Review: The king is dead. Long live the king!
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 07 12, 2013
Apologies for the review title - I couldn't resist that one. Now to weightier matters, the book.Probably derived from my lifelong dislike of tools which claim to be 'multi-purpose' and then break when you try and use for them for anything practical, I'm not a great fan of mixed genre books. That's what 'The King of Terrors' is - a mixture of the occult, the (literally) super-natural (sic) and crime. Add in the vaguest hint of romance and, apart from an alien invasion or the cavalry arriving, I reckon we've just about covered the complete set.I'd far rather a book stick to one genre: for example, even if it's something like a romance set on board a space ship, it's still a romance. I noticed that I'm not alone in this feeling - other reviewers have said similar and have lashed back with some punitive star-scorings.For the most part, the book is well constructed with few errors although the density of these did increase towards the end. I think that there's a clue here. The end seemed particularly confused and I wonder if the author had a little panic attack - perhaps worrying about pulling it all together. I do think that, for a book which had a fair share of originality about it, the ending was horribly corny.The question of 'should there be a sequel?'. I don't think this book is strong enough to merit it. What loose ends there were have been largely tied up (not as satisfactorily as I'd have liked) and I think 'let it lie'. The voice of commercial reason must be heard, though, and if the book's flying off the virtual shelves, then 'go for it', I suppose.Three stars because it's solid and holds together but not the fourth star for being particularly well done nor the fifth for star quality.Would I want to read the sequel? No. Would I want to read another book by the author? Yes (as long as it's not multi-genre!)