Silent Dawn

by C.L. Raven

Longlisted in the Exeter Novel Prize and the Flash 500 Novel competition. Silent Dawn isn't real. She's a terrifying computer game character who erodes players' sanities. Just because her legend dates back to the 1600s, doesn't mean she's real. Just because people are vanishing, doesn't mean she's real. Just because she's standing in the corner… Reality is an illusion. Drake Skelton, Ben Crewe and Keira Black are seventeen-year-old outcasts. Their obsession with Silent Asylum seems normal, until game features creep into their missing persons' posters, defaced patient records, the mutilated Victorian patient who hanged herself in the woods. Her madness infects you. As more people play the game, the veil between her reality and theirs is torn down until they can no longer trust their own minds. But this is real life. Computer game characters don’t kidnap teenagers, or poison their minds with a siren song of suicide. Yet there’s something…the flash of her red dress from the corners of their eyes. The shadow that creeps across their walls at night. The sinister humming that warns them they’re not really alone… She's coming.

Genres: Horror

278 pages, Kindle Edition

First published December 12, 2016

About the author

C L Raven are identical twins from Cardiff who love all things horror. They spend their time looking after their animal army and drinking more Red Bull than the recommended government guidelines. Along with their friend Neen, they prowl the country hunting for ghosts for their YouTube show, Calamityville Horror.

Their work has featured in 8 Hours Anthology, published by Legend Press; August 2010 issue of Writing Magazine (winning ghost story); The Pages Anthologies; Dark Fire Fiction, Dark Moon Digest, Siren’s Call and the Mammoth Book of Jack the Ripper. They also contribute articles to Haunted Digital Magazine and Oapschat. They have self-published six short story collections, one novella and one novel, which was shortlisted in the National Self-Publishing Awards. Their unpublished novels, Bleeding Empire and Silent Dawn were longlisted in the 2013 & 2014 Exeter Novel Prize.

Reviews

[destiny ♡ howling libraries]

DNF @ 30%

I may give this one a try again sometime, but I kept getting taken out of the eerie mystery by all of the banter. I love horror-comedy, but the constant volley of playful (or not) insults between characters made it hard to get sucked into the storyline, and the book as a whole felt a bit heavy on dialogue. That said, I'd definitely try reading something else by these authors in the future!

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[Peter Germany · Rating 5 out of 5]

Silent Dawn tells the story of Ben, Keira, and Drake and their interest of a video game Silent Dawn, and how the game seems to begin merging into the real world.
This book is beautifully written, paced, structured, and doesn't hold back from putting the protagonist through their paces. It has a tension that rises as the story progresses and as a reader I was wondering what was really going on with the story. There was times when I couldn't quite figure out what exactly might be happening.

Each one of the protagonist has a lot of depth and all have a very engaging personality. Each one felt very genuine, as did their home lives and what they had to go through when they were at school. These teenagers are not the stereotypical teenagers that you see in the media, and for me that is one of the things that made them more real. That and what they went through when they were at school. Ben, Keira, and Drake are goths and they suffer the fact that they are not afraid to be different from the herd. What the characters went through with their class mates and teachers is so exquisitely handled by C L Raven it felt like I was there with them. I got a little bullying when I was at school but it wasn't to the extent that Ben, Keira, and Drake go through though.

Something I really like about how C L Raven have written this is that we don't really see a lot of Silent Dawn. They keep her as the boogey man type character, and that works really well for the story. As I was reading it I was never quite sure when or where she'd appear in the story.

I'll wrap this review with a quick comment about the social commentary and humour in this story. The dialogue between Ben, Keira, and Drake is just beautiful. It's humorous, on point, character building, and just fun. There was more than a few times which had me laughing aloud.

I enjoyed this book massively, and would recommend that people check it out.

[J.S. Strange · Rating 5 out of 5]

Silent Dawn sees the existence of a character from a video game, as she torments a small Welsh town. This is probably one of the best CL Raven books I've read.

Taking inspiration from the likes of Resident Evil and Slenderman, Silent Dawn is a 'character' that haunts an asylum, before stealing your sanity. She can't possibly be real.

But as Ben, Keira and Drake do their research, they learn she might not be imaginary. They begin seeing her in the oddest of places, and each one individually becomes tormented by her existence.

This novel is cleverly written, with suspense that builds up well and a story that keeps developing until the very last page. It's brilliant storytelling, and full of facts that the writers are keen to share with their readers. I particularly liked Drake's involvement and link to Silent Dawn herself.

I also enjoyed that as well as developing the main characters, we also get a chance to see the development of Silent Dawn. She's a legend that has been talked about for centuries, which really adds to the story.

I'd highly recommend this.

[Mathology · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a fantastic book. I couldn't put it down

[Richard E. Rock · Rating 5 out of 5]

After reading and thoroughly enjoying The Malignant Dead, a macabre tale of life and death (but mostly death) set in the plague-ravaged gutters of 17th century Edinburgh, I was in the mood for another grisly fix from ghost-chasing, pole-dancing, horror-fixated twins CL Raven, so I picked up Silent Dawn and dived in.
This novel is a very different beast, trading old Scotland for present day Wales, plague doctors for ostracised Goths, and a rampaging disease for a deadly computer game character.
A spate of disappearances has thrown a dark cloud over the fictional town of Blackwater, and gay Goth Ben thinks he knows who the culprit is; computer game character Silent Dawn. Accompanied by his friends, serial killer-obsessed Goth Drake (aka Drakeula) and creative Goth Keira, he pursues his suspicions and discovers that Silent Dawn did not begin life as an amalgamation of code, but as a dark figure of folklore stretching back centuries.
As our heroes delve deeper into the grim game, in which they explore a terrifying abandoned asylum, Silent Dawn, with her hollow eyes and stitched-up mouth, burrows deeper into their psyches until they can’t be sure whether if she is actually real or if they’re losing their minds. The only thing they are sure of is that in order to save themselves and the children she has taken, they have to destroy her.
Silent Dawn (the book, that is, not the character), is fun, scary, compelling and brutal. Despite the madness and the asylum and the gore, it’s written with a light touch and a genuine, heartfelt compassion for the characters.
Ben is both loveable and infuriating, endlessly cracking jokes even as Silent Dawn invades his life. Drake is tormented not only by the mutilated title character but also by Ben’s besotted younger sister. And Keira, who never leaves home, it seems, without her trusty sketchbook, is gritty, resilient and compassionate.
But as well as being a creepy horror this book also touches on a more serious and sombre issue; that of bullying. Throughout the story our trio of heroes face scorn and ridicule for daring to be different. And as a Goth and a member of the LGBTQ community, Ben gets it twice as bad.
I’ll definitely be getting stuck into some more books by CL Raven in the near future, but for now...it’s game over.

[Jonki Silfwerax · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great creepy book, amazing writers, definitely recommend their books

[Aimee · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nice concept, but not wonderfully executed.
Too much banter and unnecessary jokes - literally every other sentence has the characters calling each other names. The fact that they talk about eyes being gouged out but yet they say things like "jumping jellyfish" and "jizzcakes" to convey shock had me cringing too.
The book actually got ok in the last 5 chapters but then just ends abruptly...