He’s spent his life doing his best not to live up to his potential.
He’s obsessed with serial killers, but really doesn’t want to become one. So for his own sake, and the safety of those around him, he lives by rigid rules he’s written for himself, practicing normal life as if it were a private religion that could save him from damnation.
Dead bodies are normal to John. He likes them, actually. They don’t demand or expect the empathy he’s unable to offer. Perhaps that’s what gives him the objectivity to recognize that there’s something different about the body the police have just found behind the Wash-n-Dry Laundromat---and to appreciate what that difference means.
Now, for the first time, John has to confront a danger outside himself, a threat he can’t control, a menace to everything and everyone he would love, if only he could.
Dan Wells’s debut novel is the first volume of a trilogy that will keep you awake and then haunt your dreams.
I told Dan I checked out this book FOUR times at the library and THREE times returned it without reading it. I was a chicken, I admitted it. He told me if I could get past chapter one, it wasn't bad.
I made it past one and kept going. Fascinating, troubling, brillant, strange story!
I don't read or watch horror. I don't recommend this book to anyone who doesn't like horror.
Then I had an interesting story pop into my head about a girl who can't have a BFF because they all die. So I thought I should read Dan's book, ya know, compare horror.
But mine isn't really horror either...
Rating: Adult (max)
L: None
S: None
V: Yes
Page 69 test:
"...people in them to hear me. Freaks respected each other's privacy. "He stole a kidney from the first one, but what did he take from the second?" The police weren't talking, but we'd get the body at the mortuary soon. I picked up a rock and threw it in the lake.
I looked down the road a few hundred yards to the nearest car; it was white and old, and the driver was staring out at the water.
"Are you the killer?" I asked softly. There were five or six people here today, at various points on the road. How long before Mom's prediction came true, and people in town started blaming each other? People feared what was different, would win the witch-hunt lottery. Would it be one of the freaks who escaped to the lake? What would they do to him?
Everyone knew I was a freak. Would they blame me?
The second body arrived at the mortuary eight days later. Mom and I had spoken little about my sociopath, but I'd made sure to try harder in school as a way of throwing her off the scent--making her think about my good traits instead of my disturbing ones. Apparently it worked, because when I came home to the mortuary after school and found them working on the second victim's body, Mom didn't stop me from pulling on an apron and mask and starting to help.
"What's missing?" I asked, holding bottles for Mom as she poured formaldehyde into the pump. Margaret had only a few organs on the side counter, and she was busily sticking them with the trocar and vacuuming them clean. I assumed the rest..."
No comments:
Post a Comment