Sci-Fi & Scary

My co-host is officially reviewing The Nightmare Room for the site. I forgot we'd accepted it for official review, and picked it up from KU because I'd seen so many good reviews on it. So, technically, Chris Sorenson will be getting two reviews from us! But mine is the one not submitted by the author for review consideration.


This was a dang good book. It feels like its been forever since I read a book that creeped me out as effectively as The Nightmare Room did. The story sucks you in at once even with the potential pain involved with the how-to-begin-a-horror-story cliché tragedy involving a husband and wife. (Yeah, you’ll need a whopping 1 guess to figure out what it is.) But, as I believe I’ve said before, it’s the mark of a good writer if they can take something that normally induces eye-rolls or jaw-cracking yawns for the unoriginality and spring something interesting off of it. Sorenson has the mark of a good writer.

The Nightmare Room was proceeding along its merry little interesting-but-been-there-done-that path when things suddenly shifted just a bit to the left. And then you blinked, and it shifted a little bit more to the left. Pretty soon, it was zooming straight towards Albuquerque and you’re wondering where the hell you’re going to stop.

And the birds. THE BIRDS. Like you know when there’s a bird in a horror movie that things are definitely gonna involve flapping, squawking, slicing, and beady little eyes, right? Right. But even knowing the layout, the lines of it will still make you do a solid: “Yep. NOPE!” I noped. I noped, shuddered, and noped again.

The pacing is fantastic. The dialogue was perfect. The atmosphere Sorenson creates in The Nightmare Room is so thick and heavy you could practically bottle it. I was so completely wrapped up in this story that I remember thinking at one point that I was very glad I was reading it during the day, when dark was still several hours away. I loved the fact that the author kept twisting things just enough that I wasn’t always sure I could trust my assumptions.

It wasn’t perfect, though. I can’t say too much about the issues I had without spoiling some very major plot points, unfortunately. I just thought the author should have stopped about 3% (read on Kindle) earlier than he did, because it was a very powerful scene. Instead, it kind of did the whole “squeeze every last microgram of the toothpaste outta the tube” thing. Still satisfying, but not as satisfying as it could have been. And, uh, yeah. That’s actually all I can say without spoiling. Sorry!

Two favorite lines (that don’t spoil anything):

“God, what the hell happened to your hair? You look like Einstein f*cked Jerry Garcia.”

&

He would ‘yes, dear’ her into submission. Better that than to let her peek into the world in which he was now living—a world where the dead were restless and clawing.

 

Overall, just a great job, and the things that I had problems with are mostly personal things that might not bother other people at all. So take my criticisms with a grain of salt.