Four Stars. A fun novel and respectable authorial debut. There’s good to be found in Brother. Brother’s strength lies in its take on the supernatural, particularly its antagonist. While it's quickly shown that detectives Jonathan and Jace face a literally inhuman foe, they play the case straight. There is no Secret Supernatural Special Ops Unit, no backup from Area 51. The monster’s abilities are served as is and the reader is left to make their own conclusions. This technique heightened my interest in the story as I wondered more about the villain’s motivation and what crime they’d commit next. As the heinousness of the crimes--not to mention the body count--increases, it’s obvious some sinister magic is in the mix. Brother’s not all guts, however. There’s two stories here, the first of J&J tracking the killer, the second of fighting their own personal demons, raising sons beneath the ominous umbrella of a killer running around. Food in Brother is a continuous theme; the comfort of the family meal, the joy of cooking, even the care of ordering vegan cuisine for a coworker. Meals are described as copiously and continuously as a banquet scene straight out of Game of Thrones, and while I initially scratched my head over this, believing such description did little to serve the plot, there came a scene when that communal food (or lack thereof) suddenly mattered and I was metaphorically punched in my metaphorical guts. Oh, how agonizing it doth feel to lose what we didn’t know we had. Brother is about more than tracking a monster. Grammar and punctuation can be spotty, but I found nothing so distracting I couldn’t read. Brother’s dialogue, while functional, would benefit from increased identity and individual character expression. While each character is defined by their actions, they speak similarly enough I had to pay close attention to dialogue tags to remind myself who is saying what. However, none of the characters sound mechanical or dead, and they probably speak more similarly to the way people speak in day to day life. Brother reads easily, like a prime time episode of a crime show, one where the focus is as much on the family of characters as the monster. That doesn’t have to be a bad thing.
Horror · Emica_Dolion
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Four Stars. A fun novel and respectable authorial debut. There’s good to be found in Brother. Brother’s strength lies in its take on the supernatural, particularly its antagonist. While it's quickly shown that detectives Jonathan and Jace face a literally inhuman foe, they play the case straight. There is no Secret Supernatural Special Ops Unit, no backup from Area 51. The monster’s abilities are served as is and the reader is left to make their own conclusions. This technique heightened my interest in the story as I wondered more about the villain’s motivation and what crime they’d commit next. As the heinousness of the crimes--not to mention the body count--increases, it’s obvious some sinister magic is in the mix. Brother’s not all guts, however. There’s two stories here, the first of J&J tracking the killer, the second of fighting their own personal demons, raising sons beneath the ominous umbrella of a killer running around. Food in Brother is a continuous theme; the comfort of the family meal, the joy of cooking, even the care of ordering vegan cuisine for a coworker. Meals are described as copiously and continuously as a banquet scene straight out of Game of Thrones, and while I initially scratched my head over this, believing such description did little to serve the plot, there came a scene when that communal food (or lack thereof) suddenly mattered and I was metaphorically punched in my metaphorical guts. Oh, how agonizing it doth feel to lose what we didn’t know we had. Brother is about more than tracking a monster. Grammar and punctuation can be spotty, but I found nothing so distracting I couldn’t read. Brother’s dialogue, while functional, would benefit from increased identity and individual character expression. While each character is defined by their actions, they speak similarly enough I had to pay close attention to dialogue tags to remind myself who is saying what. However, none of the characters sound mechanical or dead, and they probably speak more similarly to the way people speak in day to day life. Brother reads easily, like a prime time episode of a crime show, one where the focus is as much on the family of characters as the monster. That doesn’t have to be a bad thing.
Brother.
Horror · Emica_Dolion