Only Child: A Burke Novel ebook

Hooray! This is a great new book from Andrew Pyper! Ever since I read his book, The Demonologist, I always check back to that Amazon page to see what people who read it also read and get so many recommendations from there. Pyper's new book, The Only Child, was the fastest book I've read this year. I couldn't put it down; I lost sleep staying up late to finish it! My family had to shout at me to get my attention. The action scenes were so vivid and moved so fast. Earlier this spring, I had read Shelley's Frankenstein and Stoker's Dracula aloud with my two older kids. Those two books are referenced in this story (which made it even more fun) about a man who was reanimated from the corpse of a serial killer - who had also been possessed by a demon!! So, there's murder, mayhem, a two-hundred year-old immortal searching for the impossible human connection, settings in Hungary, Romania, New York and the Pacific Northwest. The heroine is a well-educated psychiatrist who works with the criminally insane. She's very accessible and believable (except for the ease with which she falls into physical relationships). So many unexpected twists and turns! This book is the perfect way to start the summer!

I recently finished this, my first Andrew Pyper, and I enjoyed it so much that I'm now halfway through two of his earlier novels, The Demonologist and Lost Girls. Based on my searches of his novels, he seems to be somewhat prolific, which means I'm already certain I'll be adding others of his titles very soon. Which may give some hint to how much I liked The Only Child. Before I discuss what seem to be generalities common to his works - of the one I've finished and the two I'm in the thrall of now - let me mention some specifics, without spoilers, of The Only Child. First, I have to confess to being a sucker for a good Gothic tale of horror, since my introduction to Dracula many, MANY moons ago. However, as tethered to Gothic as The Only Child is, this is modern Gothic, occurring in present day and told in modern language and style; literary style, to be sure, but MODERN literary style nonetheless. Yes, the story delves into the past, the times of Mary Shelley, Bram Stoker, and Robert Louis Stevenson, all of whom play small roles in the story, but these sojourns are conversational narrations described by one of the current-day major characters and not whole chapters in flashback mode. Except for this character's slightly Old World expressiveness, the language remains new, of our time. If you love the English language, this is a novel to savor, written not by a hack - oh, the sheer number of hacks out there nowadays - but by a master craftsman of words and sentence structure. On a side note, I have to take mild umbrage with one of the reviews below, the one that complains that the story devolves into a spy thriller by the end. Perhaps it's too subtly hinted at, but the fact that an off-the-grid organization is on the hunt for the character of Michael, the monster of the story, begins at the very beginning of the story, and when they later come into more evident view, the backstory of Will's character is evidence enough that The Only Child remains a HORROR story, start to finish. The organization is relatively UNimportant. My only, ONLY qualm with the novel is that I foresaw the ending long before it came; unfortunately, I can't discuss this here without spoiling it for other readers, so suffice to say that it's a tried and true ending for many horror stories. Still, the ending isn't of great importance to the whole of the novel - whether you see it coming or not, it's the journey to it that makes The Only Child as riveting, as beautiful, as it is. Now, speaking more generally... Pyper is easily a new favorite author for me for three primary reasons. 1) His style. All I can do is ask you, "How often can you say of a novel - especially in present day - that you found the writing sublimely beautiful?" The man can write. He turns metaphors, perfect metaphors, and almost never has to resort to the words "like" or "as" to do so. 2) His description. His pistons fire on every one of the five senses, and you will see, hear, smell, taste, and feel everything. Why pay for an expensive vacation to any of the locations he takes you to? Reading him, you're in Budapest, Venice, the wilds of Ontario. And his novels are much less expensive than the actual vacation. 3) His ability to write, at least with The Only Child and Lost Girls, leading characters who aren't likeable at all on the surface, but to give them such amazing backstories, trickled out bit by bit, that you at least understand them, empathize with them, and still fear for them. His people are rich, layered, detailed, flawed, human. With Kindle Unlimited, I download novels so often - some free, some paid for - that it's nearly absurd, and, because I'm a horror fan as well as a fan of simply a good novel, many that I download are that - horror novels. The true horror, though, lies in the number I quit on after the second or third chapter, sometimes even after the first chapter, or the prologue. Why? Because, that quickly, it is so painfully obvious that the authors, many of whom are indecently prolific, recognizable names to most horror fans, never graduated beyond 4th or 5th Grade English. They can't write a single sentence of any interest. And I won't even go into spelling, punctuation, grammar, syntax. So, if you want to read a GOOD horror novel, read Pyper.

Having read The Demonologist I was excited to see that Andrew Pyper had put another title out relatively soon. I enjoyed the Demonologist, but I have to say I have enjoyed The Only Child more. It is more tightly written, more exciting and exudes more of a sense of place than The Demonologist did, and I daresay it's even creepier than that previous title. I am just about at the end of this book now and my only critique is that I want to learn even more about the main characters and the locations all too briefly described here...yes, I think The Only Child is a bit too short! That said, this bodes well for Pyper's future titles and I look forward to reading them.