My Book Review: The Vines by Christopher Rice

My Review and Thoughts:

Hauntingly beautiful, nightmarish perfection. You ever go into one of those books that linger on your mind and seem to cause many mixed emotions within you? Have you ever read a book that builds on the likeness of reality as if the page doesn't exist and the story doesn't exist because it feels so real, so hauntingly real? Look no further than this spectacular, vivid, haunting piece of horror. This is wordplay at its best. Descriptive, twisted and crafted in a way of mastery. Rice is a word God. He twists and turns images through his writing that bleeds off the page and consumes you. Utterly a brilliant story. Amazing characters and a deep, dark, darkness that plays with the reader.

As I finished the 13th page I was already in total consumption of the story. He sold it perfectly. Weaved through words that grab the reader to further the adventure into the dark horror induced State of history meeting the present day as an uncontrollable monster begins its takeover.

This is one of those books you just can’t put down. You glance at the clock, it’s midnight, a little bit more you say, then its 1 am and then 1:30 am and you have to force yourself to stop. Sleep or a good story, most of the time a good story wins. The Vines is a story that wins. It’s sends you into a nightmarish imagination that only a brilliant story teller can unfold in all its twisted glory and that my friends is the one and only Christopher Rice. He is so vibrant with his words. The vivid tone of his scenarios and situations, but most of all his characters. He gives then a life, emotions, struggles and each one grow on you. The Vines captures that ultimate brilliance of giving the reader characters the reader can relate to or become a part of. You can since there, pain, fear and dread. They come to life off pages through descriptive brilliance.

The beauty of The Vines is it mixes an old school concept of Mother Nature, or better yet an ancient darkness that feeds, needs, and destroys dead souls, those stained souls that caused pains to others. It feeds off the hate. An ultimate toy used and played with but also an ultimate tragedy that interweaves with the one seeking a form of justice or revenge. But what the players ultimately do not realize is that The Vines are, darker, more sinister and ultimately more evil then they could ever imagine.

The book possibly has some of the greatest word play around. The words picked throughout to tell its story by Mr. Rice is what I would call a Descriptive Guru of Words. His fashion of interlinking words through images described in flawless storybook reality brings the best out in the reader. One cannot deny while reading this that the words chosen throughout lingers on the readers mind and the reader is educated on words that the reader more or less had never even used. The story is fresh and different. Its uses an old backdrop of a stain in history of slavery and mixes a form of 60’s old school science fiction of mother earth run rampant.

This is a wonderful read. A book that lingers long after it’s over. A book I will talk about in the future and a book I will return to in the future. I highly recommend this brilliant, interesting and haunting dark and nightmarish modern day masterpiece of words, characters and a deep dark sinister evil waiting, waiting, waiting, for the blood of the one pained or wronged to mingle with the evil lurking under us all.

I think what I like so much about Mr. Rice's writing is that he builds the human emotion. The evil or supernatural reality, is yes bad and plays an ultimate part of his stories, but it's the choices, reactions and makeup of the characters that are the true concept of evil. Human choices can lead to the darkness. The creature or animal, or monster is, and does only what it knows, but the human has to choose the darkness and make the idea to cause the horror to happen and to me, human choice can be more evil then any monster in the darkness. Mr. Rice captures that perfectly with his thick character driven stories and The Vines is no different.

The book was an absolute blast I was thoroughly entertained from beginning. middle. Most of all I absolutely loved each character. I absolutely loved the visually stunning imagery. Mr. Rice treated the reader and built and created through massive wordplay, striking descriptions, hauntingly nightmarish insanity, disturbing moments, creepy, fear inducing and suspenseful reality. As it unfolds for the reader I could not put this book down. I loved it. I absolutely was thoroughly satisfied in the end.

Willie, Nova, Blake became a part of me and I became a part of them. I experienced their emotions, there ups, their downs and most of all their nightmarish fears. Each one of them felt as if they are part of my family now. Each one was physically descriptive, created in a flawless story telling reality,

I absolutely loved the old school science fiction reality mixed with the undercurrents of this visceral visual and thick uncontrollable darkness lurking in the depths, feeding off of the hatred of humans.

Forget the Ghostbusters and call the damn exterminator.

My Rating: 3.5 out of 5