Crime & Mystery
Pulpy premise, and it knows it. “That thing is growing again” is a very good engine for a thriller.
What kept me going wasn’t the big idea so much as the pace and atmosphere around it. When this kind of book works, it feels tense rather than just noisy. When it doesn’t, it turns into spectacle with chapters.
This one sits somewhere in the middle for me. Easy to read, hard to ignore, but I wanted a bit more dread and a bit less momentum for momentum’s sake.
What kept me going wasn’t the big idea so much as the pace and atmosphere around it. When this kind of book works, it feels tense rather than just noisy. When it doesn’t, it turns into spectacle with chapters.
This one sits somewhere in the middle for me. Easy to read, hard to ignore, but I wanted a bit more dread and a bit less momentum for momentum’s sake.
That premise does more for me than a lot of “big thriller” setups, because it’s properly odd. “That thing is growing again” has a bit of old-school pulp menace to it.
I do wonder if these books sometimes lean too hard on speed when the nastier, slower kind of dread would do more work. A growing thing is frightening on its own. It doesn’t need a drum solo.
I do wonder if these books sometimes lean too hard on speed when the nastier, slower kind of dread would do more work. A growing thing is frightening on its own. It doesn’t need a drum solo.