Comes The Dark by Patrick D’Orazio

After hiding in my work bag and playing peekaboo for almost a two weeks, I finally got the time I wanted to devote to reading Patrick D’Orazio’s first novel.  First novels are usually the skeleton in the closet of most decent writers, and very few of them should, or do end up in print.  Mine included, It may have scared me out of my writing career.  That said, I wanted to ensure I was giving it the attention it deserved.  This is the first in a series of three, and I have Into The Dark and Beyond The Dark waiting impatiently for my consumption.

The story follows Jeff, a nice enough guy living in the ‘burbs, who just wandered home during the apocalypse to find his wife and children have been chewed to pieces.  I felt bad for the guy, in a way only someone with children can.  While Jeff attempts his escape from a slaughtered suburb, he meets up with Megan and they decide on the “anywhere but here” survival theory.

The zombies were “touchable” in my opinion.  Lots of gore, but it wasn’t the explicit, gut-wrenching, over-the-top ooze that you see in many.  For this story, it was right in line with what it should have been.  The action scenes are rather fast and sometimes you only get a gist of what is going on, and you feel like you’ve lost a small part of the picture.

The most important and best part of the book itself was the character dynamic.  Jeff is a bit crazed after losing his family, Megan sneaks in like a lamb and roars out of the book with a boldness that could have only been forged in the most hazardous and frightening end-of-days conditions.  Megan is a bit flakey throught the book, going through phase changes often.  (I’m scared!  I’m brave!  I’m SUPER SURVIVOR!  I’m scared again…) They interact well together from the start, and the relationship develops very naturally during the plot.  There are other characters also, but these two are the literal Spam and pineapple for this particular book.

The only thing I’m going to give away about the ending is that you will be wanting more with the extreme cliff-hanger ending.  If he’d have quit and not written the other two books, I would probably be a very upset little reader right now.

Comes The Dark: A Zombie Novel [Paperback]
Author: Patrick D’Orazio
Cover Art By: Philip Rogers
Paperback: 208 pages
Publisher: CreateSpace
Released: July 16, 2010

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Softcover