Book Review | Darkness Rising by Brian Moreland

Darkness Rising is a horror novel by Brian Moreland.

It’s all fun and games until...

Marty Weaver, an emotionally scarred poet, has been bullied his entire life. When he drives out to the lake to tell an old friend that he’s fallen in love with a girl named Jennifer, Marty encounters three sadistic killers who have some twisted games in store for him. But Marty has dark secrets of his own buried deep inside him. And tonight, when all the pain from the past is triggered, when those secrets are revealed, blood will flow and hell will rise.

Why did I read Darkness Rising?

The reviews. It's hard to pass up a new horror release that is getting great reviews.

The Strengths

I love imaginative horror. Now, there is a lot of gory slasher horror in Darkness Rising, too, but there is also some of that coveted original horror I don't find very often.

The main character becomes something awesome.

Love and light. I love when light is well placed in a horror novel. Light reminds us of how dark the darkness can be, and darkness reminds us of how much we need the light.

The Weaknesses

The characters were very immature. The college setting felt far more like grade school. It wasn't just the young adults, though, it was everyone. The killers, the victims, the bystanders, the coworkers. Unfortunately this spilled over into the horror, too, and it made a lot of the shock gore and drug use come off as annoying.

The exposition. The dialog in this book killed me. There is no way the characters (especially in the circumstances they were in) would have spent that much time telling each other information they would already know.

There was also a lot of inconsistency regarding the main character and the dark entity Cerulean.

Would I recommend Darkness Rising to others?

Yes. In the end, the good outweighed the bad in Darkness Rising. There were flaws for me, but some of the good was so good I'd recommend it to horror fans.

6/10 Good Read

Review copy provided by publisher