 Glimpse is the kind of book you finish and immediately want to read again. As soon as that last page is turned, there’s this kind of desperation, this feeling of “What if I missed something?” that might just be me making excuses for the fact that what I actually missed were some of the characters that I wasn’t ready to say goodbye to just yet… If you’re familiar with Maberry’s work, you know that he’s a talented author and that his way of crafting dynamic action scenes, powerful storylines, and kick-you-in-the-teeth endings is second to none. While those things are present in this book, it’s also something completely different. Fans of his Joe Ledger series will definitely find something to enjoy here, as will fans of the Pine Deep series, but Glimpse is also something completely new and entirely unique. I absolutely loved Glimpse, and if I had to pick just one favorite thing about it, creepy broken watch to my head… I’d say it’s the truly brilliant way the author manages to make things in the book seem simultaneously familiar and also brand spanking new, and he does this again and again and again and to great effect. Perhaps the best illustration of this is the book’s villain, Doctor Nine. Doctor Nine is, in a word, CREEPY. He’s absolutely terrifying, and fairly unique among horror antagonists… however there’s this edge of familiarity to him that’s juuuuust enough to convince me that I KNOW that guy! After he makes his first appearance, I set the book down struggling to remember whether or not I’d had a nightmare about that very thing myself at some point, which is an awful concept that immediately drew me deeper into the book itself and brought it alive like nothing else could have. Glimpse is the tale of Rain Thomas, a young woman with a dark past. She’s a former addict that gave her baby up for adoption after his father died in Iraq without even knowing Rain was pregnant. It’s the kind of thing that might drive anyone a little over the edge. After succumbing to drug addiction as a way to escape guilt over what she’d done for a period of years, Rain is now clean and doing her best to live her life. She’s been abandoned by her family, struggled to find a job, and has built a life for herself in New York. Everything starts to come apart for her one day when… well, when one day just disappears. That’s only the beginning of this unique, dazzling thriller that features one of my favorite settings of all time, a world I’d love to visit known as The Fire Zone. Rain is my favorite kind of protagonist; deeply flawed, heartbreakingly real, and relatable. She’s human, and the things she does and the decisions she makes when presented with horrible events makes her feel like someone I know, someone I could be friends with, maybe even just someone a bit like me. The book is populated by a host of memorable characters, vivid settings, and gut wrenching twists and turns that will keep you flipping the pages well into the night… and leaving all the lights on after you’ve gone to bed. If I have a criticism, it’s that my favorite character and, perhaps the most interesting character in the book (which is saying something) isn’t introduced right away. He comes in somewhere around halfway through and while I understand the decision to hold off on his introduction, I was left wanting more, more, more of him in specific. If you like supernatural thrillers, if you dig stories that put you into the heart of the action and make you wonder what you’d do when faced with events beyond your control, or if you just really like a masterfully crafted tale, I recommend Glimpse highly.   FIVE MINUTES WITH AUTHOR KITTY HONEYCUTT |
Archives
May 2023
|
RSS Feed
|
|