Review: Simply great.
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 11 10, 2011
I was really surprised, and positively surprised at that, by this novel. I always regard unknown authors with suspicion, "hoping for the best but expecting the worst" (to quote a favorite song from my youth...).One of its greatest strengths is that the novel is short. Each sentence serves to push the story forward, there are no distracting sideways, no boring chapters written only to fill a required page limit. This straightforwardness works especially well with the fast-paced, pulse-quickening race across the mountain and keeps you as out of breath as the story's characters. I think the author managed to put more content into this comparatively half-length book than most authors in their full-length novels.Nevertheless, the characters are sufficiently well drawn with lots of background information. Mercy, our female victim slash heroine, comes across as very normal, doubting her own decisions and rethinking each action, visualizing different scenarios for consequences, unsure how to act. On the other hand, Victor's thoughts are expressed in a cold clipped no-nonsense way to an extreme, which perfectly matches his sick and perverse nature, where everything follows a plan and there is no place for redundant behavior or failure in any way.There was only one small moment when I thought "been there read that, nothing new, so let the slaughter begin and get it over with". But almost immediately the story made a sharp turn in another direction and smacked my right in the face - "whoa, it's not at all over yet, smart-ass".Although Blood Mountain provides a good portion of gore, sometimes attacking you right out of the blue, it is not just another off-the-shelf genre novel. Highly recommended.