Review: Poe

Poe by J. Lincoln Fenn

My rating: 5 of 5 stars



Book Info: Genre: Dark Urban Fantasy
Reading Level: Adult
Recommended for: fans of dark urban fantasy/horror
Book Available: Oct. 22, 2013 in paperback, Audiobook and e-book formats
Trigger Warnings: violence, murder

My Thoughts: While this book is essentially horror, or dark fantasy, it is also very funny. Dimitri has a wonderfully sarcastic and snarky way of looking at the world, and the way he messes with Nate and Bob is a beautiful thing to see. The prologue pulls you right into the mystery of the story, and then the story pops back a day to give the events leading up to there, which include a lot of very funny situations and statements, at least through the first half of the book or so. After that things become more serious.

The only major gripe I had was when his father was talking to Grigoriy and calls him by his last name. This is just not done in Russia. The father would have called him by his first name and patronymic, or by a pet name. I think the author was just trying to make sure we caught who he was talking about, but it was kind of annoying.

But that was a small thing, really, and the book was otherwise quite good. If you like dark urban fantasy and/or horror you should enjoy this book quite a lot.

Disclosure: I received an ARC from Amazon Vine in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

Synopsis: It’s Halloween, and life is grim for 23-year-old Dimitri Petrov. It’s the one-year anniversary of his parents’ deaths, he’s stuck on page one thousand of his Rasputin zombie novel, and he makes his living writing obituaries.

But things turn from bleak to terrifying when Dimitri gets a last-minute assignment to cover a séance at the reputedly haunted Aspinwall Mansion.

There, Dimitri meets Lisa, a punk-rock drummer he falls hard for. But just as he’s about to ask her out, he unwittingly unleashes malevolent forces, throwing him into a deadly mystery. When Dimitri wakes up, he is in the morgue—icy cold and haunted by a cryptic warning given by a tantalizing female spirit.

As town residents begin to turn up gruesomely murdered, Dimitri must play detective in his own story and unravel the connections among his family, the Aspinwall Mansion, the female spirit, and the secrets held in a pair of crumbling antiquarian books. If he doesn’t, it’s quite possible Lisa will be the next victim.



View all my reviews