The Imaginings [Kindle Edition]

Paul D. Dail (Author)

Book Description

“never disregard your imaginings”

Three years after his brother Peter’s suicide, David Blithe is still haunted by this cryptic message found scrawled on a piece of newspaper in his brother’s apartment. David can only believe that Peter must have gone insane… until the supernatural being that pushed his brother to his death finds David in Colorado. The encounter nearly kills him. Badly scarred, in a fight for his soul and his sanity, he escapes into the mountains.

Three months later, David collapses in the Montana cabin of Dr. Robert Marrick, his wife, and their teenage daughter, Jeannie. Something more than just coincidence seems to have driven David to the Marrick cabin, something that seems to revolve around the girl, but in the ensuing chaos, will he be able to save Jeannie’s life without losing his own?

The Imaginings takes the reader into a world where the questions of “right” and “wrong” aren’t so easily defined, locking David and Jeannie in battle with an evil that threatens not only their lives but ultimately all of humanity.

Approximately 125,000 words.

Product Details

• File Size: 516 KB
• Print Length: 332 pages
• Publisher: De los Diablos Books, inc. (June 8, 2011)
• Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
• Language: English
• ASIN: B00558U3L8
• Text-to-Speech: Enabled
• X-Ray: Not Enabled
• Lending: Enabled
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #570,693 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Will make you buy a night light January 3, 2012

By M. Loughin

Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase

It was October and I was feeling itchy to read some horror, so I took a chance and bought Paul D. Dail's The Imaginings. (Of course, I didn't get around to reading it until after Christmas.) I was delighted to find that Dail's prose is clean, tight, and a pleasure to read. More importantly, he knows how to play on the reader's emotions. Three or four chapters in, I realized I should not be reading this book before bed. Or after dark. Or when I was going to be alone for a while. Particularly not on a windy day. I don't usually scare easily, but Dail makes you like his characters and then haunts them with such an insidious evil that you sweat right alongside them.

Like other horror novels I've read, The Imagining slows a bit in the middle, losing some tension, but it picks up again for the final third of the book, giving me a wild ride on a rather turbulent (literally) plane ride home from my Christmas vacation.

4.0 out of 5 stars A dark tale of possession March 23, 2013

By Mari Biella

Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase

First, an admission: I'm not coming at this book from the point of view of a complete stranger. Mr Dail is an occasional visitor to (and commenter on) my blog, and over the months we've struck up something of an online friendship. That said, I've tried as always not to let this stand in the way of an honest appraisal of the book.

This small caveat aside, here's my review of 'The Imaginings'.

'Never disregard your imaginings' - these words run through Dail's novel like a dark vein. When David Blithe finds this cryptic message scrawled on a piece of paper in his brother Peter's apartment shortly after his apparent suicide, he doubts Peter's sanity. In fact, as shortly becomes clear, Peter was the helpless victim of a very dark force indeed - and the unfortunate David will be next.

'Those forces roll across the land,' Dail writes, in a particularly chilling passage, 'and when they hit, there's nothing you can do but ride it out.'

In an echo of the unfairness of fate, the entity that has targeted David admits, 'You haven't really done anything wrong.' David cannot escape by repenting for past misdeeds or making amends (though it later transpires that the entity has a particular reason for choosing him); he is, to all intents and purposes, trapped. Interestingly, the theme of imprisonment, of one sort or another, runs through the novel: one character lives in an orphanage, and is locked in after dark; another works in a vast underground labyrinth, in which a series of locked doors lead into a succession of increasingly sinister and claustrophobic rooms.

This is a novel about demonic possession - not generally one of my favourite horror themes, but executed so well here that I was quickly drawn into the action, and kept there. Unlike other tales of possession, the demon does not restrict itself to one particular host, but can take possession of different bodies at will. This adds an additional layer of fear; how can you trust anyone, or ever feel safe, when anyone could at any moment become the conduit for a malign force? It also poses some interesting questions: is morality determined by our deeds, or by our souls? Is it possible for a soul to remain pure when the flesh becomes the instrument of evil?

This is a well-written, tightly plotted story: Dail's prose is economical yet evocative. The characters are drawn vividly and well, with a satisfying depth and complexity, and we are made to care about them; I was genuinely upset when a genial priest fell foul of the demon.

Reading other reviews of the novel, I noticed that several readers have made a slight criticism, namely that a critical scene at the climax of the novel is repeated from the points of view of two different characters. It's hard to say much about this without giving away certain elements of the plot, but it was felt that this slowed down the action. This is no doubt a matter of personal preference, but I didn't find that this troubled me at all; in fact, I actually found that it rounded the action out in quite a satisfying way. Whatever your own preferences, though, this is a minor point, and shouldn't distract anyone from Dail's achievement in taking a plot that could easily have become immensely convoluted and bringing it tightly, carefully, cleverly to its conclusion. The steady build-up of tension keeps you hooked, and while it's not a particularly short novel I got through it in a couple of sittings. Indeed, I almost arrived late for work one morning, when I made the mistake of reading it over breakfast. That's the mark of a good page-turner!

3.0 out of 5 stars A good read! August 1, 2012

By Jamie

Format:Kindle Edition

Positives: Dail creates some really compelling characters here. David and Jeannie, the primary protagonists, draw us in. We care about their fate and mourn their losses. Their emotional landscape is real and compelling. Dail weaves an interesting tale of demonic possession (not usually one of my favorite subjects as it too often strays into the cliché) that does tread new ground!

Negatives: The narrative loses cohesion in places as he overreaches. Overtones of the living Christ bloodline, The Exorcist, ancient demonic pacts, and birthrights took the story in too many directions. A tighter focus would have helped.

Summary: I enjoyed this one. Add this to your reading list.

More About the Author

Paul D. Dail is the author of The Imaginings, a supernatural/horror novel, as well as several other horror short stories. While he will quickly tell you that the people he has met in the many places that he has traveled have been the best schooling he could get, Paul received his formal education in English with a Creative Writing emphasis at the University of Montana, Missoula.

In addition to his fiction, he has had a non-fiction submission published in The Sun magazine's Reader's Write section entitled "Slowing Down" about the birth of his daughter.

Currently Paul lives in southern Utah, amid the red rock, sagebrush and pinion junipers. He teaches Language Arts and Creative Writing at Tuacahn High School for the Performing Arts.

HOW TO CONTACT PAUL:

For more about Paul D. Dail, please visit his blog, www.pauldail.com.- A horror writer's not necessarily horrific blog

Or you can contact him at [e-mail]