Thomas Brown (20)

The unthinkable is happening in Lynnwood – a village with centuries of guilt on its conscience.
Who wouldn’t want to live in an idyllic village in the English countryside like Lynnwood? With its charming pub, old dairy, friendly vicar, gurgling brooks, and its old paths with memories of simpler times.

But behind the conventional appearance of Lynnwood’s villagers, only two sorts of people crawl out of the woodwork: those who hunt and those who are prey. Visitors are watched by an entity show more between the trees where the Dark Ages have endured to the twenty-first century. Families who have lived behind stone walls and twitching curtains know that the gusts of wind blowing through the nearby alluring Forest bring with them a stench of delightful hunger only Lynnwood can appease.

There seems to be a rise of primordial themed horror recently with The Ritual, Memory of Trees, the Darkening and I like it!

Lynnwood is a beautifully crafted tale of what is left when you strip away civilisation - primal instinct. Gorgeously descriptive, poetic and eloquent the author masterfully builds an atmosphere of creeping dread leading as Midwinter approaches.

The reader, inside the head of Freya, experiences the conflict between living by the rules or fulfilling base desires.

Lynwood left me pondering is the primal instinct of savagery that exists within all of us more fundamental to the human psyche than we dare imagine.

It is a book to be savoured…. show less

In Southampton, England, a grey, rain-filled place, the story of Felix, and Michael's set. Repeating patterns, like grey days, the same walk through the city every morning and evening, and the sight of birds, characterize the book. What if birds were human, or human became birds? Remember the classic on Icarus and his father Daedalus, the creator of the labyrinth?
It's exactly this fate and circumstance that Thomas Brown as author throws his readers in while reading Featherbones. There seems show more no way out of this storyline. Dream and reality converge. It's difficult to stay concentrated. Is the reference to the Titanic a clue? Will one of the main characters commit suicide, or turn into a bird at full moon?
A more rigorous editing process could improve the novel. Unncessary sections and the absence of movement at times are annyoing the readers. Yet, I'm impressed by the psychological laden plot and the way a small world becomes even smaller throughout Featherbones. show less