Dead Reflections—Carol Weekes

It is ubiquitous. It walks naked through sunlight and dances through the nocturne. It sings quiet tunes that fade in and out with the melancholy discord of broken chimes. It keeps rooms and it takes in guests on a regular basis. Some chambers are darker than others, temporal scorpions hiding within the folds of time and space. Death is a dark flower, its perfume heady and dangerous as it pulls you into its bosom. It maintains many levels within the bloom of its existence, some of them pockets of toxic waste. (3)

Yet another of my wonderful prizes from the Librarything Early Reviewers program, although my first e-book. My strategy has been to "bid" on any of the books that I find even slightly interesting, and it seemed to pay off this time because I won three books in the December batch. All three of them were ebooks, which may mean that you have a higher chance of winning because less people are bidding on that mode of publication. Either way, exciting to win three books!

I read this one first, in conjunction with another of my recent wins: reading this one during the day, and the other after dark when my overactive imagination made it ill-advised to continue in this book.

That's a good sign, that the book was something I couldn't read after dark. It was sufficiently creepy and supernatural, while also keeping my interest. I appreciated the structure of the book, and actually found it very interesting; it began with a novel, then was followed by alternating poems and short stories. I greatly enjoyed the writing, which was thoughtful and expressive. As someone who is often accused of being morbid - which I can't claim to understand, imagining that everyone just assumes if somebody doesn't answer their phone they've probably been murdered - I appreciated that particular aspect of the book.

There were some things that were not necessarily bad, but rather observations of trends that were not necessarily realistic. Not that stories with supernatural slants are intended to be realistic. I found it odd that all of the lead characters in the novel and short stories were male. Especially considering that the author is a woman, it seemed like the lead characters were terribly inclined to not share the weird happenings with their wives, and in fact sometimes made comments to themselves about their wives freaking out or not believing them.

Additionally, it seemed that all of the children who were featured in the stories either didn't have natural intuition or chose not to trust it. While kids don't always know what's going on, and they are fairly trusting, they also have great instincts.

Overall, an entertaining and fairly quick read.