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A review by arockinsamsara
The Broken Places by Blaine Daigle
4.0
This is a tight horror novel with an ever-growing sense of dread. The three main characters are all defined by different traumas, but they are distinct and relatable, or at least understandable. I enjoyed the overall story as well as the structure and pacing, and thought the flashbacks and other reveals about the characters’ histories were well done, not giving everything away in an exposition dump anywhere but filling in the pieces slowly. The folklore is an interesting twist on other isolated forest-based mythologies, and I again I appreciated that we were only revealed things bit by bit, with some questions still unanswered by the time the immediate story ended. The setting itself, the isolation of a cabin in the middle of a remote taiga during a solstice snowstorm, felt menacing and real. So, intriguing and fleshed out characters, a well-plotted and tight plot, and an overall engaging story, which succeeded in bringing dread and some horrific imagery, makes for an overall fun read, especially for anyone interested in the folk-horror subgenre exploring when modernity is in a fight with the natural world it is trying to either conquer or leave behind.
That said, it wasn’t a perfect read for me. While the flashbacks went a long way toward it, I did wish that I actually felt the connection between the characters as much as they described their love for each other. They repeatedly referenced their deep commitment and brotherhood, and while it felt genuine in the story, I would have liked to see it a little more. There was also a clear attempt at making the forest a character in the story, and the setting did feel genuine and creepy but I never really felt it to have the kind of heft it needed to really be an active participant, except for a few moments here and there. And while I don’t think every rule of the supernatural experience needs to be explained, I enjoy when stories refuse to handfeed you everything rely on the unreliability of the narrator’s experiences, I felt like there was some hand-waving at making the supernatural legacies fit the story. It just felt like anything could have happened in the plot and it would have been fine within the fuzziness of the mythology of the story, as the rules and expectations of the supernatural elements just didn’t seem to have any real heft. I just needed a little more to anchor things, so I didn’t feel like rules were arbitrarily being made up as we went along. And, lastly, some of the actual prose was a little too purple for my taste. I really appreciate poetic prose, especially in genre stories, but here it often felt forced, with every page having far more adjectives and qualifiers than necessary and sentences that felt like they were crafted just to sound important. Overall, the writing was strong and I did enjoy some of the flourishes but some of it just felt unnatural, it was just too heavy-handed.
I did really enjoy this story, and blew through it in just a few sittings. The chapters felt long enough to provide actual sustenance while still being able to end with some nice hooks that urged me to keep reading. It has strong plotting coupled with a good dose of ambience that makes for a compelling read. While there were some things I think could have been improved upon, I still heartily recommend it, especially for anyone terrified to find what might be buried in the frozen legacy of family history, hiding in plain sight in the middle of a cabin in the middle of nowhere.
I want to thank the author, the publisher Wicked House Publishing, and NetGalley, who provided a complimentary eARC for review. I am leaving this review voluntarily.
That said, it wasn’t a perfect read for me. While the flashbacks went a long way toward it, I did wish that I actually felt the connection between the characters as much as they described their love for each other. They repeatedly referenced their deep commitment and brotherhood, and while it felt genuine in the story, I would have liked to see it a little more. There was also a clear attempt at making the forest a character in the story, and the setting did feel genuine and creepy but I never really felt it to have the kind of heft it needed to really be an active participant, except for a few moments here and there. And while I don’t think every rule of the supernatural experience needs to be explained, I enjoy when stories refuse to handfeed you everything rely on the unreliability of the narrator’s experiences, I felt like there was some hand-waving at making the supernatural legacies fit the story. It just felt like anything could have happened in the plot and it would have been fine within the fuzziness of the mythology of the story, as the rules and expectations of the supernatural elements just didn’t seem to have any real heft. I just needed a little more to anchor things, so I didn’t feel like rules were arbitrarily being made up as we went along. And, lastly, some of the actual prose was a little too purple for my taste. I really appreciate poetic prose, especially in genre stories, but here it often felt forced, with every page having far more adjectives and qualifiers than necessary and sentences that felt like they were crafted just to sound important. Overall, the writing was strong and I did enjoy some of the flourishes but some of it just felt unnatural, it was just too heavy-handed.
I did really enjoy this story, and blew through it in just a few sittings. The chapters felt long enough to provide actual sustenance while still being able to end with some nice hooks that urged me to keep reading. It has strong plotting coupled with a good dose of ambience that makes for a compelling read. While there were some things I think could have been improved upon, I still heartily recommend it, especially for anyone terrified to find what might be buried in the frozen legacy of family history, hiding in plain sight in the middle of a cabin in the middle of nowhere.
I want to thank the author, the publisher Wicked House Publishing, and NetGalley, who provided a complimentary eARC for review. I am leaving this review voluntarily.