Pandora's Game

Triumvirate #1

by Christopher Andrews

College students Neil Carpenter and Mark Hudson set out to create "The Triumvirate," a comic book about a vampire, a werewolf, and a zombie who resist their evil natures and hunt their own kind. When Neil learns hypnosis in his Psychology class, he proposes using it to enrich the characters - they could hypnotize themselves into believing that they are the characters, then exchange interviews. To test the idea, Neil assumes the identity of the vampire - the wealthy and deeply religious Alistaire Bachman. The Game begins ... ... a Game that leads to a whirlwind of confusion, murder, and impossibility.

248 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 1999

About the author

Christopher Andrews lives in California with his wife, Yvonne Isaak-Andrews, and their wonderful daughter, Arianna. In addition to his duties as stay-at-home Dad, he is always working on his next novels, and continues to work as an actor and screenwriter.

Excerpts from all of Christopher’s novels can be found at www.ChristopherAndrews.com.

Reviews

[Conan Tigard · Rating 3 out of 5]

Right from the get-go, I found myself enjoying this story. The theme of this book intrigued me and I couldn't wait to see what happened next. I did enjoy both the werewolf and the vampire characters, but was slightly disappointed with the lack of presence of the zombie in the story. Trey really wasn't in the story very much. Of course, he is a zombie and is kind of brain-dead, so that might have something to do with it.

I only had one other small problem. Once, when Neil was "with" a girl, he bit her on the neck so hard that he punctured her skin with his canines. Was this an attempt to show the reader that the realities were mixing and Alistaire was crossing over a little? If so, I had a problem with this logic. Since Alistaire is different from all other vampires in that he is a Christian, and he has never in his five hundred years drank the blood of a live victim, why was Neil doing this? Alistaire would never have done it. I still don't know. But the story is well-told and moved along at a good pace.

The characters are appealing and the concept is absorbing. There are more than a few errors either in spelling or punctuation, but don't let that dissuade you from reading this story. Pandora's Game is well worth the time spent. There is also a 27 page sneak preview for Paranormals in the back of the book.

I rated this book a 7 out of 10.

[Lindy · Rating 1 out of 5]

Very puzzled on why this book has high ratings. When I picked it up, I had high hopes for this novel. An author who seeks hypnosis to better understand his characters? Yes plz, sign me up.

Unfortunately, this book didn't carry it's weight. In fact, it didn't even carry an editor. I stared at this sentence for about six minutes: "...no, let's say that he never to ok it directly from the living..." until I figured out there was an accidental space in the word took. And this is on page five! The rest of the story is littered with typos and misspellings and an overuse of random italics. Ugg, don't get me started on the italics. You will find one italicized word per paragraph in this novel. It's nuts. Drove me crazy.

The characters were ok. I didn't hate them but I wasn't in love with them either. The writing was ok too. It wasn't fantastic, just ok. I just wish the author edited the novel because it could've been a great story. The typos were getting to me and the italics were really killing the story. I stopped right about page 80. Gave it a good shot, but it just wasn't holding up.

[Dan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Interesting concept, makes you think about how deep our own mind can go before we loose all control