The Hour Before the Dark

By: Douglas Clegg

Narrated by: A.T. Chandler

Length: 8 hrs and 28 mins

Publisher's summary

There are rules to every game. You must never play the Dark Game after sunset - it becomes real then. It takes you over...

The Hour Before Dark is a riveting gothic suspense novel of supernatural horror from best-selling and award-winning novelist Douglas Clegg - author of The Children's Hour and Halloween Man.

When his father is murdered in one of the most vicious killings of recent years, Nemo Raglan must return to the New England island he thought he'd escaped for good...and the shadowy home called Hawthorn.

"Douglas Clegg has become the new star in horror fiction, and The Hour Before Dark is his best and most exciting novel to date. This is pure imagination, and it is wearing speed skates." (Peter Straub, New York Times best-selling author of Ghost Story and, with Stephen King, The Talisman.)

©2002, 2012 Douglas Clegg (P)2013 Audible, Inc.

Suspenseful and Spooky

I really liked this book a lot. I read some of the negative reviews, but disagree with them.

I thought the story telling was excellent, and I’d love to see this made into a movie!

Great story, original!

This book was full of mystery and suspense, as well as a healthy bit of horror. The Dark Game is something children play in the hour before sunset. This game allows them to touch another world, one created by the dark, mystical, and powerful emotional pain, fury, and hatred which the players of the game hold inside. It magnifies their emotions and feelings as well as their creativity. Nobody has more creativity than a child, they're also naive and innocent. They can be manipulated while playing the game, it leaves them very suggestible....


I enjoyed this book, it kept me engaged and hanging on to see what really happened all those years ago, and who murdered mr Ragland. Check it out, great story, and excellent narration!

Weirdly Written Pacing Throws Off Story

1

I am currently still listening to this book, so this review may change. This story--at least in the beginning--doesn't seem to understand where it wants to go. It discusses concepts before they're needed and then repeats.

2

The same information once it IS needed. It mentions how the kids don't like the smokehouse a couple of times in the narration before the characters even discuss it. Making it a boring subject and losing any potential intensity once it's brought up with the characters for the first time, but the third or fourth time for the reader. Not only that, but it fills like there is a lot of filler.

3

The narrator will break the pace of the story to explain things that he will learn later, that could make for interesting moments or minor revelations...but, it just doesn't fit into how the story needs to be written. It's like the writer wanted a 1st-person perspective, but kept mixing it into a 3rd-person omniscient. Making the story feel jarring and stilted. Not only that...

4

But what is with the section breaks in the chapters? Just reading this breaks up the pacing--like how I'm doing for this review--can you imagine how annoying it gets when listening to someone? It especially doesn't help that alot of the "commerical breaks" feel unnatural to the story, making it halt unexpectantly.

5

In the book, it may have worked better as stopping points for the reader to make it easier to get back to their spot, but they should have been removed for the audiobook. Who knows? Maybe all of these weird and unnatural elements will tie together in the end, but right now, it really takes me out of the story, which you cannot do in a horror novel.

6

Again, my opinion and review may change once I finish the book, but I may not even finish it at this point.

Last quarter is decent

It took forever for this to get interesting. I tried listening to it 10 times before I could even get to chapter 5. It seemed as if the author tried to throw an entire life’s worth of backstory into it, taking away from the actual story.

Blathering Mess

This is one of the most poorly written pieces of tripe I have ever heard. I did not finish it. To add insult to injury, the narration would have been more interesting and emotional if Siri had read it.