She Treads Softly: The New Flesh

Saturday, June 22, 2013

The New Flesh

The New Flesh by Keith Deininger
DarkFuse, 5/21/2013

paperback, 260 pages

ISBN-13: 9781937771775

http://www.keithdeininger.com/the-new-flesh.html

Description:

When Jake, a shy fourth grader, starts a fire in the woods behind his school that gets away from him, he's punished and forgiven. But his life is never the same. Three years after the incident, the dreams begin. Dreams of flames and a strange creature Jake calls The Melting Man. Waiting and watching with an insidious grin, it lures him deeper and deeper into his darkest fears, and closer to an otherworld of fire and torment. And then, Jake begins to see The Melting Man wherever he goes.

Come with me, Jake...Come and see...

As his dreams bleed into waking life, Jake realizes he's being dragged toward a very real apocalypse, and that The Melting Man's powers are growing stronger. Asleep, awake, or trapped between the two, Jake must fight to understand not only who and what The Melting Man is and what the dreams mean, but how this creature and Jake's mysterious family legacy ties into a disturbing, violent and enigmatic film associated with his father, a failed screenwriter.

But there may be no way to stop what has already begun...because this is a new nightmare...a new terror...a new Flesh...

My Thoughts:

The New Flesh by Keith Deininger struck a wrong chord with me right at the start. I couldn't blithely accept the whole violent porn-film-making right at the start and didn't want to. The plot just kept going downhill for me. While it was setting up the horror part of the novel, I couldn't get beyond my initial disgust and it just got worse. Although I normally only accept copies of novels I think I will appreciate, I am sorry but I can't recommended The New Flesh.

Disclosure: My Kindle edition was courtesy of DarkFuse via Netgalley for review purposes.

No comments:

Post a Comment

John Updike's six rules for reviewing:

1. Try to understand what the author wished to do, and do not blame him for not achieving what he did not attempt.

2. Give him enough direct quotation--at least one extended passage--of the book's prose so the review's reader can form his own impression, can get his own taste.

3. Confirm your description of the book with quotation from the book, if only phrase-long, rather than proceeding by fuzzy precis.

4. Go easy on plot summary, and do not give away the ending.

5. If the book is judged deficient, cite a successful example along the same lines, from the author's oeuvre or elsewhere. Try to understand the failure. Sure it's his and not yours?

To these concrete five might be added a vaguer sixth, having to do with maintaining a chemical purity in the reaction between product and appraiser.....Review the book, not the reputation.... Better to praise and share than blame and ban. The communion between reviewer and his public is based upon the presumption of certain possible joys in reading, and all our discriminations should curve toward that end.