Status Updates From Twisted

Ralph is every bit as effective and memorable as Dick Hallorann.

"Why my generation gets a bad rap as being so focused on instant gratification, I'll never understand. It's a process."

The voice is a little incongruous here but still, these flashes of brilliance are sprinkled throughout the book in character development, creative use of flashbacks, narrative voices and mythology. Why the horror genre gets a bad rap as being so low-brow, I'll never understand.

Collings knows how to switch narrative perspectives and fill in the gaps so the reader feels like they're getting the full picture. It's really satisfying and serves to amplify the (twists) surprises that he sets up despite delivering the full story.

...he said it like an alcoholic, thanking someone for taking the wine off the table.

"Ali nearly had an embolism, an aneurysm and terminal diarrhea all at once."

Humor, too. You just get more book for your buck with this guy.

As the tension mounts, this starts to resemble great horror home-haunts like Matheson's Hell house, Burke's House on Abigail Lane and Malerman's House at the Bottom of a Lake. And of course, the timeless Shining.

Now that they've discovered the photo album, it's full Torrance-family territory.

"Though soon she'd want to feed. They all would."

Michaelbrent isn't always subtle and elegant with his hints of dread, but when he is, there are few who do it better.

A very Jack Torrance story minus the roque mallets and the topiary.

"Just as the greatest future experiences cannot be understood, so the worst past experiences can never be truly erased." This guy has so much to say that he doesn't have the time to give his books the publicity they deserve and the editing that would place them firmly in the next echelon of popular fiction. Understated brilliance.