Title: The Dark
Author: James Herbert
Type: Fiction
Page Count/Review Word Count: 336
Rating: 4/5
This book was James Herbert doing what he does best, which is to write badass horror. I liked the way that the bad guy in this is the darkness itself, because that ties back to the old tales of good versus evil and light versus darkness. I’m also a little bit afraid of the dark, although I always say that it’s not the darkness that scares me but rather the idea of people using it to hide themselves.
The characterisation here is pretty good too, but it’s basically the story line that carries everything, although I found that it started to slow down towards the last 70 pages or so, which was a shame. I think it’s because the stakes were raised so high early on that it was hard for the tension to hold.
With that said, there were still some cool scenes inside an apartment building where there was a huge crowd of people trying to chase after the main characters. There was also plenty of gore, including a scene in which someone gets literally cut in half.
I think that there’s an obvious comparison to be made between The Dark and The Fog, because the two are pretty similar and even the endings have the same vibe. The details are changed, but the general idea is pretty similar and so I’d say that if you like one, you’ll like the other.
There’s not too much more to say about this one really, because it’s just a good, old-fashioned horror novel like we’ve come to expect from Herbert. It’s pretty typical of his work and it’s also somewhere in the middle of them all in terms of its quality, at least from the books of his that I’ve read so far. I’m looking forward to continuing to crack on so I can see what other tricks Herbert has got up his sleeve. Happy days!
