DARK RESURRECTION

By JOHN A. KARR (Samhain Publishing; 2007)

     A dispatch from the brave new (to me, at least) world of e-books: John Karr’s DARK RESURRECTION, a revision of a novel originally published back in ’01.  No, I’ve never heard of the book either, apparently a small press publication that vanished “without so much as a splash in the publishing ocean”.  I’m guessing, though, that DARK RESURRECTION will receive a bit more attention in this new and improved version.

     It’s an evil hospital chiller set in and around an establishment called Holy Evangelical Lady of the Lake, or H.E.L.L.  There Victor Galloway, a contented orthopedic surgeon, is unfortunately taken after suffering a heart attack.  Unfortunate because the place is run by undead assholes looking for new recruits!  Victor joins their ranks by eating an undead heart offered to him by the Hospital’s corrupt CEO Randolph Tobias, which entails waking up in a coffin and digging his way out of his own grave.

     Enter Ray, who works as a programmer in H.E.L.L., he being one of the hospital’s few mortal employees and unaware of the true nature of his co-workers.  A programming issue brings him in touch with Victor’s grieving wife, just as Victor is forcibly coerced into doing Tobias’s dirty work.  But Victor is anything but subservient to Tobias and his henchmen, and is determined to take ‘em down--with Ray’s help, of course.

     Fine story, though a mite standard for my tastes: the good guys are all really good and the bad guys really bad, and yes, there’s the expected sappy romance between Ray and Victor’s wife.  The latter is kidnapped of course, leading to the obligatory climactic rescue attempt, and, not to give anything away, but there’s also a big explosion near the end.

     I can’t complain, however, about the story’s construction or overall flow.  It’s a page-turner (or, more accurately for an e-book, a page-scroller) and extremely well paced, with information doled out at a clip neither too fast or too slow.  The characterizations are uniformly solid and even the romance is integrated without much strain (the author for once doesn’t halt the narrative so his protagonists can have a roll in the hay).

     Continuing the praise, I liked the way the relationship between the male protagonists is developed, from a glimpse Ray has of Victor in the beginning to a partnership in bringing down the evil fucks running H.E.L.L.  There are also some novel twists on traditional undead mythos (a specially fashioned stomach, for instance, to accommodate the consumption of human flesh), much breakneck action and plenty of gore.

     To download this novel, go to www.samhainpublishing.com