Customer Reviews

The Bone Factory (Leisure Fiction)

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

As with all good authors, Nate Kenyon improves with each book. His first novel, Bloodstone, was merely okay; its successor, The Reach, was good. The Bone Factory continues to show Kenyon's growth as a writer: it may not be perfect, but it is still a good horror novel.

At first glance, The Bone Factory is reminiscent of Stephen King's The Shining. Both involve an unemployed father bringing his wife and child to a isolated area for a new job. In addition, the child has some sort of psychic ability that clues her in to possible danger. The similarities end there however. David Pierce is actually a nice guy and is not in danger of becoming another Jack Torrance.

That's not to say that all will go well when David, wife Helen and daughter Jessie move to a tiny community on the U.S./Canadian border. David is going to work for a hydroelectric company to help set up a new plant; it seems like a dream job, especially since David lost his last job under unpleasant circumstances. Not all is going well at the job, however, as it is undergoing investigation for possible pollution.

This, however, may be a secondary concern for David. The family that once occupied his new house left after their daughter disappeared in the local woods, an event that is particularly frightening to a protective father like David. In addition, Jessie is being plagued by more visions of monsters, especially a "blue man". And, as the reader knows, even if the Pierces don't, there is definitely something malevolent in the woods.

I read a lot of horror fiction, so it's hard for me to be really wowed over by any but the really outstanding books. The Bone Factory doesn't fit in that category, but it is well-written horror that should impress the more casual fan of the genre. Even if you're more of a die-hard fan, you should not be disappointed.

Worried for the future especially their daughter Jessie, David and Helen Pierce are reaching the bottom of their savings. He is currently trying to get work having quit his last job when his superior stole his ideas without giving him any credit; his supervisor's boss sided against David so he left. In retaliation they blacklisted him as a malcontent in the industry; no one will hire him due to the lies.

Hydro Development is building a hydroplant in an isolated area of Quebec. Michael Olmsted interviews and hires David for the position of completing the plan and overseeing the development of the reservoir in tiny Jackson. David and his family relocate to Jackson in the winter so can do little on the project. Jessie is clairvoyant, but her parents are in denial unable to accept the paranormal especially with their child. They soon learn the house they currently reside in, once had a little girl who just vanished without a trace; as did one of the searchers. Jessie and David see a shadow being, but both assume it is their active imagination while Helen fears she is being watched by a stalker though she sees no one. None of them understands the danger they face while a local deputy sheriff has stumbled onto a horrific site in the nearby woods that unless a miracle occurs could be the next stop for the Pierce trio.

There is a growing sense of foreboding as animals and fish look strange and a psychotic person disappears. Jessie's visions increase that feeling as the reader senses like she does something is coming for her. As the Pierces put together the puzzle pieces, their chances of survival decreases; their only hope to get out alive is if David can find the missing links that relate the incidents to the project. Fans will enjoy Nate Kenyon's creepy horror thriller as the next stop for the Pierce family appears to be a one way ticket to hell.

Harriet Klausner

******POSSIBLE SPOILERS******

David Pierce, an engineer, is desperate for a job after losing his after a disagreement with his ex-boss. In a scene copied right from the first few pages of Stephen King's "The Shining, he's being interviewed for a position by Hydro Development as the head engineer and boss for an isolated plant in the small town of Jackson in Quebec, Canada during the height of the winter. He gets the job of course, and he, his wife Helen, and his little girl Jesse have to move to Jackson. He goes up there, and checks out a house that is owned by Hank Babcock. David finds that he has walked into snake pit. Just recently another little girl disappeared from the house that he is now moving to, there has been a gory death, and another man has, like the child, disappeared. Then there is that the Jackson Plant has mysteriously shut down for what looks like a very harsh winter, and it is being investigated for possible discharges of toxic chemicals. And to top it off, his daughter has obsessive/compulsive disorder and keeps falling into catatonic fugue states that are really psychic visions.

"The Bone Factory" is also a multi-viewpoint story, and the novel's story is also told from the viewpoint of several other characters. The most prominent is Jonathan Newman, a six foot five, scarred Vietnam vet, who is also suffering from schizophrenia (?), and PTS. He has started working as a watchman at the Jackson plant just when the mysterious murders and disappearances started.

This book starts off with a bang, and then it slows down. I mean, it slows down to a crawl. One of the main problems with this novel is that it is just too long. Kenyon spends the first two hundred pages in what some would call character building, but what I would call putzing around. The first one hundred pages alone could have been condensed down to twenty pages. Except for a few visions from Jessie, some viewpoints from government overseer Dan Flint, who has discovered something in the water around the plant that is turning animals insane, and some crazy visions from Newman, not much happens. The novel's storyline doesn't really pick up any steam until near the novel's last seventy pages or so.

Another problem is the characterizations. There is Dr. Seigel, Newman's psychiatrist who is just extraneous, Jessie, who is nothing special except that she is your clichéd scared little girl, her visions contribute almost nothing to the story. And then there is Newman, who is every crazy psycho Vietnam vet that has cluttered up horror and action fiction (whether it be movies, tv, or novels) since THAT war ended, and is a Jason Vorheeves stand-in.

The end result is a novel that is just slow, predictable, and too long for what it is. There is a red herring that ends up never really getting resolved, the killer is just exactly who you think it is, and Jessie's psychic elements are never really exploited or explored as well as they should have been, they are just THERE, and become redundant and tiresome. This is a real disappointment after Kenyon's last novel. He struggles to pad a thin ninety page story into a three hundred and twenty page, low-rent "Friday The 13th" rip-off. Only for the very, very easily entertained.

Two stars because there are a couple of nice scenes in the end, but you gotta wade through an awful lot of excess verbiage to get to them.

I have reviewed the following books by Kenyon for this site:

Bloodstone (Leisure Fiction)
The Reach (Leisure Fiction)

"The Bone Factory" is an ARC given to me (and signed) by Nate Kenyon. It was delivered to stores in July.

"Joe Thibideau never had a chance to get up. A shadow fell across his path, followed by a searing pain in his shoulder, moonlight flashing on a silver blade that rose up and plunged down again and again, speckling the pure white snow with his blood."

With that auspicious start, and the fact that several people have disappeared from the tiny town of St. Boudin including the little girl Joe was looking for, "The Bone Factory" takes it's readers on a horror thrill ride second to none...I'm sure the master, Bram Stoker, would approve.

David Pierce and his family (wife Helen and daughter Jessie) have fallen on hard times. Leaving his last job after a dispute, he figured it would be easy to pick up another. However, the economy and the vindictiveness of his last ex-boss leave him coming up short interview after interview.

He and his marriage are at the end of their rope when an interview with Michael Olmstead at Hydro Development comes up. Hydro Development is building a power plant in remote Canada, a few miles from the U.S.A. border, that uses water flow between different underground levels to produce power. With years of experience in this kind of work, David figures he has a good chance at this job and does well in the interview.

No sooner does David arrive at home in New York than a phone call comes in from Olmstead asking David when he can start. In an instant, Helen, David and Jessie's (and Jessies constant toy companion, Johnny Bear) lives turned from bad to good.

Everyone was happy and looking forward to moving north. Except for one thing.

Jessica is an extremely bright little girl who suffers from increasingly frightful nightmares, and she has a gift that her mother calls PERCEPTIVE. Jessica can see the future. On the trip up to their new home, Jessica is riding in the back seat when she enters a stupor where her body becomes cold, her lips blue, and she does not respond immediately to her parents frantic pleas. Eventually, Jessica recovers from this stupor, but, fears the "blue man" who has been increasingly haunting Jessica's dreams.

Arriving at the new house, everything seems fine. The house is beautiful, and even though it is in a very remote location, the family tries their best to settle in. Going to St. Boudin to buy some groceries, Helen learns that that house was recently abandoned because the previous owners little girl had disappeared. Helen confronts David about this and he admits he knew.

Jessica, in the meantime, decided to take a walk outside of the house while David is working in the study where she sees the real "blue man".

The town folk are acting strange, and the water around the plant has been tested and shown to be contaminated by a very strong hallucinogen....

From this point on "The Bone Factory" moves at lightning speed. David goes into town for a meeting, only to realize that Helen and Jessica may be in dire danger. In the worst winter storm in ten years, David rushes home to find....a broken window, blood, and an empty home.

"He's coming for us, Mommy," she said. "The bad man is here."

I have only read horror from Bram Stoker (yeah...I need to read Stephen King) but, Nate Kenyon is everything I like about Bram Stoker and more. The horror is not blatant, but, it creeps up on you like a slithering cockroach in a movie theather in Kauai (OK, yes that happened to me). Suddenly, you feel several moving objects on your arm, but, by then is is too late......the horror is upon you.

If you pick up "The Bone Factory", beware that sleep may be difficult, you may have nightmares, and if there is blood....

By TracyReaderDad

I'm a big fan of suspense & murder novels and was looking forward to reading this novel. Unfortunately, although it was well written, the pace was so slow that I ended up not finishing the book. That's rare for an avid reader like me. The premise of the novel was great and the Prolouge captured me. Afterwards, however, Kenyon never seems to pick up the pace enough to keep me reading.

I want to like Nate Kenyon. I've read all three of his published works. The Bone Factory immediately started off feeling like a slight rip-off of The Shining. The father figure needs a job and isn't highly sought after; the girl having somewhat 'special' senses; the mother oblivious to a portion of her surroundings. With that said, Kenyon did a steady job of drawing the reader in. I like his style of writing, I just didn't care for the subject matter in this book. Better than Bloodstone but not better than The Reach. All the critics who've compared him to Stephen King are beginning to prove their correct with this very familiar story.

Author Nate Kenyon continues to improve with each book, especially his technical writing. The Bone Factory illustrates Kenyon's talent for smooth prose and his special attention to atmosphere. I'm a sucker for novels set in snowy, desolate locations, and the locations in this story are about as far away from civilization as you can get. But there were a few choices that I wish were handled differently and the overall storyline didn't grab me the way I would have liked.

I enjoyed the slow, calculated buildup with the family and the move to their new home, but sometimes I think too much time was spent on small events which could have been edited down and been just as effective. For instance, there is a section nine pages long describing a character's inspection of the woods around his property to see if there is anyone lurking around. Surely this didn't need to be nine pages. There were also some character reactions that I found rather odd that pulled me out of the story. Helen's strong reaction to Angie's information about the missing girl seemed a bit melodramatic. David's reaction was strange as well. It's not as if the girl was torn to shreds inside the house. They were simply living in a house where the previous owner's daughter went missing. What's the big deal? They never even found her body. People go missing all the time for any number of reasons. These revelations could have been smoother for me.

Prologue aside, and with the exception of a brief death scene involving a camper, the horror really doesn't get going until another two hundred plus pages. And while there is no doubt that Kenyon is a fine writer, I question the need to tell this particular story. Well executed, sure, but it was not that engaging as a tale, especially a full length novel. Perhaps it would have worked better as a novella. The separate parts of the story didn't quite connect in a natural, organic way for me. The section about the baby and his bottle was quite vivid and horrifying, but for most of the book, I found the horror rather tame for adult fiction. However, I have heard great things about Kenyon's new novel, "Sparrow Rock", so I plan on giving that a try.

I wouldn't categorize this novel as a train wreck, as stated. The author does bring forth some form of suspense, and his characterization, as his narration, is well-handled. The only thing that failed to really grab me--after a well developed but tad tame first half--is the final denouement between the protagonist and the villain. Although nicely paced, it could have been stronger in the horror department. What we're left with instead is a PG-rating climax without the terror-filled elements so much expected. Still, If atmospheric-type books are your thing, you could definitely enjoy this novel. If you prefer your horror heavier and cruder, then I would suggest to look elsewhere.-----Martin Boucher

On the cover of this book there is a quote saying Kenyon is a voice similar to King's Salems' Lot. I can see why they said that. I read Salems' Lot around a year ago and I could definately see similar writing styles. The main similarity would be the set up and tension building beginning. There is a lot of character development in the first half of the book and building of the books "feeling" or "atmosphere" that really pulls you in. This really helped draw me into the characters and the story and really lets you into the world that Kenyon created. Where some books are so fast-paced that when your done they almost become forgetable (even though fun) because you never really get drawn into a moment before you are rushed on to the the next event. With this book you get mentally invested with the story and characters which gives it more lasting appeal.

Kenyon is a very good writer and I look forward to reading more from him.

I'm not the first (or most influential) person to compare Nate Kenyon's writing to that of Stephen King, but damned if The Bone Factory, his third Leisure release, isn't going to make such critics even more firm in their convictions. Out of work father David Pierce gets a job at an isolated Canadian hydroelectric plant, leading to boardroom maneuvering and psychic-girl craziness due to a haunted house and some toxic chemicals. Throw in a bunch of unsolved, grotesque murders and a nutjob, and you've got a helluva good book. Kenyon juggles a multitude of elements as easily as any seasoned master of the genre. It's a quick read that stands out against most of the horror I've read this year. 4/5.