Winter Holiday

Dark Minds, Novella 6

By: Chad A. Clark

Narrated by: Alex Freeman

A house in the mountains, the roads to and from it impassable. The perfect place for best-selling author Peter’s annual holiday; a refuge from the pressures of life and an opportunity to recharge his creative batteries in solitude.

A dream location.

Except this year, something else has taken residence on the snow-covered slopes, something filled with malignant intent and a desire to kill. Driven by impulses beyond its ken, it seeks out the house in which Peter is staying and the writer soon finds himself in a battle with the deadliest of foes, a creature born of nightmares…

©2018 Dark Minds Press (P)2020 Chad A. Clark

Winter Holiday

This was really good for a short book. Very creepy yet full of mayhem.Narration was very good.

Decent Monster Story

I thought this was a decent monster story. I didn't think it was all that unique but was a more adult version of the story I typically see for kid's stories or movies. As others have said, the story isn't perfectly streamlined and there are some spots were I'm not sure what the point was and if it really had any kind of bearing on the story. Otherwise I enjoyed it. I like Clark's short stories and while they may have a few faults, the overall story itself is absolutely worth listening to.

Alex Freeman did a really good job with the narration. Something about his voice sounds familiar and made for a very easily listening experience. I felt he added to the overall feeling of isolation and was a big reason I enjoyed the book so much.

I was voluntarily provided this free review copy audiobook by the author, narrator, or publisher.

Excellent

A fantastic monster horror
An isolated author fighting his own creativity
Well narrated and highly recommended
I received a free review audiobook and voluntarily left this review

Is it all true: listen to the author notes of course it’s true.

The performance was good. Alex kept a sense of tension in his read through. It set up a nice scene when it was needed and kept it around after the actions was done. I liked the ambiguity of the monster and the monster relation to peter. After the first instance I would have ran away think it was a bear. The inclusion of Brendan seemed a bit strange that side story was only there to fuel Peter psychosis. It didn’t add much. It was cool don’t get me wrong but seems more of something that was thrown on after the story was planned out. I liked it more then it may seem and will be checking out more of Chads books.

Disjointed and incomplete

This story is listed as a novella, but I've listened to short stories that are more developed as huge chunks seem to be missing from the story.

The story starts off well, with lots of backstory and buildup, but then suddenly the author is in the middle of a crazy experience that we seem to just get bits and pieces of. Suddenly the protagonist knows the monster attacking him, but we don't. Then suddenly another "surprising" discovery that gets zero resolution or explanation.

The writing was decent, not great, and while the narrator was good, it was spoiled by horrible production quality. The audio sounds like it's coming through a phone line or underwater making it tough to listen to.

It's short, so that's something, but I'd still skip it honestly.