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Afraid  By  cover art

Afraid

By: Jack Kilborn
Narrated by: Phil Gigante
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Publisher's summary

WELCOME TO SAFE HAVEN, POPULATION 907...

Nestled in the woods of Wisconsin, Safe Haven is miles from everything. With one road in and out, this is a town so peaceful it has never needed a full-time police force. Until now...

A helicopter has crashed on the outskirts of town and something terrible has been unleashed. A classified secret weapon programmed to kill anything that stands in its way. Now it's headed for the nearest lights to do what it does best. Isolate. Terrorize. Annihilate.

Soon all phone lines are dead and the road is blocked. Safe Haven's only chance for survival rests on the shoulders of an aging county sheriff. And as the body count rises, the sheriff realizes something even more terrifying—maybe death hasn't come to his little town by accident...

WELCOME TO SAFE HAVEN, POPULATION 907... 906... 905...

AFRAID by Jack Kilborn
Are you afraid of the dark? You will be.

©2009 Jack Kilborn (P)2009 Brilliance Audio, Inc.

What listeners say about Afraid

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  • 4 out of 5 stars
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    648
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Performance
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  • 4 out of 5 stars
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    278
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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

He had to cut his own leg off, again

This is one of those books, where saying you like it, might make people wonder about you. This is not literature. This is not all that clever, although there are twists and turns and surprises. This has to be the goriest book I have ever read or listened to. This has torture that makes you cringe, lots of bloood. The evil characters are as evil as you get. Bernie's story is so disturbing I will never forget it.

You have now been warned as all the reviews mention this is gory. I have to say I loved it because it kept my attention, it made driving hundreds of miles fly by. Entertainment value was high for me and I was in the mood to be entertained.

I am following two people that gave reviews on this. One gave it five stars and one gave it one star. The one who gave it five stars reads lots of scary stuff. The one who gave it one star is big into outdoors and military books.

No, one guy does not cut off both his legs, but his dad cut off his leg and then he finds himself caught in a bear trap and he has to cut off his leg. I will admit that after about seven hours I was ready for people to quit cutting.

The part where a little boy is caught in a burning building with his elderly babysitter and his babysitter decides she is going to shoot him to save him from burning, was extremely well done. The school locker room massacre was good and etc.

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43 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    2 out of 5 stars

A Lesson Learned

Read the reviews. That's the lesson for today.

The reviews are loaded with references to the gory violence. People wrote how they were revolted by some of the depictions of pain, torture and graphic descriptions of terrible things people do to each other. They were right. I've read literally hundreds of thrillers and mysteries...and while some made my skin crawl and a few made me go "ewwwww" none of them was an out and out gross-out.

This book is a very well written story that you will have to wade through rivers of gore to complete. There's nothing new here -- the theme has been explored many times. The "Fill In The Blank" monster descends on a sleepy town and starts doing terrible things to the residents. And of course it's up to a handful of people to stop it.

To be honest, I was intrigued bythe plot and, despite some very goofy character actions, it delivered.

If you're a fan of splatter movies, this writer is for you. (Wearing a raincoat when you're listening may help.) But the unrelenting violence seemed to start taking the place where I was really looking for some interesting character developments, or new plot twists -- something ANYTHING to take away from the endless nastiness of the narrative.

I won't be getting any more books by this author -- despite thinking the book had merit. They are literally disturbingly violent.

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40 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    3 out of 5 stars

Run, catch, torture, repeat puhleeezz

Small town USA is infiltrated by a bunch of crazy sadistic soldiers looking for a particular person. They confront people pretty much one at a time looking for said person. Three main characters are the town's only hope (not really they basically just save themselves). Much like "Trapped" all the characters are confronted, some fall or something stops them from escaping and they're tortured, somehow manage to miraculously get away, run, fall or get stuck, tortured, run somewhere else blah blah blah. I did like this one better than Trapped and could at least finish it (couldn't with his Endurance). He does a really good job of describing the torture without being too "gross". I just wish he would come up with different "scenes" for lack of a better word. They're all the same. Run, trip fall or get stuck, be tortured, escape, run somewhere else and the whole thing starts over again. Uh, how about hide or run out of town or find weapons. Seems like a B rated straight to DVD story. The plot was unique in this one and the narrator did a descent job. Just all the running around haphazardly drives me crazy. If you're bored and don't have anything better to read give it a try.

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17 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars

Started out ok

This book started out ok. Quite grusome but scary none-the-less. WOuld have been ok, if the book length were cut in half. Too much of "good guys meet bad guys and just make it out alive" type situations. It also got a bit "sci-fi" for me.

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14 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

What Kind of Sick F&%#...

What did you love best about Afraid?

So I told my girlfriend to recommend a book that would "shock me"; a book that would make me think "what kind of sick f&%# would come up with something so disturbing?!"

Well I didn't have that exact reaction from Afraid. One theory is because maybe I'm already some kind of sick f&%# myself. :) That's actually a pretty solid theory...

With that said, what I will say is that I discovered a really creative and gripping story. Yes, there is some serious gore, but the author only gives enough detail about those situations to allow your imagination to take it to the next sick level. He doesn't dwell on those details and that keeps the story moving at a great pace.

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13 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    3 out of 5 stars

Be afraid of this book ... very afraid

This book started out well. In fact, I enjoyed the book completely for the first 1/3rd of the story, until I realized that this is just a horrific collection of unimaginably gruesome ways for people to die And die they do, one after another, one bloody,paintful and nightmareish way after another. I can tolerate such horror when it is peppered throughout, but in this book, the gore and bloodshed is as thick as peanut butter on a PBJ sandwich. To make matters worse, the actions of the "heros" of this story are so absurd as to be insulting to the reader. As I got into the 2nd half of the book, I began to realize that it was escalating to the point where I was not sure if I wanted to continue. But I kept hoping/expecting something would change. Time after time, just when I thought one character or another would manage to escape some horrific fate, I came to expect disappointment. Before long, I realized that this book was just DARK. The entire story, how it was constructed and how it unfolded, is discouraging, depressing, and frightening, not in what is happening to the characters/victims, but frightening to realize that someone could write such a book, that a publisher would promote it, and that the public might read it. This type of book, these descriptions, in the hands and minds of suseptable people is what scares me. While I do not advocate censorship, I also do not advocate that this book be considered anything but dismal, dark, and DANGEROUS. This author scares me, and I will remember the name, as one to avoid. The mind that could write such a book, and consider it worthy ... this is what scares me. I would not want this person for a neighbor.

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13 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars

huh?

I am sooo confused!! I think I must have downloaded an alternate universe addition of this book (UR?). After reading the glowing reviews, the one I listened to was just silly and non-dimensional.....on a scale where King is a 10, Koontz is a 3, this guy is somewhere in the negatives.

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12 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars

Not for Little Children

Too violent. Shallow plot. Not enjoyable. Gratuitous gore.

It is a relief when the story ends.

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11 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars

great action even if the plot is cheesy

needed a book to get me through the night and for the price and length this one did the trick- the narration was over the top which worked well for this book because the whole premise was over the top including the gore- if it was a movie it would be a solid b horror/action type film- it was by no means a classic, more like fun literary junk food- but the story line was cohesive,and even though you could pretty much guess the ending- it was suspense full enough to keep me going and the violence was new and creative as far as that stuff goes-

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9 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars

Wow

Very gory and intense, but the narration by Phil Gigante was nothing short of brilliant. He was able to acheive a different tone for each character, as well as get the maniacle giggling of one of the protaganists down pat. Good job!

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8 people found this helpful