A review by johnny92m
Dexter in the Dark by Jeff Lindsay

2.0

I couldn't begin to tell you why this book took me so long to get through. Maybe it was my schedule, maybe it was an inherent disinterest in the start of the book, that carried into my mood for finishing it. Nonetheless, I found this go-around with Dexter and his demons utterly uninspiring and full of out there fancy, even for me.

The book spends a lot of time waxing poetic about what Dexter's life will be like if he cannot reunite with his Dark Passenger, the internal spirit (for lack of a better term) that helps guide him through his most grizzly night excursions. The Passenger goes into hiding under threat during a string of new homicides, which amounts to truly nothing. The victims are left with their heads chopped off, which serves as a metaphor for how faceless these secondary characters come off in this book.

Lindsay's past works in the series have helped to produce some truly interesting characters, but in this one the lot of them feel like caricatures. Usually vibrant and complex folks like Deb and Rita are reduced to what feels like shells of their former selves. The "villains" are two dimensional husks of what they could be, if we didn't have to have another solid 3 paragraphs on how Dexter *feels* about the same thing he's been *feeling* for the majority of the novel.

I'm invested into the series through at least the next three books (thank you, great yard sale deals), so I hope this is just a hiccup in a series I've so far enjoyed.