Low

De: Mike Duke

Narrado por: Larry Whitler

Duración: 13 h y 11 m

Resumen del Editor

Officer Mark Adams is fed up with God, his wife, and the legal constraints of his job. He longs for a life he can enjoy and to see true justice meted out.

Chad Bigleby is a lawyer thrown into a deadly moral quagmire, forced to decide whether he will abide by man’s laws or make his own.

Each man is being driven to the edge of his limits. Both men are on a collision course. All because something wicked has arrived in Pleasant Grove. Something ancient and obsessed with vengeance, eager to punish the souls of men for their sins.

How low will they go to get what they desire most? And what will it cost them in the end? Hell only knows...

©2017 Mike Duke (P)2020 Stitched Smile Publications

Get straight with God

We've all heard the phrase "you reap what you sow". We are all privy to the inevitable day of reckoning.

Well, this book made me want to get on my knees and repent for all my sins. Even those that are already forgiven. Just in case Phobos was to ever come sniffing around my door.

I came up in a religious household in which we were told that sinners go to hell. If that church is still preaching those ways, I would like to pass around a few copies of "Low" amongst the congregation. Scare the crap out of the teenage paritioners. Get them on the straight and narrow.

The story flows very well through the horrors. The evil doers are so very easy to hate. The good guys are flawed. Mike Duke’s experience in law enforcement is refreshingly evident throughout the book. He writes a hell of a good dream sequence and also a hell of a good Hell.

A solid supernatural police procedural...

A well-paced novel of brooding supernatural suspense with some genuinely powerful moments.

I won't bother with recapping the synopsis. This was a sort of supernatural police procedural, replete with shapeshifting demons and some gory moments, though not overly so. There is a heavy undercurrent of theological philosophy throughout, that serves the story and the characters well. We get a solid three dimensions out of most of our characters, though at the same time we know what the character will ultimately choose in the end, right or wrong. This isn't so much a flaw, but it stood out. I never felt that our hero was going to make the wrong choices when it came down to it...he was just too noble. Sure, he's tempted, but you could feel he was righteous underneath so there was no real threat he would fall prey to temptations. The human baddie, on the other hand, I felt was handled extremely well. He's vile in so many ways, but the side story about his kid really added some depth to him and his motivations, and I applaud Duke for his drawing of this character. It was terrific.

The pacing is solid, never balls to the wall, but it does ramp up a few times to some exciting moments. You can tell Duke knows his stuff (he was a cop for years), so the procedural aspect of the story feels very realistic. I don't mind less realistic depictions (and I'd wager your average reader wouldn't either), but you can just tell when someone really knows of what they speak. Great crime/procedural writers like Michael Connelly are able to take a layman and transport them to a life of public service in such a way there's never any doubt in the reader's mind that they nailed it. Duke manages the same level of realism in that aspect of this novel, and it helped add legitimacy to the supernatural side of things.

The climax is good. I'd have liked a bit more of the buildup to it, a bit more nail-biting suspense before it popped off, but that's a personal thing. And the triumph at the end actually threatened to move me to tears, made me reflect some on my own faith and what I believe in, and it moved me.

All in all, this is a very good book, one I'd easily recommend to most readers who don't openly and savagely hate Christianity. It isn't preachy, isn't religious fiction, this is still an R-rated horror novel, but it treats religion fairly and doesn't cast it in a negative light, which was refreshing.

The narrator...that's my biggest gripe. There are a lot of sections of the book he does a fine job, but then there are others where he bordered on bad. Overall he wasn't bad, but just moments. Some mispronounced words that recurred several times and every time made my shoulders cinch up. And his cadence (especially in some parts of dialogue) occasionally falters and seems like he wasn't sure what the next word was, but again, this was not a problem throughout, just something that happened a few times. Not my favorite narrator, but not a bad one.

I say you should do yourself a favor and check it out. I think you'll have a hell of a good time.

Disappointed

Couldn’t get passed first quarter.
I was disappointed in story from description and had trouble following it