Customer Reviews

Darker

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Darker is another of Clark's book filled with the right mix of action, suspense and horror that never gets boring.

Rosemary Snow meets the mysterious stranger, Michael, who is being pursued by something unknown, something dark. He leaves Rosemary and continues on until he meets up with the Young family, and this is where the book really takes off.

Darker is a blend of darkest fairy tale and the best sort of horror, the kind that makes you want to keep reading and reading without setting the book down. Clark once again creates believable characters who stick in the mind until the story is over. What was really interesting about this book is that the supernatural Beast is not the only horror in the story. Darker focuses on something much more horrific to me: the possible loss of a member or members of your family.

Originally published in 1996, Darker is one of the most sought-after books written by Clark. Kudos to Leisure for reprinting it and giving those of us in the U.S. the pleasure of reading yet another Simon Clark book.

I am a fan of Simon Clark, but this is not one of his best efforts. He has a good premise for his story, he starts well and basically ends well, but the middle is pretty boring and a little confusing. This book could easily have been 100 pages shorter and would probably have been better.

Richard Young, his wife and daughter are about to embark on a dark journey full of mystery and horror. While their son is away on a camping trip, they are persuaded by a frantic stranger to help him get away from an invisible force that threatens all of their lives if they don't outrun it. Their 4 year old daughter has some special abilities that the madman is looking for and he will stop at nothing to use them.

The story gets bogged down in their fleeing from the invisible force. It catches up to them, kills a few people, they get away, narrowly, and it all starts over again. About half way through the book you find yourself wanting to scream,"enough already, we get it, let's move on!"

While this book is not a total waste of your time, and it is exciting enough in the beginning and ending to capture your attention, please just understand that you will have to slog through some fairly boring, repetitious chapters to get to the final reward. If you have something else you've been dying to read, go ahead, you won't miss anything if you pass this one up.

Simon Clark is one of my favorite authors in the horror genre. Blood Crazy, King Blood, and Vamphyrric are all superb, unique, and amazing works. Darker, like his first novel Nailed by the Heart, suffers from a certain vagueness that occasionally crops up in Clark's work.

The characters here must face an overwhelming evil force and though we grow to like our protagonists, I found it difficult to truly understand them. Every so often someone would do something I found completely out of character, merely in an effort to serve the story line. Clark shows his hand a bit too much in this one, though the novel remains a gripping read. You simply might be left with too many questions at the end of it.

I've read most of Simon Clark's novels, even going so far as to order British hardcovers of the more recent ones, and most of what I've read has been very promising. Clark is one of the strongest writers to enter the horror field in a long time, maybe since Clive Barker first broke on the scene with his Books of Blood. That said, I have to say I was rather disappointed by _Darker_. This is a rather silly novel, with characters that are pretty one-dimensional. The whole "invisible force" that must be kept under control, lest it start to hammer people and objects flat, has to be one of the stranger plots for a horror novel. I can't fault Clark for his originality here. Unfortunately, he doesn't do much with this idea and the book just doesn't match up to the amazing heights of his other work. Check out _Vampyrrhic_ or _Blood Crazy_ first. Wait until you're a Clark fanatic and must read everything he's written before you try _Darker_.

Not Since James Herbert's "Magic Cottage" have I enjoyed a horror novel so much. Clark is a magnificent writer. He is one of few who can pull the reader in so completely and effortlessly. I liked all the characters, even the villian Michael, with those kind gentle down turned eyes. My favorite character was that of Rosemary Snow, a brave young woman who becomes more and more powerful as the story unfolds. I am new to Clark and I am looking forward to reading all his novels.

This book starts off with a bang, but doesn't sustain its pace. Before long, we're swept up into an endless, repetitive chase during which a lot of people get gorily squished by an evil Beast. Meanwhile, a transparently evil villain manages to charm the pants off an incredibly unsuspecting family, while plotting to use their innocent four-year-old daughter in his nasty plot to rule the world...

Clark writes well, and he's created an especially engaging character in teenaged Rosemary Snow, but this rather thinly plotted book starts running in place long before its climax.

I'm so glad to have discovered this author. "Darkness Demands" was a phenomenal book as is "Darker". It weaves so many different elements of horror and fantasy together to create this wonderful story. Mr. Clark has the rare gift of being able to hook you from the first page until the very last. This one never gets boring nor slow. You literally sit on the edge of your seat until the last page.

The book starts off with a teenaged girl named Rosemary meeting up with a mysterious stranger named Michael after running away from home. This stranger seems so nice she allows herself to be sucked into his evil plans which is to try to control a brutal power he has unleashed.

After leaving Rosemary behind to face this force, he gets in a wreck near the home of the Young family and from there, Richard has to try to save his wife and daughter with the help of the battered Rosemary Snow. I won't tell anymore so as not to spoil the plot but this is one wild ride of a book. The characters are all very believable and are people you care about. The plot has all the elements of a great suspense novel as well as horror. You never know from page to page just how this one will turn out.

All in all, this is one of the best horror novels I've read recently. I can't wait to read what Simon Clark will write next. If you like being on the edge of your seat and enjoyed his other books, don't pass this one up.

Darker is a horror novel with a difference. As with Clark's first story Nailed by the Heart, there is a family unit under threat, but this time the menace is an implacable, incredibly violent force of nature which pursues the characters like something out of the movie Forbidden Planet. A monster from the id! At times the writing stops and starts, just like the car in the story, and people occasionally act out of character where the plot demands, but there are some extremely tense moments, and Clark manages on the whole to make the entire nightmarish scenario horribly real.

This book starts real slow. The back cover of the paperback states that a stranger "pounds" on the door of the Young's
house. This happens around page 100 of the paperback. Just when I started to put this book down and go on to something else...BAM!
It really gets going. Then it slows down again....BAM! Here we go again. You'll love Rosemary Snow. You'll want to strangle Joey for his stupidity. Certainly a mixed bag.

Simon Clark is an author that I just can't seem to like. Darker is another failed attempt on my part to enjoy his work with the exception of The Tower. I thought I would love a novel about a force that chases down and literally crushes people flat but this, like most of the Clark novels I've read, just seemed sooooooooooooo drawn out and I wanted it to end. There comes a point in certain books where it becomes a challenge to me to finish and that's when I decide it is a bad book. This one was especially difficult because I had already read a couple bad novels by this guy. Still, I am a horror fan and I have time to get to all of it before I die, at least hopefully, and I'm glad I read Darker even though I pretty much hated it. I will give it credit for having a grabbing beginning and some gruesome descriptions of deaths but that's about all I got out of it.