Review – Dark Seduction

Title: Dark Seduction

Author: Shaun Jeffrey

Publisher:  Deshca Press

Publication Date: April 14, 2012

ASIN: B007UILHAW

Available at: Amazon

From Goodreads:

Forced into accepting a bet by a group of mysterious card players, Zen Barker soon discovers that there is a world beyond ours. A place of nightmare where the monsters are real: The Shadowland.

The rules of the wager? Kill or be killed. The target? A woman named Melantha who wields a sinister power called the Glamour that allows her to bewitch anyone she meets. She intends using it to take vengeance against the descendents of those who have persecuted her gypsy clan through the ages. But in doing so she risks creating a disturbance in the infrastructure, and if that happens, then the monsters that reside in the Shadowland will be released.

Now the fate of the world rests on the shoulders of a disgruntled anarchist. God help us.

Review:

This novella was a little discombobulating at first as it jumped from Zen to Verity’s points of views. It gained more cohesiveness towards the end though as the two joined forces to end Melantha’s vendetta against the gadje, those who wronged her gypsy tribe.

Nonetheless, the character development was still good. Zen was an inveterate gambler who got in too deep and made a desperate gamble to get out of debt.  He learns the price is too high in the end. Verity was an estranged daughter who wanted to mend fences with her father only to find she was too late. Their paths cross when she goes on a search for the woman who may have caused the death of her father.

The Shadowland Zen learns of is inventive and horrific. At times I wondered if this book was more horror novel then fantasy. I think it was a combination of the two.

The end was very abrupt and unsatisfying. It felt like the story got chopped off at the knees. Maybe there will be more stories about Zen, maybe there won’t. It kind of felt like this was a teaser. Then again maybe it wasn’t. It was very bewildering.

Despite the fast-paced, inventive plot I can’t be completely happy with this story. Even though it left me unsettled like a good horror story should, I can’t be satisfied with the way the story ended or started off.

 *This story does contain some steamy sexual content.

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