Book review: Angel of Darkness

Having finally reached the point where Charles de Lint crossed over into my favourite genre, Horror, I have to say I was pretty excited about reading the first of the three horror novels he wrote under the pen-name of Samuel M. Key (also side note - his reason for choosing that particular pen name is near and dear to my heart!)

The first of the three novels, Angel of Darkness, feels an awful lot like the video game series Silent Hill - except for the fact that this book was published almost a decade before the first game in that series. The story follows the first responders to a horrible murder, who seem cursed to shift between their own world and two increasingly darker versions of the world after being exposed to the crime scene. (For non-gamers, the three shifting worlds is a pretty big part of any game in the Silent Hill franchise).

The open sequence is pretty gruesome, and may scare away readers, but trust me, if you can make it through the first chapter this is an intensely good read, forever keeping you off balance but playing fair in terms of a good horror novel.

The characters are well written, both good and bad alike, and the story definitely gave me a serious case of the heebie jeebies.