Since Every Dead Thing, I have been a fan of John Connolly. His Charlie Parker books are great detective/thriller novels with just a twist or hint of the supernatural. In fact, Connolly has specifically said that he leaves it to the reader to determine whether Parker’s “psychic abilities” are real or whether they are Parker’s mind getting away from him. With The Book of Lost Things, Connolly steps outside of his previous mythos and takes us on fairy tale about a boy (David) who gets transported from his world (England during a world war) to an alternative world.

Unlike most fairy tales, however, this alternative world is not bright and cheery. It is dark, depressing, full of monsters, and ruled by a king that has less and less power. Much of the book concerns David’s travels throughout the land to reach the king. He does this with the hope that the king will be able to help him return to the real world. In the meantime, David is shadowed and, at times, protected by The Crooked Man, who needs David’s help in order to live.

Connolly is a great storyteller and that shines through in this book. On his trip to find the king, the boy encounters several people from familiar fairy tales. However, those fairy tales have been twisted. For example, Little Red Riding Hood is willingly responsible for the half human, half wolf creatures that spend most of the book chasing the boy.

Despite the darkness of the world, Connolly manages to inject some humor into the scenes in which the boy meets Snow White and the dwarves. In Connolly’s world, Snow White is a lazy, overbearing, taskmaster that is hated by the dwarves and who scares off any potential prince who might marry her. In fact that best exchange of the book occurs when the boy is leaving the dwarves. The dwarves are retelling the Goldilocks story and they volunteer the information that the bears ate Goldilocks. David says that Goldilocks just ran away. The dwarves then say:

“That’s what ‘ran away and was never seen again’ means in these parts. It means ‘eaten.’ ”

“Um, and what about ‘happily ever after’?” asked David, a little uncertainly. “What does that mean?”

“Eaten quickly,” said Brother Number One.

As with his other books, Connolly takes what we know or what is normal and then twists it in a demented or unexpected way to keep his story fresh and interesting.

Although this book is different from Connolly’s others, I would not hesitate to recommend it.

Afraid

Jack Kilborn is the alter ego of J.A. Konrath, the author of the Jacqueline “Jack” Daniels series of crime novels. I am a big fan of those. Thus, I was happy when I was able to snag a review copy of his new book, Afraid. With Afraid, Konrath brings us a book that is quite different from the Jack Daniels books. Nevertheless, I enjoyed the book and recommend it to anyone who wants to add a little horror to their reading selection.

Although Afraid does not include the amount of humor that is found in the Jack Daniels book, there is enough snark to bring just a little levity to the book. Afraid involves a helicopter crash near Safe Haven, Wisconsin. That crash releases a merciless force on the town that endangers all of the residents.

Konrath does an excellent job of pushing a variety of psychological buttons to invoke fear in the reader. He does a particularly good job of placing people in danger and making it impossible for their loved ones to assist them. The action in this novel is virtually nonstop. There are no chapter breaks in the book. As a consequence, the scenes cut from one person in peril to the next person in peril.

I don’t want to go into details as to what the killers are or who lives. However, I will say that the killers are quite efficient and their body count is quite impressive. Additionally, I enjoyed the variety of methods of attack (for lack of a better term) that were used by both the killers and the citizens.

I also liked the fact that Konrath was not afraid (no pun intended) to kill citizens. I went through the entire book never knowing if the character whose viewpoint I was experiencing would be dead on the next page.

If you like horror and don’t mind a little bloodshed in your book, then you will want to check out Afraid.

Also, for the month of March, Konrath has been on a blog tour to promote the release of Afraid. If you have not checked out that tour, I urge you to do so at his blog, A Newbie’s Guide to Publishing. Konrath covers a wide variety of topics in his typical humor-filled manner. It is really engaging reading.