but it's not very advanced. I was being told a lot of stuff that didn't need to be spelled out for me, and I feel like the author just didn't include descriptive text about emotion. For a horror book, the emotion and suspense is so integral that to have a book without it just didn't feel scary.
We were introduced to upwards of 6 or 7 POVs and characters over the course of what I read, and I have no doubt that I didn't see the last of it. While in theory this is fine, it was a bit confusing, even with the author reminding us who everyone was and making it easy to understand. It just felt convoluted in places.
But what really made me DNF this book were the themes explored in it, and how openly and without meaning they were put into the story. A 14-year-old girl has been through hell and back, forced to sell her body just to find somewhere safe to hide and be loved, and the first thing our main character's bodyguard does is think about how much he wants to have sex with her but can't. Gross. Couple this with the fact that not even 2 chapters later, we read about a woman who is outcast from her family, lured away by a demon, then has "multiple orgasms" that produce 3 babies? Then, when those 3 babies grow up into young women, they have a family wide orgy? This all happened in maybe 15 pages. It wasn't enjoyable, and didn't feel like it had any place in this book.
The only horror storyline we saw was barely elaborated on, and didn't seem to matter in the point of the story I was in. It was just shock value, and disgusting imagery trying to get a rise out of the reader.
I wanted to like this book. The concept was really good, and the first few chapters did hook me - I really was excited for where it was going to go. Unfortunately, it went really downhill really fast.
The writing style is fine. It's easy to read and isn't objectively bad, but it's not very advanced. I was being told a lot of stuff that didn't need to be spelled out for me, and I feel like the author just didn't include descriptive text about emotion. For a horror book, the emotion and suspense is so integral that to have a book without it just didn't feel scary.
We were introduced to upwards of 6 or 7 POVs and characters over the course of what I read, and I have no doubt that I didn't see the last of it. While in theory this is fine, it was a bit confusing, even with the author reminding us who everyone was and making it easy to understand. It just felt convoluted in places.
But what really made me DNF this book were the themes explored in it, and how openly and without meaning they were put into the story. A 14-year-old girl has been through hell and back, forced to sell her body just to find somewhere safe to hide and be loved, and the first thing our main character's bodyguard does is think about how much he wants to have sex with her but can't. Gross. Couple this with the fact that not even 2 chapters later, we read about a woman who is outcast from her family, lured away by a demon, then has "multiple orgasms" that produce 3 babies? Then, when those 3 babies grow up into young women, they have a family wide orgy? This all happened in maybe 15 pages. It wasn't enjoyable, and didn't feel like it had any place in this book.
The only horror storyline we saw was barely elaborated on, and didn't seem to matter in the point of the story I was in. It was just shock value, and disgusting imagery trying to get a rise out of the reader.