Randolph "Dilda" Carter

Did I ever say how much I hate series books? The ending here was even worse, suspense-wise, than the first volume; you actually could have quit after Ghost Road Blues but here the cliffhanger is so unresolved that there is no way you cannot read the next book in the Pine Deep series, Bad Moon Rising. This trilogy is going to make The Stand look like a pamphlet before it's over.

I had to lower my rating for this one. It was too slowly paced and seemed to have a bit of filler that didn't move the plot forward much. Good character development in a couple of new characters and one old one from GRB. The other weakness over GRB is that there just isn't the sense of novelty and the unique plotting ideas that there were in GRB, with the gangsters coming to town, etc. This seems to be devolving into a conventional vampire and werewolf fest. I'm not all that keen on most of the standard horror tropes and there just isn't the creativity in the plot here that there was in GRB.

Still, well written and with enough suspense thriller elements to keep you turning the pages. It is not a "deep" book so reading it fast isn't going to leave anything behind. Ghost Road Blues was just so much better I think Maberry may have made a mistake by stretching this to three 500 page volumes. Some people just can't get enough of the characters they love, but I'm not one of those. I don't read for that. We'll see if volume 3 justifies my fears or makes me a liar.

Accompaniment: Willie Dixon, Slim Harpo, Robert Johnson.