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wrenl's review
2.0
23281754
Amazon / Goodreads
A book that challenges the word "powerful" and obliterates it
Written in searing prose, this is the story of two boys: Erik, who performs miracles, and Thorn, who hears voices. The book chronicles their lives as their minds devolve into hallucinations, and shows the way their worlds intersect, culminating in a final stand-off.
This debut novel offer a raw, insightful look at the forces that compel us to act against our will. Even more so, it captivates and dares us to look away, knowing full well we can't.
I just...I don't even know what to say.
Whoa.
*This will be a short review.*
The two main characters were the best and strongest points. They were fascinating. Perhaps creepily so.
Erik made miracles. I didn't see that, though. Where are the miracles? Where? I didn't read miracles happening. I wanted what I was promised. That's all I ask for. I felt like there should have been something else. Something more. And when did he make his lovely girlfriend like him? Or push him away? With the double perspective, it can be harder to show all that happens. We get certain parts of their lives. That is simply a problem for me because I get left out of the loop. Erik could have been better. Given him some more personality. He was locked in this vicious cycle where he would just take the pain and talk about 'you'. He believed that he would be a husband in the future and married to a girl he never met. While I his dreaming, I didn't expect it to happen.
Thorn was controlled by the voices. The Sawmen. The Guardians. The Architect. I thought he was hearing things. That HE was causing pain upon himself. Which might make sense if the Architect didn't enter his body. (I'm still confused about that.) He thought his parents were demons, and perhaps parents are. (But that would mean all future parents are demons as well. Especially since Thorn thought it was appropriate to cut off the demon-ness at the source--when you are young.) I don't think that's entirely right. It's an odd way of thinking. That just means babies are evil before they are evil. Doesn't make too much sense to me.
Is what made these two special just a lie? Are they just in an insane asylum pretending this happened? (Credit to my friend for that reasoning.) It made no sense to me. I could just not understand this. That might be it.
The plot was a mess. I don't even want to try to comprehend the mess that is the plot. It was too confusing. So much happened. Since the story seemed to be told in little chunks, I hoped for little battles of the mind or something. That's not what I got. I ended up with two very confusing perspectives that didn't do much. The little chunks described random thoughts and happenings. It wasn't much. There wasn't much plot.
It wasn't until the end that the two met. And that didn't seem right to me since we were promised a meeting in the premise. I felt like there was too much on both their sides.
The ending was...confusing as well. What happened? Why the guns? Is there a rhyme or reason for any of this? I didn't find it if there is. There was no reason for Thorn to even meet Erik. Unless persuaded by someone else, Thorn would have never met Erik. I thought they would meet at school or something. But no. They randomly met in a park. What compelled Erik to be there? Fate? I don't think so!
The afterword was bittersweet. That afterword was good for me. I liked it. It made no sense with the story, though. What do little kids playing have anything to do with Erik and Thorn? I'm not sure.
This story was a whole bunch of 'I don't know's. And a lot of confusion. I couldn't understand the story. That's maybe the first thing. I didn't understand. I couldn't. Some might be able to understand. I didn't. That's simply it.
Weather:
Sunny with a 80% chance of rain
2/5
Amazon / Goodreads
A book that challenges the word "powerful" and obliterates it
Written in searing prose, this is the story of two boys: Erik, who performs miracles, and Thorn, who hears voices. The book chronicles their lives as their minds devolve into hallucinations, and shows the way their worlds intersect, culminating in a final stand-off.
This debut novel offer a raw, insightful look at the forces that compel us to act against our will. Even more so, it captivates and dares us to look away, knowing full well we can't.
I just...I don't even know what to say.
Whoa.
*This will be a short review.*
The two main characters were the best and strongest points. They were fascinating. Perhaps creepily so.
Erik made miracles. I didn't see that, though. Where are the miracles? Where? I didn't read miracles happening. I wanted what I was promised. That's all I ask for. I felt like there should have been something else. Something more. And when did he make his lovely girlfriend like him? Or push him away? With the double perspective, it can be harder to show all that happens. We get certain parts of their lives. That is simply a problem for me because I get left out of the loop. Erik could have been better. Given him some more personality. He was locked in this vicious cycle where he would just take the pain and talk about 'you'. He believed that he would be a husband in the future and married to a girl he never met. While I his dreaming, I didn't expect it to happen.
Thorn was controlled by the voices. The Sawmen. The Guardians. The Architect. I thought he was hearing things. That HE was causing pain upon himself. Which might make sense if the Architect didn't enter his body. (I'm still confused about that.) He thought his parents were demons, and perhaps parents are. (But that would mean all future parents are demons as well. Especially since Thorn thought it was appropriate to cut off the demon-ness at the source--when you are young.) I don't think that's entirely right. It's an odd way of thinking. That just means babies are evil before they are evil. Doesn't make too much sense to me.
Is what made these two special just a lie? Are they just in an insane asylum pretending this happened? (Credit to my friend for that reasoning.) It made no sense to me. I could just not understand this. That might be it.
The plot was a mess. I don't even want to try to comprehend the mess that is the plot. It was too confusing. So much happened. Since the story seemed to be told in little chunks, I hoped for little battles of the mind or something. That's not what I got. I ended up with two very confusing perspectives that didn't do much. The little chunks described random thoughts and happenings. It wasn't much. There wasn't much plot.
It wasn't until the end that the two met. And that didn't seem right to me since we were promised a meeting in the premise. I felt like there was too much on both their sides.
The ending was...confusing as well. What happened? Why the guns? Is there a rhyme or reason for any of this? I didn't find it if there is. There was no reason for Thorn to even meet Erik. Unless persuaded by someone else, Thorn would have never met Erik. I thought they would meet at school or something. But no. They randomly met in a park. What compelled Erik to be there? Fate? I don't think so!
The afterword was bittersweet. That afterword was good for me. I liked it. It made no sense with the story, though. What do little kids playing have anything to do with Erik and Thorn? I'm not sure.
This story was a whole bunch of 'I don't know's. And a lot of confusion. I couldn't understand the story. That's maybe the first thing. I didn't understand. I couldn't. Some might be able to understand. I didn't. That's simply it.
Weather:
Sunny with a 80% chance of rain
2/5
alienor's review
4.0
► Trust me, if a book can become an instant favorite and yet make me wary to recommend it, it's this one. From what I could read, the opinions are mixed (just look at the ratings) and I can't say that I don't understand why - anyway, sorry if it comes out with know it all vibes, but to me? This book deserves more praise, because it challenges yourself as a reader and delivers a complex cast of characters that I'm not likely to forget anytime soon. And if we get our new vampire or cute romance every week in the new release charts (we do), I can't find another book like this one - how powerful it is for a compliment, tell me?
"Speak only when they're something worth saying. Speak only when it's necessary. When is there anything worth saying? Can you tell me? When is it necessary?"
After reading several reviews, the complaint that emerges the most is the fact that there's no plot. With this I both agree and disagree (and now you can wrap your head in your arms and yell, because I do realize that I'm telling anything and everything with this sentence).
Yes it has no regular, well-wrapped plot, as we follow slices of life from two different narrators, Erik and Thorn, throughout several periods of times. Therefore if you expect a beginning, a middle, and a end (exposition - rising action - resolution) you'll probably end disappointed.
However, I never stopped thinking that the path that we readers followed was making sense but perhaps I'm just that sort of weird. Maybe. Boris Vian and André Breton have owned my heart all my teenage years, after all. So, who knows - surely not me.
"I wish all the voices I hear inside my head would melt down into one voice, a voice I can trust."
Nevertheless, what I do know is the fact that Fell of dark was such a gripping, compelling read that I couldn't put it down from the moment I started it, even though I only planned to steal a glance at it.
As for the writing, I found it absolutely incredible, and I'm weighing my words here. Actually, this is the kind of books that make me overjoyed to be able to read in English, because I'm not sure a translation could do justice to all the beautiful experimentations Patrick Downes uses, from the haunting metaphors to the short and even one word sentences. I loved it to pieces, as in my opinion nothing is useless and every sentence serves its purpose, whether it's to make me think or feel.
"You people. You people.
Youpeopleyoupeopleyoupeople. Cowards, every one of you. What, what, what, what keeps your legs from breaking under all the weight of your fears and lies and hatred? Human beings. I'm not one of you. I'm outside your fences. I'm running around you at the speed of light, you goddamn beasts. But you think I'm the monster."
I felt everything - every struggle the characters must face, and trust me, there're plenty. Indeed from Erik's letter to its future wife to Thorn's wanderings through the several voices spreading from his head, what Patrick Downes offers us is a poignant descent into madness that managed to break my heart and made me tearing up at the most random moment. Now, that's what I call a brilliant author, and I'm not too shy to write it : Patrick Downes, I admire you.
► To be frank, the only reason that prevented me from rating it 5 stars is the ending, which was strangely anticlimactic in my opinion. Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining about what happened in the end, no. But the truth is, I expected another way to relate it, something else than the dialogues that left me feeling almost empty. Anyway, it's a matter of personal taste, so perhaps you'll like it more. Please tell me.
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lazygal's review
3.0
What a weird, odd book: are Erik and Thorn the same person, just different personalities or aspects in one insane mind? Are they two different people, both mentally damaged in some way? Over the course of four years, at two year intervals, we check in with the two, seeing how they develop and what their lives are like, until at the end they collide. It's unsettling to say the least, and there are passages, at the end mostly, where one has to re-read to understand what exactly is going on.
ARC provided by publisher.
ARC provided by publisher.
kyleg99's review
3.0
I really appreciated the writing and unconventional style of storytelling that Downes used here, as well as the high readability the novel has. I wasn't as much of a fan of the lack of a plot the novel had, and although possibly intentional, I really never connected to either Erik or Thorn. I also found their individual voices to be too similar, and the sudden ways their stories intersected was too out of nowhere for my taste, even if there was one bit of foreshadowing prior.
jenniferntremblay's review
2.0
I'm still not too sure how I feel about Fell of Dark...review to follow.
chwaters's review
3.0
Fell of Dark is the story of two teenaged boys who are swiftly succumbing to schizophrenia. Erik believes that he performs miracles while Thorn hears voices in his head. As they fall deeper and deeper into the abyss of their delusions, their paths draw closer and closer together.
This is a hard novel to describe as it is not even remotely plot-driven. The focus is entirely on the two narrators. The symptoms of their illness are very different, but the fact that they are clearly ill means that they're unreliable as narrators. The reader must discern what is hallucinatory from what is real and draw their own conclusions. This is not a book with wide appeal, but its dark and ominous prose will certainly keep the attention of more sophisticated readers. I personally didn't love it, but I appreciated what Downes was doing. His characters are unique and the prose is elegant. While it doesn't read like YA lit, it offers a very different take on the teens-with-mental-illness genre.
This is a hard novel to describe as it is not even remotely plot-driven. The focus is entirely on the two narrators. The symptoms of their illness are very different, but the fact that they are clearly ill means that they're unreliable as narrators. The reader must discern what is hallucinatory from what is real and draw their own conclusions. This is not a book with wide appeal, but its dark and ominous prose will certainly keep the attention of more sophisticated readers. I personally didn't love it, but I appreciated what Downes was doing. His characters are unique and the prose is elegant. While it doesn't read like YA lit, it offers a very different take on the teens-with-mental-illness genre.
buzzard's review
challenging
dark
mysterious
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
zoesully's review
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
sad
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
memawls's review
3.0
I'm not sure how I feel about this one. I wasn't thrilled with the ending. Felt abrupt. I will say though that I flew through this one, and it kept me engaged. Need to think about it a little more.