Within The Fog: Book 1

Title: Within The Fog

Author: Charles Welch

Published: October 27, 2020 by Charles Welch

Purchased: Received as an ARC in exchange for an honest review. $2.99 on Kindle.

Rating: ☆☆/5

About: The same ancient evil that killed 115 people at Roanoke, Virginia in the late 1500’s has arrived in a small eastern Colorado town. A fog covers the small town and closes in on Tom Benton and his family. The evil that lurks within the fog feeds on humanity but has special plans for those with anger deep inside. Tom Benton’s son Bobby has seen the face of evil outside his bedroom window in the darkest hours of the night. The man who appears at his window offers a veil of redemption to those holding onto anger and rage. As the fog wraps around the Benton family home there will only be a narrow chance at survival. Can Tom Benton and his family escape the issues of their past in time to save themselves from Croatoan?

Review: So I received this ARC in exchange for an honest review. Honestly? I believe this story had so much potential. There were so many places where I could see the story really taking off, but the execution of it just….left something to be desired. That’s why I feel like giving this a two star instead of a three star. It was a decent idea, it just could have been executed differently, which could have made it a five star.

If I had just been reading this on my own, the first chapter might have turned me away from the book and it would be a DNF, because the writing was very choppy and very….simplistic? I’m not even sure if that’s the right word, but there were hardly any contractions or any punctuation other than the period. So that just makes the story sound very formal and stiff, there was no sense of urgency. Even when the action was going down and I knew the characters were trying to hurry and were scared, it was just…stiff.

The fact that the narrative is in third person while it’s in present tense instead of past tense, makes it difficult for me to delve deep into the story and to get lost in the story-telling. I was interested in the concept, I wanted to know what was going to happen because the idea is an interesting one, I believe, but the way the story was being told made it difficult to get lost in it.

Now, don’t get me wrong, there were some bits that gave me a spook. Honestly, if the whole book had been written like that, lord would it have been good, but even with those little spooks, I’m not looking over my shoulder to see if something or someone is behind me. I enjoyed the end of the book, the ending did give me a little spook and I kind of want to read on when the second book comes out, but I don’t know if I will.

Now, I don’t know how I feel about what was done with the Croatoan virus, it’s something that I haven’t seen before in anything and I’m…really not sure how I feel about it. Now, if the writing had been better, the idea of what was done with the virus would have been better and I don’t think I would have minded it as much as I do now.

I also wasn’t a big fan of the sudden switch between POV’s when, for a while there, the audience was with one family. All of a sudden, we’re learning about other people when there’s action going down, when we could have been learning about them earlier on, when it was slow.

All in all, it’s probably not something I’m going to read again, the only reason I would recommend this would be to tell people about what the author did with the Croatoan virus. There’s potential here, there’s massive potential here, but the execution and the writing needs some more fine tuning.

Thank you for reading my review.