Wednesday 19 September 2012

HISTORICAL URBAN FANTASY: Dark Asylum - Matthew Cowden

Release Date: 06/04/12

SYNOPSIS:

All families have secrets. Some are just far darker than others.
Pennsylvania, 1895. Evil and madness hide within the walls of the Gaskell’s gothic, country mansion, and some believe ghosts roam the halls to torture the living. Emily Radcliffe, the Gaskell’s governess, has her own dark past, one she has been hiding from under the shelter of this sinister home.
A blood thirsty killer escapes from a nearby mental hospital, leaving a trail of carnage and cat-and-mouse games through the streets of Allegheny City, and giving the police the impression that the Gaskell family may be his eventual target. Mystery, madness and carnage gradually surround Emily as she becomes trapped in this dark world of secrets and sin.
Dark Asylum is a tale of the late Edgar Gaskell, a man who is the key to unlocking the horrifying secrets of a tortured family and horrors beyond imagination... Only read Dark Asylum if you wish to suffer...


REVIEW:

As a reader I like books that are a little different and whilst this one took me back to a real gothic feel in the beginning, it sort of felt like an amalgamation of two separate idea’s to extend the concept into a full length novel that lost pace half way through. As a reader it fell flat from such a promising beginning and whilst the introduction of graphic De Sadesque torture sequences really made me feel that it was there more to shock and tantalise rather than deliver a full length tale.

All in it wasn’t quite the book I was hoping for and sadly for me, means that Matthew will not be top of my TBR pile any time soon. Don’t get me wrong, the first part worked wonderfully for me and because of that I will give him another crack of the whip but I just hope that the next tale is more defined rather than the shock tactics within this one.


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