afraidus_smSafe Haven, Wisconsin, is a little town in the middle of nowhere with one road leading in and out of it.  Blink and you’ve missed the place.  One night a helicopter carrying special forces soldiers crashes in the woods just outside of town.  As Safe Haven’s sheriff and the other townsfolk learn, the crash was no accident and the soldiers are hostile.

Afraid is full of action and violence and cringe inducing scenes, from beginning to end.  Punch for punch, author Jack Kilborn moves along fairly quick detailing this night of terror that has descended on the unsuspecting populace of this quaint place.  For all of its full throttle blood lust, though, it isn’t that interesting until the last half of the book.

The book is good, albeit puzzling in places. 

I thought the whole “lottery” thing was silly.  And some of the more brutal scenes felt as if they continued for far too long.  Afraid rides the thin line of nearly being too much, of being overload.  Think of a porn movie that’s all sex, and substitute that sex with violence and you have an idea what this novel is kind of like.  For all the history given the characters, there’s still no real sense of knowing them; they are pretty much tacked on and cardboard, getting lost amid the chaos.  The big reveals in the story have little weight.  And there are times you just want to smack the characters in the head and scream “Think!”  For the Red-Ops, the super soldiers, to be so deadly and lethal and, you know, super, you would think they wouldn’t have that much trouble killing a single-mom waitress, her ten year old son, or the old lady babysitter.  Or even the dog.

All that aside, it is an entertaining time if you can make it through the first half of the book.  It’s part chase movie, part psychos run amok.  If you have a jones for gratuitous violence delivered in stunning detail, this your story.

3 out of 5
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