Book Review- Dark Inside by Jeyn Roberts

Title:Dark Inside

 Author: Jeyn Roberts

Series:  Dark Inside #1

Published:  2 September 2011 by Macmillan

Length: 368 pages

Warnings: Violence,gore, 11 +

Source: Library

Other info: Book two will be called Rage Within. Dark Inside is Jeyn’s debut.

Summary : Since the beginning of mankind, civilizations have fallen: the Romans, the Greeks, the Aztecs...and now us. Huge earthquakes rock the world. Cities are destroyed. But something even more awful is happening: An ancient evil has been unleashed, and it's turning everyday people into hunters, killers, and crazies. This is the world Mason, Aries, Clementine, and Michael are living in--or rather, trying to survive. Each is fleeing unspeakable horror, from murderous chaos to brutal natural disasters, and each is traveling the same road in a world gone mad. Amid the throes of the apocalypse and clinging to love and meaning wherever it can be found, these four teens are on a journey into the heart of darkness--and to find each other and a place of safety.

Review: After worldwide earthquakes...a tonne of crazy stuff happens. People become killing machines, turning whenever, turning on friends, lovers, family. There’s no explanation for it, but it throws survivors into chaos. Months pass with everyone unable to trust others to keep them alive. Michael, Aries, Mason and Clementine are four teenagers who are trying to stay alive. Each are succeeding, but only  just. Continued survival depends on thngs they don’t have. And the killing goes on.

It was a nice idea, but not a must read thing. Post apocalyptic things like this where there’s random survivors thrown together are always interesting, with a lot of stereotypes being available for use, invertion and playing around with. Jeyn brings a lot of new things to this, while still keeping some stock characters.

Clementine and Aries are two girls who don’t seem that different to each other.  Mason and Michael are also similar in their ways. It’s nice that they all have their own reasons to keep going, carry on surviving in this carzy world, but they’re not amazingly developed and at some points I was wondering if they’d die so I could be happy. The best character is Chickadee, who’s strong even while dealing with all of this and her diabetes, but still tries to carry on.

It’s different to what I expected-the summary makes it seem as though they’re all somewhere near each other throughout. In reality, it takes a fair bit of the novel for them to meet and interact. So slow on that count.

It starts off really well, with the earthquakes and first wave of things happening really quickly, showing us the characters as they deal with all of this stuff. But from there, it drags out a little.  switching between the four focuses, not perspectives as it’s in third person aside from one part which I’ll say about later, was a bit confusing to start with and it feels a bit all over the place, and it’s a bit samey.

The writing’s not that good. it’s not very engaging when it comes to showing our four protagonaists and their fights to survive, and I couldn’t really care much about it.

Saying that, the parts written from the perspective of “Nothing” are amazing. They’ give a creepy air to the novel and are intriguing enough to make me want to find out more about his “Nothing”.

Overall:  Strength 3 tea to a postapocalyptic novel with some upsides, but not much.

Links: Amazon | The Book Depository | Goodreads | Author website |