Customer Reviews

Afraid [With Earbuds] (Playaway Adult Fiction)

5 star:		(132)
4 star:		(65)
3 star:		(22)
2 star:		(16)
1 star:		(18)

 

 

It may be the worst-kept secret in publishing that Jack Kilborn is the pseudonym of novelist J.A. Konrath. Fans of Konrath's Jack Daniel's serial killer novels know that he's not afraid to depict graphic violence. That knowledge is not going to prepare you for what you'll face in Afraid.

The plot is high concept, and simple enough to summarize in just a few sentences. Every major government, including our own, is experimenting in "Red-ops." Why turn soldiers into killers, when it's so much easier to turn killers into soldiers? And if you can use cutting-edge technology to enhance them, so much the better. One such Red-ops team of psycho killers accidentally crash lands in bucolic Safe Haven, Wisconsin. It's a terrible, terrible mistake, as the team launches into what they've been trained to do--kill and maim in the most terrifying (and may I add disgusting) way imaginable. Only the elderly town sheriff has begun to suspect that it may not be a mistake after all...

And it was that last bit, in the book's description, that got me. Not a mistake? What do they want? I was hooked. I mean HOOKED. I had important work to do, but once I had started it, I could not stop reading this book until I finished it. I read it in less than a day. The pacing of the novel was relentless, as was the subject matter. I had been told that this was a gory novel. In no way does that prepare you for the level of sickness you will encounter in this novel. I can not emphasize enough that Afraid is not for the faint of heart. If it were a film, I wouldn't have made it through the first five minutes. (Let's all hope they never make a movie.) Kilborn's creative, I'll give him that. I don't even know how a healthy mind goes to the places his went.

Ultimately, I give the novel four stars. When all was said and done, I was mildly disappointed in what all the furor was about. Was it enough to justify the events of the novel? And I wasn't sure, but I might have found a small plot hole. Mostly, I just can't give five stars to anything this revolting. On the plus side, there was actually some pretty fantastic storytelling. I'm a total sucker for characters like Stubin and Mathison. In addition to unremitting suspense, Kilborn threw in enough twists, reversals, and out-and-out surprises to keep me constantly on my toes. As much as I'd like to deny it, Afraid was damn entertaining.

If I sound conflicted, it's because I am. I'd like myself better if I liked this book less. This is sick, sick, sick stuff y'all. I'm going to recommend it to my mom--she loves psycho killers! Will I read Kilborn's next one? You betcha.

Too many of the novels I pick up get put back down with the feeling that I didn't get a good story.

This isn't one of them.

AFRAID, by Jack Kilborn, starts out with a quiet evening of fishing on a small town lake. It quickly turns deadly for the residents of Safe Haven. A helicopter carrying a secret army special ops force crashes at the edge of town, and soon people start getting sliced and diced faster than you can say shish-kabob.

As the body count climbs, Sheriff Streng must confront five of the deadliest killers he has ever encountered. And the more he learns, the more he suspects that the helicopter crash may not have been an accident. What's more, the men hunting him aren't just killing to get their kicks (much as they enjoy their work). They're after something...or someone.

Streng gets some valuable assistance from a young fireman (Josh) and a single mom (Fran), who help track down the killers. There's a surprising boost to the story from Duncan, Fran's 12 year old son, who responds to the horror around him with a courage that escapes most of the adults in the novel.

The villains are more than just stereotypes. Kilborn takes the trouble to get into their minds to show us why they do the things they do. We also get a wonderfully delicious ending that left me cheering for more.

AFRAID will keep you up tonight, so don't forget to lock your doors and bolt the windows. And don't be afraid...be very AFRAID.

J.A. Konrath, writing as Jack Kilborn to elude three jealous husbands and an army of angry creditors, has written a scary and horrifyingly funny book: AFRAID. It's disturbed, depraved, demented, and several other words that begin with D. It also includes a toe sucking sequence that has already cost me several thousand dollars in therapy. I highly recommend it.

The book is good. The book is also very, very violent. If you're at all sensitive you might want to sit this one out. Years of video games and movies have thoroughly deadened my ability to react to gore, but for someone not so jaded the book might be overwhelming.
A major downside to me was that the "villains" all have different and distinctly goofy personalities and I don't mean goofy as in the author tries to give them some spark of humanity. I mean goofy the way villains in children's movies are goofy. They all attack in different ways (biting, fire, so on) and have completely different, exaggerated appearances. You have your thin, good-looking serious villain and then your huge, stupid "I'm gonna pet the wabbits, George." villain and so on. Pretty disappointing in that regard. It's really nothing like an actual military unit. Just a mish-mash of silly evil characters.

I must admit I read some of the other reviews and kept wondering what people saw in this that was even a little bit scary. It was bloody and gory, yes. Unremittingly. But not even a little bit scary--I mean not at all.

Part of the problem with this is it's rather poor pacing--in fact, it has none or what little it has is crudely and poorly done. A woman has her toes bitten off and then they chat about why the guy didn't ask her out on a date. I assume it was intended as a relief (rather badly needed) from the unremitting gore, but instead it came across as frankly stupid. NO ONE would have had that conversation. For the most part though, the novel went from one gore scene to another with pretty much no changes in pace. Well, even gore can get boring--and it did.

The other problem is that when you start with flaying a woman alive in the first chapter, it pretty much leaves you no where to go to up the stakes. Again, a basic problem in pacing.

And then there is the elderly sheriff, Streng. Did anyone actually believe that he could take the punishment that this novel put him through. I found it totally unconvincing. I didn't believe it even for a second.

Duncan, the kid, you knew was totally safe from the first which means that every threat to him was dismissible. And a 12 year old kid as the most heroic (but totally safe) character in the novel pretty much ruined the whole thing for me.

And the animals--OH, please. The dog was bad enough. But the monkey? It was simply eye-rolling.

That leaves the bad guys, which I thought were the lamest and least developed I've seen in a thriller in a long time. They were barely two dimensional and each conveniently had a different fixation to add "spice" to the mix. I felt like the whole thing had been put together from a rather poorly divised "horror cake mix" listing add 1 tbsp of flaying, 2 tbsp of fire, etc.

What he left out was both good pacing and originality.

Wow- a spectacular non-stop fright fest! Disturbingly graphic, but vital story telling. It's arresting action sequences are unrelenting and overpowering. Imagine operating a Fearri down a freeway with the accelerator locked to the floor and no brakes....then you'll start to understand what it is to experience this book.

This is an excellent book. The basic premise reminded me of something Dean Koontz would write. A group of ordinary people are confronted with a horrifying situation. Except I don't think Dean Koontz's stuff was ever this intense or this violent.
The pace of this book is relentless. It gets scary on page 3 and doesn't let up for the next 340 pages. This kind of sucks when you're looking for a good place to put it down for the night, because there isn't one.
I highly recomend this book.(unless you're squeamish)

Safe Haven, Wisconsin is a small town that likes it privacy. It chose, years ago, to forgo the economic benefits of tourism in favor of the peaceful and quiet existence of rural life. The town only has one major road, and a County Sheriff who patrols on a part-time basis. Unfortunately the peace and tranquility of Safe Haven explode in an instant one crisp autumn night when a helicopter crashes and explodes near the town.

The local volunteer fire department responds, as does the County Sheriff, but neither of the entities is prepared for what has been unleashed on Safe Haven. The town is quickly shutdown--roadblocks at each end of town--and a group of raving killers is set loose on the populace. The novel opens with the slow and painful torture of an elderly couple and swiftly moves between several characters, including the Sheriff, the firefighters, an old woman and a young boy, a waitress, a scientist and his pet monkey, an eccentric old crook, and the killers.

AFRAID is an explosion of a novel. It opens hard and fast, and never lets up. The plot is crisp, and what it lacks in believability, it makes up for in taut and forward-looking action and suspense. The characters are well-drawn and fulfill their roles, within the story, with precision. The prose is straight forward and literate in a thriller sense--

"Streng wrapped his fingers around her wrist, and for a moment his body stretched between Ajax and his cousin's wife. Then the giant jerked hard, breaking Streng's grip, making his face skip across the rug and causing a friction burn on his cheek. He was hauled into the hallway, past the staircase--so close yet so out of reach--and into Sal's bedroom, where Ajax lifted him by his leg and held him upside down like a little girl's doll.

The strength of the novel is its ability to envelope the reader with its pacing, action, and terror. The bad guys are worse than one can imagine, and the good guys are seemingly doomed without hope of redemption or rescue. It is reminiscent of 1980s and 1990s Dean Koontz--it particularly reminded me of Koontz's DARK RIVERS OF THE HEART. It also has more than a semblance of the work of Richard Laymon, less the sex.

AFRAID is a novel that will appeal to anyone who likes stories with a high measure of action and a quick and tricky plot. It is a throw back in the horror-thriller genre, in that the writing is tight and there is not an ounce of padding. It is pure action and suspense, and more fun than two modern thrillers combined.

-Gravetapping

This book was very scary. The action was relentless throughout and the premise was unnerving. Super-villains who have been genetically altered and exceptionally equipped with the best technology available descend upon a small, isolated community. Standing against these evil invaders are just a few ordinary citizens. Mayhem ensues. There are grisly torture descriptions -- this book is not for the squeamish.

I really have enjoyed other books by this author including the Jack Daniels series that begins with Whiskey Sour and the book he co-authored with Jeff Strand called Suckers. Those books are liberally sprinkled with humor throughout. Afraid is a horror book - Think Terminator times five.

This summer I read Afraid by J.A. Konrath (under his pen name Jack Kilborn) and it was extremely well-written but gruesome as all get-out. Frankly, unsure if I can recommend Afraid (2008) due to its unmitigated gore, relentless, chapter after bloody chapter. Anyhow, Konrath is a good self-promoter and busy author.