something black...

by Steven Montano

The end of the world is here.A mysterious commuter train crash leaves no survivors, but that's just the beginning. Within 24 hours, most of Washington's population has vanished, and chaos spreads like wildfire as murderous shadow creatures ruthlessly hunt down the scattered survivors.Now a desperate band of refugees struggles to stay alive as they race across a deserted countryside in search of safety. But there are two among them who are not what they seem. One is the cause of all of this madness. And another has been chosen to stop it.Something evil is coming. Something sinister. Something black...

Genres: Horror

139 pages, Kindle Edition

First published June 15, 2012

Reviews

[Randy Harmelink · Rating 3 out of 5]

The author is very good at writing horrific scenes and describing events. However, there were two major issues I had with the book:

1. The jumping back and forth in time is not the type of story I enjoy. I want the story to flow over me, to engulf me. It just becomes jolting to have to reset the perspective every chapter, to work at fitting the current chapter into the overall puzzle of what is going on.

2. There's a chapter of the book where everything is "spoon fed" to us -- what is going on, why it is happening, what needs to happen to resolve the situation, etc. Those types of things should be revealed piece by piece while the story itself is being told, not suddenly explained to us as if it is something the author forgot to tell us and thinks we need to know to catch up to what is going on.

[Tammy K. · Rating 4 out of 5]

I give this book 4 stars (better then average) based on the 'overall' read.
There are issues within the book that had the ending not been so good, would have caused me to drop this down to three stars (an average read).
Yet once the story is finally pieced together it is an exciting apocalyptic story, that causes one to think about it more when your done reading it and so that pushed the book back up to four stars.

There are a few grammar issues, however I felt these were only minor distractions.

The big flaw in this book, and the reason I almost stopped reading it all together is the constant time flip flop. Most every chapter is in another time frame. It starts off in a vague time frame, then runs a few days in a row, then jumps back 3 years ago, then back to 3 days ago, then backward to two years ago, then one year ago, then back to two days ago and this keeps going on and on flipping into pre-time, back again to modern time... Wow, this was not only distracting, but it broke the rhythm of the story.
This isn't that long of a story, but due to the confusion, and frustration of this flip flopping, it took me all day to read this because I kept putting the book down out of annoyance/confusion.

There is a fair amount of violence, gore, and cursing in this story. So much so that I full-heartedly agree with the authors' tags of 'Horror' 'Gore' and 'Violence' Warning. An example of this, would be the 'descriptive' torture scenes of the captured soldiers.

Characters: due to the jumping around in time frame it was difficult to bond to and understand the motivation of the characters until almost the last few pages.

Plot execution: due to the jumping back and forth in time, it took a long time to understand the direction the plot was moving, but once we got to the end and could piece together where the author was taking us, the plot played out predictably and with a reasonable amount of satisfaction.

Pace of the book: Each chapter had its' own pace. Again I would say due to the jumping around in time frame, the overall pace (rhythm) of the book was sporadic.

So do I recommend this book? If you take everything I have said into consideration and can adapt to the choppiness, and the violence then... Yes, I recommend this book to those who read apocalyptic, science fiction, occult fiction.

[Bandit · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is one of those things where a perfectly good individual parts don't make up a particularly impressive total. The sum remains wanting. Montano is a good writer, the separate chapters of the story attest to it, he lacks neither talent nor imagination, the story segments are strong and the plot is original, but putting it all together didn't quite work. The incessant timeline serves here as a tremendous detractor, the story comes across as disjointed and confusing, unnecessarily so. This end of the world scenario would have really benefited from a more linear narration. As is it was a decent quick read and a display of a somewhat wasted potential. Looks like all the author's other books are series. This reads like a part one of something, but appears to be a stand alone, as it (and most books)should be.

[Shannon Gambino · Rating 5 out of 5]

something black... is one incredible piece of apocalyptic writing. The chaotic speed at which the state of Washington is attacked is conveyed in the writing style. Past, present, and future all become inter-woven at the same moment in time. This story shows every action has an equal and opposite reaction, or better yet, every choice has an equal and opposite outcome. The pace of the storyline and movement between characters throughout moments in time can be daunting and sometimes confusing, but the story is thick, gruesome, and juicy. A single point of clarity emerges in the final moments of utter chaos and loss of life.

Steven Montano's ability to weave a story together piece-by-piece and character-by-character with such intense imagery never ceases to amaze me. something black... does not disappoint. Having been engrossed in Mr. Montano's books since 2011, his ability to bounce within a story fascinates me just as much as the story itself.

[Kristy · Rating 4 out of 5]

First I want to say that Steven is an excellent writer, fully able to pull me into the story and baffle me with his incredible choice of wording. I've read the entire Blood Skies series (up to date anyway; obviously there's still a lot to come in that one) and enjoyed it, so I was really looking forward to reading this one and seeing how he wrote something a little different.

And I was not disappointed. I tore through this book in less than 24 hours. It intrigued me right from the first chapter and I could hardly put it down. It's also the kind of book your brain continues to chew at after you're done with it. I kept thinking, "well then how? ...but then what? ...ohhhhh!!" Very enjoyable read.

Content Rating: R-LV ... (L) Some, but not overpowering. (V) Obviously. If you couldn't tell that from the book's synopsis, then I don't know what to say about you.

[Renee McKinley · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book. Each chapter is a different time. In each time a bit more of the story is opened. I found myself reading just to get to the next "time jump" to see how the pieces fell into place.

I would like to have had a bit more background on a couple of the characters. Why they were chosen for a particular task.

Toward the end the story seemed to bog a little with trying to explain the "whys" of the conflict. Maybe more chapters to unfold these reasons would have made a better flow there.

The ending was well executed though. And perhaps left room for more adventure to come.

[N. Kuhn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sure the author can write horror. But, the story jumps all over the place. I feel it could have been written a litle better. The plot of the story is completely given out at once instead of developing through out the book. I found it hard to enjoy. Most of the time I spent trying to figure out the time frame. I mean.. it goes from One month from now to Four days ago, Three days ago then Three years ago. I just couldn't enjoy this.

[Zoë · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not as ghastly as they will have you believe in short its a rip off of justin cronins the passage.