AWAKENED by James S. Murray & Darren Wearmouth – Review

I received this book for free from the Author in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

Awakened Published by Harper Voyager on June 26 2018
Genres: Adult, Horror
Pages: 304
Format: PDF
Source: Author
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The nitty-gritty: A bloody good time, Awakened has plenty of twists and will appeal to fans of survivalist horror.

I featured Awakened on a Waiting on Wednesday post some months back, and author Darren Wearmouth actually contacted me to see if I’d like a review copy. And I’m so glad I had the chance to read this book, what fun it was! Wearmouth and co-author James S. Murray have taken a cool idea—terror in the New York City tunnel systems—and written a fast-paced, bloody story with engaging characters. The pacing was great, and the authors know how to slowly dole out the clues to what’s terrorizing everyone in the tunnels, which kept me flipping pages as fast as I could.

Mayor Tom Cafferty is having the most important day of his life: his years-long project called the Z Train, a high-tech, high-speed subway line that connects Jersey City to the other boroughs of New York, is about to come to fruition. It’s opening day of the Z Train and the Mayor is on hand to welcome the train to the state-of-the-art underwater Visitor’s Pavilion after it’s inaugural run from Jersey City. And it’s an even bigger deal because the President of the United States is there as a special guest. But when the train arrives, the visitors on hand to witness the event get the shock of their lives: the train is empty of passengers, the lucky few selected to make the first ride, and the car is covered in blood. Even worse, the mayor’s wife was one of the passengers, and now she’s missing, or more likely dead.

As panic sets in, and with scores of visitors trapped underground with no way to get to the surface, the Mayor, the President, and a handful of civilians must come together to help save everyone, despite the very real threats of a possible terrorist group and a methane gas leak. Is the enemy an outside force? Or is the true enemy hiding among them?

Horror fans will have a blast with Awakened, which delivers big time when it comes to blood-soaked and violent action. The consensus among the characters up until about the halfway point is that the missing train passengers are victims of a terrorist cell, hiding underground and running amok. But the reader is in on some information that most of the characters don’t know about yet, and so we deduce almost immediately that these are not terrorists, not at all.

This is a fairly large cast of characters and the authors cut back and forth among them for a multi-person point of view, which I think worked really well. Some of the stand-out characters are the Mayor, whose life’s work has been shattered in a matter of minutes; President Reynolds, who turns out to have a fair amount of moxie and handles the emergency situation like a champ; Agent Samuels, the head of the President’s Secret Service team who will do anything to keep the President safe; a S.W.A.T team member named Sarah Bowcut who has a family legacy of law enforcement to uphold; a French journalist named Lucien Flament who is ex-special ops; and Diego Munoz, the operations manager in charge of the technical aspects of the Z Train. Each character has something in his or her past that bubbles to the surface during the course of the story, which gave these characters unexpected depth.

Murray and Wearmouth take their slasher-like horror tale and add in elements like a boat-load of secrets that the characters are hiding, government conspiracy theories that eerily echo our current political situation, and even some emotional moments with a few characters whose backstories really tugged at my heart.

There were a couple of negatives for me, but overall they didn’t ruin the fun I had at all. First, the writing is really clunky and uneven in places, which could be a result of having two writers working on one novel. Also, I couldn’t keep myself from wondering WHAT THE HELL IS THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES DOING AT A SUBWAY OPENING?? That didn’t make much sense, although when you finally get to the meat of the story you’ll understand why he’s there.

When the threat is finally exposed, all hell breaks loose (literally!) and the action takes an over-the-top turn that, while ridiculous at times, was certainly exciting. Also, if you’re a Buffy the Vampire Slayer fan, there is a moment that reminded me of the Hellmouth (that’s all I’m going to say), and I’m hoping it’s a deliberate homage to the show. I didn’t realize until the end that this is the start of a series, and I’m quite looking forward to the next installment. The authors give us some resolution while dangling a few carrots in front of the reader to bring us back for more. Fans of visceral, fast-paced horror stories will eat this up.

Big thanks to Darren Wearmouth for providing a review copy.