I Stayed Up All Night Reading Robin Wasserman's The Waking Dark

It has been a long time since a book kept me up all night and then gave me nightmares to boot. I read The Waking Dark for my October column Wednesday night and it is going to be a perfect for that time of year -- a classic autumn title that is horrific less for the fantastic nature of its tale and more for the very believable horrors it reveals.

You really could see this one happening.

Lots of folks have compared it to Stephen King and it certainly is reminiscent of his multiple point-of-view novels with smart characters standing up to a vast conspiracy that includes lots of people behaving very badly and some crazy and some blood and some good guys who die as well as a lot of bad ones. BUT...that comparison does nothing to diminish what a great big fun read this is. The characters are all fantastic and the teen protagonists especially are well-rounded, three-dimensional and even those who only appear for a page are two are memorable and cut to the bone.

The plot, from the opening pages of unexplained murder, moves at a breakneck speed and even when you find out what is going on it doesn't slow down until the last pages. Perhaps the best compliment I can pay Wasserman is that she reminds readers what a big good entertaining read can be when it's not relying on fangs, fur or undead, which frankly have become crutches lately for far too many lazy writers.

A more thorough review will follow in my column but in case you were wondering about this one, have no doubt that The Waking Dark is worth every penny. I loved it, from start to finish.