For as long as I can remember, there has been a place in my heart for scary stories. Being the coward that I am this has caused me to spend many a night curled up in my bed under blankets with all of the lights on in my home.
So when I picked up the The Dark Horde by Brewin, I was not let down. This book managed to hit me where it hurts at every single point. Not only was it just scary it was creepy and at certain points it made me feel uncomfortable. All three of these are great assets in supernatural horror, and help this book stand out from the many others I have read.
The other aspect that really stood out to me was the rhythm of the writing. The narrative switches between the main story (in normal text) and observations of characters and the demons (in italics). This did wonders to the flow of the text giving the entire novel a catchy rhythm making it super easy to get sucked in to the story.
Yet this book was not without a few weaknesses. The author throws many different characters at the Reader and very few of them have distinct voices. I found that I was getting characters confused and had to backtrack a bit to figure out who was who and how they were related to other characters. This made it hard for me to care about the characters. Danny though (a young boy at a Boarding School) did manage to win my heart over and I really hoped to see him victorious despite all of the odds.
The other weakness was the ending of the novel. It ends on an ambiguous note, which I do like with my horror novels, but the build up to the ending is a little bit rushed. The pacing before the final few chapters is really well done, but it feels like a switch flicks at the end and the author just wanted to story to be done with.
Overall, I found The Dark Horde a great read and Brewin shows extreme potential and I hope to read more of his work. I highly recommend this book to anyone who enjoyed The Strain or has a soft spot for slasher flicks.
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