Revive
by Thomas James Brown
Lulu.com
Copyright © November 2011
ISBN: 978-1-4478-3676-6
200 Pages
$9.27 Paperback
£2.29 Kindle UK
Reviewed by Author C. V. Hunt
3 out of 5 Stars
ABOUT:
Christmas is coming. It is a time of celebration, of goodwill and the sharing of gifts… But not for Tammy Becks. Her mum is sick, her brothers need looking after and in her desperation she turns to a coffee shop, a quiet little back-alley place, far from the bustle of the high street. It is called Revive.
Phil has lost his job of twenty years. With the festive pressure mounting a family of his own to feed, he must do whatever necessary to make ends meet, even if that means donning a beard, jacket and boots for the foreseeable future…
Except even that proves uncertain, when a last coffee on Christmas Eve sees him at Revive, A subtle horror has been brewing and the untimely death of a regular unleashes it in all its ancient, bitter force.
Even the dead can’t resist on last drink before closing…
REVIEW:
I had mixed feelings about Revive by Thomas James Brown. The synopsis gave me a feeling that I was in for a ride of grueling horror, but it wasn’t the gut-wrenching bloody-terror that I thought it would be.
The day-in and day-out lives of two of the main characters take up most of the story. Tammy Beck is a young girl, her mom is very ill, and she has two younger brothers. With her mom unable to work, Tammy takes up a job at a small coffee shop, while the other main character, Phil, suits up every day as Saint Nick. Phil has recently lost his job and is willing to do anything to keep his family fed through the rough holiday season.
The scare of this story didn’t seem to be the unknown horrors that lay waiting in the coffee shop, but the everyday struggles of two people, from different walks of life, as they fight through a terrible economy. All of the worries and terrors of families living pay check to paycheck seemed to be the primary focus of Revive, with flashback of happier times that only intensified how dire the present was for the characters. Christmas is only a few days away, and everyone’s minds want to linger on being able to feed their families, and provide them with a Christmas that feels unaffected by the dropping economy.
There were areas of the story were repetitive, and it was intentional on the author’s part. Thomas James Brown does extremely well with theory of mind. (Theory of mind – the ability to attribute mental states of oneself and others and to understand that others have beliefs, desires and intentions that are different from one’s own.) My only complaint would be that the dialog became confusing with no attributions in some areas, but overall it was well written.
There was quite a bit of creativity to the plot, and in the end we still had our gruesome horror of the monsters the lay within the pages. I only wished that the ratio of everyday horror, and the supernatural horror, was heavier on the supernatural. The final sequence was thrilling, and the ending was somewhat disturbing with the evidence that had been presented through the book, but that is what makes up horror – the disturbing aftermath.
