[b:The Painted Darkness|7849115|The Painted Darkness|Brian James Freeman|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1327885661s/7849115.jpg|10965903] by [a:Brian James Freeman|3415820|Brian James Freeman|http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1313877690p2/3415820.jpg] is an outstandingly creepy novella. Freeman expertly interweaves story lines from Henry's present day to his childhood, resulting in a great story about the nature of monsters. As Brian Keene says in the forward, this is both great literature and great entertainment. ( )

This one has been tucked in my kindle for years, since before I had ever read anything else by this author. I finally got a chance to read it last night. It's a short and creepy tale, told along 2 timelines. It goes back and forth from present day Henry, and childhood Henry, an artist who is currently on his own after a fight with his wife caused her to take their child and stay at her parents. I found the childhood Henry to be more intriguing, and enjoyed the suspense leading up to the discovery of what Henry had witnessed as a child that forever shaped the man he is today ( )

An oddity of a novel. Chapters alternate between present day and the main character's childhood, when he witnessed something so terrible he has blocked it from his memory. Atmospheric, fast read. Walks the line between horror and suspense. ( )

What a great story. Slowly building dread, two different timelines for the same narrator, and just a great little horror story. Well written, well realized.

There's times when I couldn't shake the idea that this booked owed a lot to Stephen King's The Shining, but don't expect a boring retread of that classic, because you don't get it.

Instead, the elements are there. A snowed-in, remote location. A deadly boiler. A creative type with his own demons. But there's also a precocious boy who sees things he shouldn't be able to see.

All things from The Shining, right? Right. But Freeman takes those elements, shakes them up and builds an entirely different, and entirely beautiful new story from those initial building blocks.

I got this ebook in a free giveaway he did quite a while ago. I don't know why it took me so damn long to get around to reading it, but the free giveaway did what it was supposed to do: introduce me to the talents and wonder of Brian James Freeman. I'll definitely be seeking out his other works. ( )

Released for free, as a publishing experiment, when no publishers were interested enough in publishing it - The Painted Darkness managed what its author had hoped: that "free" would mean more circulation, and that more circulation would achieve a profitable audience when it may not have had one as a traditionally published novella.
This is a short novel composed of three or four Stephen King ideas that the author seems to have enjoyed. When he says the boiler is based on one in a home he had, you are apparently supposed to stop thinking of it as the boiler from The Shining. That one creeps, while this one gulps, after all. I'm not buying it for a second.
The story ultimately doesn't make sense, and not in the less-than-clean not-making-sense that is intended and at the heart of the story. You couldn't make it more clear with more information... or, if you did, that additional information would not hold the audience's interest. This is only my suspicion - you can't say for certain what something is or isn't, beyond what it is... but I think the illusion of this story being more than it seems is a faulty one, and that the smoke and mirrors we're supposed to be enjoying are instead disheartening crutches that reveal a story that never quite worked or stood on its own two feet.
It's a shallow creation, heartless and without substance in the end. I cared up until the end, but only because I thought I had a lot more story to look forward to - - for the author to reveal what he'd been doing, and for that feat to be interesting and fun. Instead, it felt cheap and disappointing.
Every revelation is exposition. The story may not technically even qualify as one. ( )