kieralesley's review
4.0
Great second installment for this series!
Rust really is a strong example of indie horror done right. There's a lot of originality here - the setting is really, really evocative. Rustwood has it's own feel. It's rainy, it's moody, everyone's on edge and it's all rotting underneath. It's beautiful in a disgusting sort of way!
Fitch and Kim are back in this installment trying to get Kimberley home while weaving through the increasingly strange and dark factions warring over Rustwood's underbelly. I really like Kim and Fitch as a duo, she's cynical and at times flakey or immature, Fitch is hardbitten and quite sympathetic. We don't get much of his backstory but it feels like the world at large gave up on Fitch a while ago. They're both flawed but competent and likeable, you want them to win - and it's a hard thing for them to win!
Where Ruz has really brought it in this installment was with the antagonists, without giving the game away, they're some of the more confronting and genuinely frightening monsters I've encountered. His prose and pacing are both fantastic too. There's real talent here.
The only thing that stopped this being a five star review was it was a little on the light side plot-wise for me. We covered a lot of ground, but it didn't quite feel big enough to be satisfying. That's probably in part due to the serial nature of the installments, but I felt like I'd read the first half of something that was ramping up to be great rather than something that stood on its own as great, I wanted another act to really bring it home.
That probably means I need to read the next installment!
Rust really is a strong example of indie horror done right. There's a lot of originality here - the setting is really, really evocative. Rustwood has it's own feel. It's rainy, it's moody, everyone's on edge and it's all rotting underneath. It's beautiful in a disgusting sort of way!
Fitch and Kim are back in this installment trying to get Kimberley home while weaving through the increasingly strange and dark factions warring over Rustwood's underbelly. I really like Kim and Fitch as a duo, she's cynical and at times flakey or immature, Fitch is hardbitten and quite sympathetic. We don't get much of his backstory but it feels like the world at large gave up on Fitch a while ago. They're both flawed but competent and likeable, you want them to win - and it's a hard thing for them to win!
Where Ruz has really brought it in this installment was with the antagonists, without giving the game away, they're some of the more confronting and genuinely frightening monsters I've encountered. His prose and pacing are both fantastic too. There's real talent here.
The only thing that stopped this being a five star review was it was a little on the light side plot-wise for me. We covered a lot of ground, but it didn't quite feel big enough to be satisfying. That's probably in part due to the serial nature of the installments, but I felt like I'd read the first half of something that was ramping up to be great rather than something that stood on its own as great, I wanted another act to really bring it home.
That probably means I need to read the next installment!
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