Chapter by Chapter

Exsanguinate: World of Blood by Killion Slade was a story that had me hoping for gore and terror.  Something that would keep me up at night…have me questioning the different bumps and thumps in the middle of the night.

And although the story did start off promising (a great intro to the characters and a lead up to the dreaded haunted house), at the midway point, the story went off on a totally different tangent.  One from horror to completely supernatural.  Not that that’s a bad thing.

The way in which the story completely turned around into a whole different kind of story was done in a very interesting way.

Let’s start from the beginning.  Some of you may (or may not) know this about me, but once upon a time (like 2 years ago) I was a hardcore gamer.  I’m talking about games like World of Warcraft where I spent many a night questing and raiding with my “guild”.  Truth be told, I did make a few friends that I loved to pieces, and miss to this very day.  But even before the time of WoW, I was completely immersed in the world of Second Life (SL).

For those of you who are not aware of what that is, it’s basically a virtual reality world where you have a “second life”!  Seriously.  New family, new kids, you could be a girl or a boy or a furry!  And people could make some really good coin, depending on their computer skills.

So why am I mentioning this?  Well, the main characters are all connected through ExsanguiNation, the “SL” virtual reality in this book.  And it’s through this “game” that the characters start to form a bond; specifically Cheyenne and Roxas.  Dating virtually now for almost 2 years, the time had finally come where they would meet IRL.  And what better way than at Global Studios for the annual fright fest.  (Sounds like a solid date to me).

But when Chey goes into the haunted house to conquer her fear, something goes terribly wrong, and her nightmare becomes a reality…literally.  And it’s after this horrific night where everything that Chey and her sisters knew about reality totally shifts.  The world of the supernatural is introduced to them in a rather harsh way.

Now Chey (and her moxy crew of supers) has to find a way to rescue her sisters from seriously cray vamps and out of a severely demented situation.

As I had mentioned earlier, I had some really high hopes for this read.  There was just something missing for me!  I didn’t feel that terror in my bones.  I could feel the build-up.  I was itching and ready to get into the haunted house and witness the terror.  But the absolute terror I was hoping for didn’t come.  I was just kinda left hanging.

I was hoping that perhaps I was hoping for the horror to happen too early in the read, and perhaps it would happen later…but instead of horror, I got a “WTF is going on I can’t turn my head away” type of read.  It got a whole lotta messed up, and because of that, the read kept my attention.

What irked me while reading this book was the language.  One of my pet peeves is swearing.  Not the fact that characters are swearing, but that they don’t!  They instead make up these silly made up words that we know are supposed to be their version of swearing…but really…just swear.

Another thing that bothers me is when the characters switch from speaking “proper” to normal.  Why does that happen?  I don’t understand, and it messes with my head because when I see a character speaking “proper”, they automatically have an English accent to me.  So to have them switch from “proper” to normal speak…I get confuzzled.

Other than that, the characters in Exsanguinate by Killion Slade are pretty solid and I was totally loving the kick ass female characters found within the pages.  The storyline was good, and one that will keep a reader’s attention.

I would recommend this book to fans of Supernatural reads.