The Falling Away by T L Hines

Coming Summer 2010...

Description:

Native American Dylan Runs Ahead is running away. He ran from the Crow Reservation where he grew up because he felt responsible for his sister's disappearance. He ran to the Army, but after his leg was mangled and his buddy was killed when a bomb exploded, he had to escape from those memories too. Now he's gotten mixed up in the wrong line of business and he's running from people who would prefer him dead.

But then he meets a woman named Quinn. She claims to see things that others don't and tells him that he's "chosen." Oddly enough, his buddy in Iraq kept telling him the same thing. Before Dylan Runs Ahead can figure out what that really means, though, he's going to have to stop and face the demons--both literal and figurative--that he's been running from.

Preview:

Perhaps T L has a fabulous idea to back up this otherwise typical and mediocre plot he has crafted. Or perhaps he has merely peeked out and feels to need to write something just for the sake of writing. He has never dabbled much with demons and supernatural elements before, which I am surprised at. This plot has the potential to have imperfect characters, but there could also be victims. It is truly impossible to tell what a plot like this will turn out like. It could be another The Unseen or it could fall by the wayside as another The Dead Whisper On.

Waking Lazarus by T L Hines

The first time Jude Allman died he was eight years old.

That has got to be one of the best opening lines ever.

Anyway...

Jude Allman has died three times. Three times he has been inexplicably raised from the dead. Once when he was eight, once when he was sixteen, and once when he was twenty-four. He is now thirty-two and lives an undercover life as a janitor. He must live under the alias of Ron Gress because one can become a celebrity for dying three times. He is divorced to his wife and son and lives alone. But he has a gift. He has know idea where it came from. All he knows is that it works. By physical touch with a person he can know what is going on in that person's life or what has gone on in their past. This gift comes in handy when his son is kidnapped.

Because this book comes before The Dead Whisper On, I wasn't sure whether it would be good or not. But clearly, The Dead Whisper On was a major slump for T L Hines.

Jude is a very interesting and surprisingly realistic character. Every morning he disengages his elaborate alarm system, searches the house for intruders, and sweeps the house for bugs. This is the reason his wife left him. His paranoia has driven him from the outside world. He is paranoid because everywhere he goes, people recognize him as the dead guy who was raised to life three times.

None of the characters are perfect, in fact. They are all normal people except for the fact that they lack true personality.

The villain, though at first he seems like a mindless serial killer, is not who you would expect it to be. He is not a typical villain, even though he uses random capital words like Quarry and Normal. He is very intriguing and his identity is surprising.

The end of the book is ambiguous if not slightly predictable. There is one part I knew Hines would do, but there are other parts he surprised me with.

So what keeps it from being five stars? The predictable part of the end, and the lack of personalities in the characters. Otherwise, T L Hines has produced an unexpected Elite novel.

Since T L started out this well, I expect him to do more great things in the future like this one and less horrible things like The Dead Whisper On.

4 stars

The Unseen by T L Hines

Lucas is a loner, but he's not alone. He creeps from one public building to another and lives wherever he can set up. He makes his bed wherever he stops for the day. He eats whatever he can find. He's a creeper.
He takes on odd jobs just for fun, but he really likes to watch people. He likes to watch them carry out their every day life.
But one day he comes into contact with another creeper. Lucas is not the only creeper out there. After some contact with this new creeper, he takes Lucas to a meeting of the Creep Club, a group of creepers.
But Lucas does not like them because they conduct covert surveillance on people in their houses just for fun.
Then Lucas is visited by a Dark Suit, a CIA agent who wants to stop the Creep Club and may also be a Chinese government agent.
Then a Russian Mafia hit man. Then some Venezuelan diplomats. Then a wasp-man.
All of these are villains of some sort. Normally, I would say that there are too many villains, and there are a little too many, but it all makes sense in the end.
As the reader is vaulted into Lucas' strange world, the reader begins to pick up on some of his oddities, like his always saying "Humpty Dumpty had some great falls," and his obsession for making Connections with people, and his feelings of Dark Vibration. Normally, I would say that such strange capitalization is juvenile, but it all makes sense in the end.
Things start to make sense after Lucas' showdown with the Creep Club, the Chinese agent, the Mafia hit man, and the wasp guy. It was one of the most entertaining final scenes ever written.
After all of this nonsense, it really gets down to the interesting parts. Hines flips genres on the reader and comes up with something very original. Very original indeed.
The main things keeping this book from being five stars is the oddities at the beginning and one plot hole that if removed, wouldn't be missed.
The book has a five star end. I never thought I would be saying that after The Dead Whisper On. But I think Hines has finally found his niche, it will be interesting to see what he produces next. (I hope)
4 stars

The Dead Whisper On by T L Hines

The public's enthrallment of TL Hines amazes me. It simply amazes me.
The Dead Whisper On follows the boring life of Candace "Canada" McHugh, a lonely garbage collector, who one day sees the ghost of her father and talks with him like a normal person. Eventually, her father takes her to the society of other "shadows", as Canada calls them. They direct her to a group of humans who are trying to defeat the shadows with water. Keros is a monster who is annoying them. What Keros is is extremely absurd and beyond belief: a golem, which is supposedly a person made of clay given life by a Jewish rabbi reciting Hebrew incantations. Keros has no purpose in the plot but to create false suspense. He eventually disappears from the plot leaving no explanation for why he was part of the plot in the first place.
To say this book has a plot would be a huge overstatement, so I'll just tell you about the finer subjects discussed in this book:
Canada sees shadow spiders crawling on her wall occasionally. Sometimes they spew out of people's mouths.
Canada sees people burn and turn to ash right in front of her. She carries on with her life.
The humans working with the shadows want to blow up a toxic pond on the outskirts of their city. They succeed in blowing the toxins into the sky, which return to earth as harmless rain.
There is an absurd romantic subplot.
Canada is a perfect character; saving people constantly. When she is done saving people, at the end of the book, she takes a five day nap.
If you were the punch a hole in the pages for every plot hole, you wouldn't have much paper left.
We could go on and on about all the problems with this book, but eventually, Blogspot would tell us that we don't have anymore room left on our post.
The reason this book is the recipient of the lowest rating ever bestowed by us is because this is not even a book, but a collection of horror scenes and half ideas. Do yourself a favor and skip this one, despite what the public says.
1\2 star