Shadowlands
Author: Alan S. Kessler
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Price: $5.99
On the outside, Steve Goldblatt is an example of the American dream--a man who has achieved wealth and power. But his worship of gold masks the emptiness of his soul. He has survived a tormented and brutalized childhood by descending into madness. As the story unfolds, the careful wall he has constructed between his outwardly normal life and bizarre inner landscape, between sanity and derangement, begins to disintegrate with unforeseen and tragic consequences. via amazon.com
Kessler's Shadowlands was a mixed bag for me.
Coming in, I had high hopes, eagerly awaiting the horrors living inside the mind of Steve Goldblatt, but the experience was marred with a few roadblocks.
- Block #1: Steve Goldblatt is not a likeable character., He suffered abuse(mental and physical) as a child, but still he’s a terrible person that does horrid things. It’s hard to get behind such character(at least for me).
- Block #2: The writing in places is frantic and hard to keep up with. In one moment a character is blasting away with crisp dialogue and then switches to another character. and before long I got lost.
Ultimately, I was drawn back to the horrible mind of the main character; wanting to see what awaited him.
I’ll most likely come back to this at a later date and see if my opinion changes.