This read was trick on the mind. What started out as a somewhat slow pace of development, it wasn't until more than half way through the novel did things start progress. With the anticipation of horror as the initial expectation of the book's main development, Alessandro took his time, allowing the reader to fully understand the victims and where they were going. At first, it seemed the nightmare was going to be light in nature, but in time, Alessandro unleashes hell on his readers, allowing the sacred development of his well crafted, well background characters, suffer the true horror that awaited them.
This book was a cross breed of many different types of horror. To name a few, I would say a mixture of Hellraiser meets Evil Dead meets Cthulhu. Ancient ones of other worldly plains comes to mind, and there is no fail to say this is reminiscent of HP Lovecraft. This is a compliment for sure. This was a nice start for the author, a first book with some real grotesque scenes. If you like the violence and gore, this is your avenue, you just have to be patient.
Somethings to note are that some of the characters were consistently whiney, which can be a good thing, in order to rouse the reader into a tension that is required for these sort of reads. At some point you either wish these types of characters would either disappear of die off. I'll leave it to your imagination.
As for the pacing of the story as mentioned before, the beginning was a little slow and prompted me to not continue in a quick fashion, but persistence paid off, for soon I found myself engulfed in a maelstrom of diabolical filth and destruction, blood and guts, dripping through the floor boards an into your mouth. Gagging is an understatement. Alessandro is good at attacking every one of your senses, and then piles it on even thicker than pancake syrup. Thank you for reminding me how grateful we should all be that our lives are somewhat normal and not following in the shadow of Rei's life.
It would be neat to see a follow up to this story, with some sort of relation to it.
4 out 5 stars.
F. D. Gross