Prismatic by Edwina Grey

Prismatic by Edwina Grey A Horror Book Review by Tasha Schiedel.

Okay here is the review. Please let me know your honest thoughts. I don’t normally like writing bad reviews, but I feel that it is a necessary learning experience for me that I need to do.

Prismatic has a fantastic synopsis that has potential to be a phenomenal book. However, with the multiple authors and the back and forth timelines, this book is a dud for me. It feels as if the three authors each had a story based on the same premise, but did not get together to form a cohesive and strong narration, and just threw together what they wrote.

Since I feel that the story is thrown together the way it is. I never cared about the outcome of the main characters in each of the time lines. The current timeline character, Jacqueline, comes across as antisocial and only along for this story because she doesn’t know where else to be. Her skills or what she brings to the story, is irrelevant other than she found skeletal remains.

The next timeline set in 1919 is Doctor Waters. He is probably the most entertaining of the group of characters. He is trying to figure out an illness that is spreading quickly while saving the people that are sick from it. For the first half of the book, he is just waltzing around looking at his patients. Asking some questions on their health, and that’s about it. And then you have 1789, John, a criminal that is trying to survive in a community overrun by zealots and disease. Entertaining enough, I just didn’t click with John.

I strongly feel that this story could use a rewrite and become a stronger, solid, and entertaining book. Don’t get me wrong, there is a story here, but I was never pulled in to care much about where the story ends up and what happens to all the characters. Each of the authors that are a part of this story, is a great writer individually. But when you put them altogether in this format, it isn’t working. Perhaps a bit more focus on the current timeline with a bit of history could make this a solid story.

Prismatic by Edwina Grey

JOINT WINNER OF THE 2006 AUREALIS PRIZE FOR BEST HORROR NOVEL.
 
History is out to get you.
 
Jacqueline is a struggling academic. Unless she can kickstart her failed thesis, she will lose everything she’s ever dreamed of.
 
A lucky find leads to the discovery of a lifetime—a cache of documents detailing a century-old murder. She can finish her thesis, and garner the prestige to make her career. 
 
But as Jacqueline digs into the records, a mysterious plague strikes Sydney. Identical to the mysterious illness detailed in the historical documents, causing unnatural outbreaks of violence and madness. And the man she made the discovery with—biologist Daniel O’Connor—may be the source of the infection. An ancient conspiracy surfaces, desperate to bury the ancient truth.
 
Threatened on all sides, Jacqueline must confront a dark legacy, or everything she knows and loves will be consumed by malevolent forces..
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If you like Stephen King’s Cell and James Bradley’s The Resurrectionist. You’ll devour Edwina Grey’s dark horror story that draws on Australia’s blood-soaked past as a prison for Britain’s most monstrous criminals. This terrifying, award-winning novel is only one click away.

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