Michaelbrent Collings

The book starts out like a Stephen King thriller, like the kind he wrote during the seventies and eighties when he was still hungry. Back before King started writing cinder block-sized epic tomes filled with meandering storylines that wandered off on tangents. It grabs your attention, hints at something terrible just outside your vision, and convinces you to keep reading because you have to know how this is all going to play out. And there's certainly a nod towards King with an all-obscuring show more fog and strange creatures that lurk within, a la The Mist. Unlike King, Collings is still hungry, and it shows. With only a couple of exceptions, Collings stays focused on the plot and the characters in said plot. There's plenty of action with several fight scenes and car chases. Horror is used to reveal the monsters living within people in a very literal sense.

Collings provides us with three likable protagonists: John (the man with no past), Serafina (the woman sworn to protect him), and Isaiah (the killer). Collings goes in depth with each of them, revealing their pasts and their struggles to hold it together as their worlds come crashing down. Isaiah was the most interesting of the three as he goes from avenging angel to a man caught in an emotional vise, blackmailed to do the dirty work of the antagonists. And he's a priest! I found his life journey from troubled youth to priest to assassin quite intriguing.

The two main antagonists are Dominic and Melville. While the former is in charge, it's the latter that had more depth (as despicable as he is). Dominic seemed too much a cardboard cutout villain. And then there's President Richard Peters, whose emails with Dominic, staff, and foreign leaders opens every chapter. He offers the reader a clue as to how the rest of the world is dealing with the crisis as well as a window into his deteriorating mental state.

After the thriller opening that plays on conspiracy theorists' worst fears of an all-knowing police state, the story morphs into apocalyptic fantasy. Los Angeles is collateral damage as John and Serafina are relentlessly pursued by Dominic's henchmen, Isaiah, and Melville. The disease morphs people into abominations and the fog closes in, yet there always seems to be a car to be found with a full tank of gas and maybe some sandwiches. This is all intentional; the characters are being led to a meeting place in the middle of the country where all will be revealed.

Unfortunately, the manuscript could've used another run through by a proofreader. There were enough mistakes in there that, while it didn't sink the story, proved to be a distraction: "laying down" was used instead of "lying down", an assault shotgun becomes an assault rifle then switches back, a gun becomes a knife, bad dates in email headers, misused punctuation, capitalization (the Bible) and word choice errors.

This Darkness Light is an an action-packed chase across an apocalyptic landscape. While the characters serve familiar roles, Collings embodies (most of) them with enough depth that you can picture who will play them in the movie. Another set of eyes would've been helpful before publication to tidy things up, but it shouldn't stop you from enjoying the ride.

A free copy of this book was received in exchange for an honest review, which originally appeared at the New Podler Review of Books. show less

I’m a little bored with stories about zombies. Don’t get me wrong, I like them plenty, it’s just that I’ve read a lot of them and most of them tend to be pretty similar. So I wasn’t quite sure how I’d like Michaelbrent Collings’ first novel in his new zombie series, THE COLONY: GENESIS. I need not have worried – it’s really fast-paced, it’s engagingly written, and yes, it does have something new to say about zombies. It’s also the start of a new series.

Mild plot show more spoilers follow.

Ken Strickland is a pretty ordinary guy: he’s a high school teacher living in Boise, Idaho, with his wife and three young children. The day begins ordinarily enough – Ken is giving a test to his students – when they witness a plane falling out of the sky. Then another. Then all hell truly breaks loose when half of Ken’s students begin savagely attacking the other half, tearing them to shreds and shrugging off horrific injuries. Those bitten also quickly turn into brutal, unthinking killers. Ken survives the initial onslaught, but knows that his family is downtown, so he begins a desperate quest to (1) simply survive and (2) try to save his family, eventually joining a small number of other survivors of the catastrophe. This isn’t an ordinary zombie novel, and to be clear, it’s not even truly a “zombie” novel in the sense that it involves the dead coming back to life to consume the living; the seemingly mindless killers are still alive, but are driven to kill in the same way that the infected of the film 28 Days Later or Steven King’s CELL are. It quickly becomes apparent that there is some weirdness (beyond the obvious) going on here. For one, why did roughly half the population suddenly become mindless, savage, and enraged, while the other half were unaffected? For another, why do the killers periodically stop what they’re doing, in unison, and pause before resuming their killing rages, and why are these pauses growing shorter and shorter? And what’s going on with the insect populations, which also seem to be behaving strangely?

There is one element of GENESIS that I should note because I think it could matter to some readers: the book ends on a cliffhanger. We’ve been following Ken as he and his companions make their way through the zombie-infested ruins of Boise to the last known location of Ken’s wife and children throughout the book and, well, we don’t yet know what their fate is at the end of the book. We also don’t yet come to understand why or how any of this happened. We just have questions, and few answers by the end of the novel. I didn’t find it unsatisfying, as two sequels are already available, but some readers might be annoyed by the fact that this isn’t truly a “stand-alone” kind of novel. Frankly, I am genuinely curious about the circumstances surrounding all this.

THE COLONY: GENESIS is a quick read: the action is very fast-paced and tends toward the cinematic. Characterization is not deep (but then again, this is a story about people just trying to stay alive and facing almost impossible odds, so there isn’t that much opportunity for deep reflection and motivation). If you’re looking for a quick read of survival horror, and an interesting take on zombies, then I would highly recommend THE COLONY: GENESIS.

Review copyright © 2014 J. Andrew Byers show less

This is probably the darkest, most twisted installment yet, while still having one of the sweetest, nicest characters in this series. I don't know what I was expecting going in - but I was surprised by how disgusted I was by some of the new players on the field. Seriously, how does Collings find new ways to horrify and disgust me after the first three books??? That said, I loved the two new people Legion falls in with early in the story - Marnie and her mom (whose names often change as show more they're on the run). It's not a short book, yet I found myself flying through it, eager to find out what would happen next. If you enjoy dark horror that will make your skin crawl, with characters that can sometimes surprise you, you're going to really enjoy this one! I really hope to see more of Legion in the future - he's become a favorite of mine, madness and all. show less

The Douglas family just recently had their second child. Money is tight, really tight. And now it looks like there is a malevolent force haunting them. It wants their torment and their blood. The Douglas family may not survive this darkness.

Blake and Alyssa are trying very hard to make a happy family. Their son, Mal, is perhaps 8 years old. Baby Ruthie was just born and already she has a severe medical condition that has both parents deeply worried. But there are centipedes to exterminate. show more Yep. A swarm of centipedes popped out from the crawl space beneath Mal’s bed. Ugh! Why did it have to be centipedes? I am an insect lover… but that warm fuzzy feeling I have for bees, butterflies, beetles, and even tarantulas does not extend to centipedes. So right away, I am a little freaked out, which is what any good horror tale should be doing.

Blake has ghosts of his own that are raised from the past because of all the stresses he is under… and perhaps that malevolent force has something to do with it too. He came from an abusive household and while he has never done anything harsh to his family members, he constantly worries that he is a bad parent or husband. This aspect of Blake made him very human to me and easy to connect with. The guy hasn’t put his past to rest and this recent bought of crap he has to deal with brings it all to the forefront. Just where the evil ghost who is haunting them wants it.

Alyssa is the quiet, subtle hero of the tale holding the family together even as she feels beaten up and torn (literally from the recent birthing). She reassures Blake often that he is a decent human being and tries very hard to hold her own emotions in check to keep the kids reassured.

We also get to see a good chunk of the book through Mal’s eyes. He does a good job of being a kid but also observing all the stress signals his parents are giving off. He tries very hard to be a good brother to Ruthie. I found that some of the scariest scenes were seen through his eyes because he’s just a kid and shouldn’t have to deal with ravenous centipedes or malevolent ghosts.

The plot had some nice twists and turns. There’s some turn of the century photos of dead kids, a few journal entries from a case file on a serial killer, a bike messenger with an interesting paranormal ability, and plenty more. The ending caught me off guard. Even though I was hoping this story wouldn’t have a happy ending (a statement that probably makes me look a little deranged), I wasn’t prepared for how it did end. Yet, once it was laid out before me and all the connections drawn out, I felt that it all made sense and that was really the only way this tale could end. Additionally, Collings provides a personal note at the end about his missionary work and domestic abuse that was a very nice touch. I will never look at ‘I Love Mom’ tattoos the same way again.

I received this audiobook from the narrator (via the Audiobook Blast Newsletter) at no cost in exchange for an honest review.

The Narration: Scott Thomas has a remarkably creepy voice! And he put it to very good use in this book. He had nice voices for the Douglas family, and passable female voices. Then he had a deeply disturbing voice for the malevolent ghost. There were also times in the narration where something tense and spooky was going down and his voice would reflect that. show less