Reading is my ESCAPE from Reality!

Wind rips through the crags a thousand feet above, nothing moving in this godforsaken town, and the mule skinner knows that something is wrong.

- first sentence

 

Okay, so the first thing I need to say is that I loved the Wayward Pines series. I thought I would love anything by Crouch.

When I started reading this book, I thought there was going to be a supernatural element. I kept waiting for something that was never going to come.... because of this, I didn't like the book. Maybe if I had known what to expect, I would have appreciated the book more. To be fair, the summary on Amazon does kind hint towards a ghost/haunting.

Overall, it wasn't a bad book and I did learn a lot of new words - though I probably won't have an opportunity to use them in conversation any time soon.

Examples:

mochila - a Spanish word for knapsack

shabrack - a cavalry saddlecloth used in European armies

younker - youngster

scree - a mass of small loose stones that form or cover a slope

speleothem - structure formed in a cave by the deposition of minerals from water

slumgullion - cheap or insubstantial stew

The story goes back and forth between present time and a century ago (when the entire town disappeared). There is a lot of death and killing, but the reason is NOT supernatural, it's just old-fashioned greed. There is a man who thinks God talks to him and makes a terrible choice because of it, but there are no ghosts, no haunting. Oh well.