'Deathbringer' – Bryan Smith

I'm slowly catching up with the TBR pile, 'Deathbringer' has only been sat in the middle of it since the middle of February... I was quite pleased to see 'Deathbringer' finally make it into the TBR pile as it happens. Here was one of those books that I meant to buy and not only didn't but also managed to forget what it was called entirely. It took me a while (and by 'a while', I mean 'several years') to find it again but find it I absolutely did and I finally got round to reading 'Deathbringer' over the weekend.

Was it worth the wait? Erm... no, unfortunately.

Hannah Starke was the first to die. And the first to come back. In the small town of Dandridge they all come back. The buried claw their way out of their graves. The recently killed get up and killed . As the dead attack the living, the number of the dead continue to grow. And the odds against the living get worse and worse

In the middle of it all stands a dark shadowy figure, a stranger in town with an unspeakable goal. If he is successful, death will rule Dandridge and the terror will continue to spread until all hope os lost. Who can defeat an army of the living dead? And who can stand face to face against the... Deathbringer?

Reading horror and Bryan Smith are two things that just go together without too much thought involved. If you like one then you'll like the other, it's pretty much that simple. I've got a way to go before I finish reading Bryan Smith's back catalogue but I thought I'd read enough, by now, to expect another good read in 'Deathbringer'. Well, that's what I thought...

If you get a perfect score in anything, in this life, then you're a very lucky person. 'Deathbringer' was the book where my perfect run of Bryan Smith books ended and the really annoying thing is that I can't really put my finger on quite why. I think a large part of it was that Smith's characterisation and focus, normally spot on, were not up to their usual standards here. The Deathbringer himself was a little too 'other worldly' which would have been fine if he hadn't had a plan that we needed to buy into to make the book work. He did but I couldn't because there was nothing to relate to in order for me to be for or against that plan. The characterisation wasn't quite there either. Smith is great at telling us all about the horror in the American 'under class', that you never see until that hitcher pulls a knife and guts you, but it doesn't quite fall true here. Melinda should have been a great example of this but felt like she was going through the motions instead of really cutting loose. Luckily for us, we do get to peer inside the heads of several zombies and their bloodlust does make the pages turn in a way that the living couldn't manage..

And that's the thing, if I can't get on board with the living then there's only so much that the dead can do to scare me. If I don't care about the living characters (and what might happen to them) then what am I here for? In the case of 'Deathbringer', there was just enough going on that I thought I'd may as well finish the book but there were no real scares, just a couple of slightly unsettling moments where Smith showed us just what the zombies were capable of.

If you want to pick up a Bryan Smith book for the first time, I'd happily point you in the direction of 'The Fucking Zombie Apocalypse' or 'Last Day' as good places to start (the 'Depraved' books are fun as well but definitely start yourself off on something a little more easy going first). I couldn't recommend 'Deathbringer' though, not when Smith has written so many other books that are much better.