Wow, what a mess. I really enjoyed Allyn's short stories with Dr. Westbrook as the central character; and looked forward to a full length novel. Allyn writes well, but this book was, well, too full length to begin with.
Parts (the personal parts) were interesting and kept my attention. But the whole thing fell apart about half-way through as unpleasant things begin to occur. (WARNING: some of the unpleasant things concern dogs, which I thought was unnecessarily cruel to a dog-loving reader like me.)
I thought the supernatural element could have been dropped entirely, and when the plot devolved at the end into one of those tiresome conspiracies, I started skimming. Also, it's one of those stories where if the good guys had just killed the obviously horrible villain when they had a chance, a number of equally horrible events could have been avoided.
To sum up: great writing, interesting characters, terrible plot.
Parts (the personal parts) were interesting and kept my attention. But the whole thing fell apart about half-way through as unpleasant things begin to occur. (WARNING: some of the unpleasant things concern dogs, which I thought was unnecessarily cruel to a dog-loving reader like me.)
I thought the supernatural element could have been dropped entirely, and when the plot devolved at the end into one of those tiresome conspiracies, I started skimming. Also, it's one of those stories where if the good guys had just killed the obviously horrible villain when they had a chance, a number of equally horrible events could have been avoided.
To sum up: great writing, interesting characters, terrible plot.
