jvar's review
4.0
Wonderfully creepy. There were moments where I had to put the book down and take a breath. Great take on the elder gods mythos.
andreablythe's review
4.0
This Lovecraftian story involves the rising of ancient gods, a combination of unsettling and bloody moments and lots of tentacles. There were almost too many characters at first, with a lot of jumping around between them, but on the whole the story was interesting and fun with a little gore, but not too much to overwhelm those who might be sensitive to that.
teirhan's review
3.0
I started this book expecting a story in the vein of Declare! by Tim Powers or the Laundry Files by Charles Stross. Unfortunately, while this book was good, it didn't quite rise to the level of that book or series, respectively.
This book is just 270-something pages long, and it's a real shame because I think that in this book there was a much larger one itching to get out. Declare! had a wonderful slow burn to it, gradually building the dread and the supernatural components until it was undeniable; but for all that, much of it was kept ambiguous, too. Red Equinox would have been a better book, in my eyes, if it had moved a little more slowly.
There are some other things that bothered me, too, like the sudden inclusion of SPECTRA (are they from Wynne's other books?) as a government agency dedicated to "special" threats. At the beginning of the book (and for much of the rest of it) the government seems unaware that there is anything "supernatural" going on, and yet by the climax of the book they seem to be completely dialed into the occult world, and aware that there is a supernatural (lovecraftian) world out there to be aware of (and be wary of). There is a subplot with conflict between different organizations in the alphabet soup of clandestine agencies, and between different departments as well, but it seems underdeveloped by comparison to the main storyline.
Overall, a good book and one I enjoyed, but I think that it could have benefited from a little more time to develop the cosmic dread it was trying to evoke at times.
This book is just 270-something pages long, and it's a real shame because I think that in this book there was a much larger one itching to get out. Declare! had a wonderful slow burn to it, gradually building the dread and the supernatural components until it was undeniable; but for all that, much of it was kept ambiguous, too. Red Equinox would have been a better book, in my eyes, if it had moved a little more slowly.
There are some other things that bothered me, too, like the sudden inclusion of SPECTRA (are they from Wynne's other books?) as a government agency dedicated to "special" threats. At the beginning of the book (and for much of the rest of it) the government seems unaware that there is anything "supernatural" going on, and yet by the climax of the book they seem to be completely dialed into the occult world, and aware that there is a supernatural (lovecraftian) world out there to be aware of (and be wary of). There is a subplot with conflict between different organizations in the alphabet soup of clandestine agencies, and between different departments as well, but it seems underdeveloped by comparison to the main storyline.
Overall, a good book and one I enjoyed, but I think that it could have benefited from a little more time to develop the cosmic dread it was trying to evoke at times.
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