Book Review of Descending: A Gina Harwood Novel
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BLURB:
Described as a cross between the X-Files and Call of Cthulhu, the second title in Indi Martin’s Gina Harwood promises even more suspense and surreal action! In Descending, Gina discovers a mysterious portal in an ordinary wall that leads somewhere few humans were meant to go, while a group of friends set out to make a music video in a creepy old house that goes terribly, horribly wrong.
Described as a cross between the X-Files and Call of Cthulhu, the second title in Indi Martin’s Gina Harwood promises even more suspense and surreal action! In Descending, Gina discovers a mysterious portal in an ordinary wall that leads somewhere few humans were meant to go, while a group of friends set out to make a music video in a creepy old house that goes terribly, horribly wrong.
Descending: A Gina Harwood Novel (Book #2 in the Gina
Harwood Series) will be released on 2/28/2014
BIO: Infected with terminal wanderlust, artist,
author, and traveler Indi Martin spent her childhood voraciously devouring
fantasy and science fiction alongside her father. She is perhaps best known for
her graphic novel serial "Dissolution," as well as penning the paranormal
mystery Gina Harwood novels. Indi currently resides in Maryland. She is a
founding member of Tortoise & Hare Creations.
ONLINE LINKS:
Blog: dissolutionnovel.blogspot.com (Graphic novel I do weekly as a webcomic, sometimes I speak
about the novels, but it's not necessary to include)
Twitter: @tortoiseharecreations
Excerpt/Other:
First Chapter:
1
Gina Harwood tried to calm her breathing, which was teetering on
the edge of hyperventilation. Her heartbeat pounded heavily in her ears, a
nonstop drumming flurry that caused her to clap her hands to her ears and
squeeze her eyes shut, counting in her head to quiet herself.
Experimentally, she cracked one eye open again and peered across the room
at the hole that had suddenly appeared in her wall. Her strawberry hair was
slick with fear-sweat, dangling limply in her face and partially obscuring her
vision, but not enough for her to miss the hellish black void that didn’t
belong. She peeled her hands away from her ears and ran them roughly through
her hair, pulling the damp locks away from her face. Forcing her trembling
hands down to the recliner arms and her other eye fully open, she glared at the
blackness that stood beyond the peeling plaster. Anger boiled inside her,
shoving her fright aside, but re-quickening her heart.
That shouldn’t be there, she thought, quite logically. It wasn’t
there before and it shouldn’t be there now. She nodded. That seemed true.
Standing at the edge of the hole, she looked back at her
recliner, wondering briefly why she didn’t remember padding across the hardwood
floors. Looking back into the abyss, she noticed a dull yellow glow emanating
from deep below her. As she watched, the light expanded slightly, revealing
edges that seemed to shimmer sickly, as though covered in some viscous liquid.
She realized she was peering down a staircase.
Startled by the discovery, Gina took a few involuntary steps
backward from the precipice.
“This is a dream,” she murmured weakly, wincing at the smallness
of her voice. Steeling herself, she cleared her throat. “This is a DREAM,” she
announced, clearly and strongly.
There was no indication that her surroundings cared a whit about
her announcement. Her apartment still looked real and normal, except for the
unwelcome portal that looked as though it had erupted forcefully from behind
her wall. Unwilling to turn her back to it, she minced sideways until she
reached the kitchen bar. Reaching over, she flipped the switch up. Cold white
light immediately illuminated the room, blinding her, so she turned it back off
again. Gina was not a total stranger to lucid dreaming, even lucid nightmares,
and she stared in surprise at the switch. Light switches usually did not work,
at least not as expected.
Frustrated, she grabbed her cell phone off the counter. “This
definitely won’t work,” she whispered, glancing sidelong at the dull glow emanating
from the hole in her wall. At her touch, the screen flickered on, reading 2:09am
on October 10th.
Gina’s eyebrows shot up in surprise and she brought the phone to her ear,
tapping the speed dial as she did so.
She heard a faint click as the line went active.
A thin spiderweb of grey cracks started pulsating out from the
hole, sending bits of drywall and paint flakes into the air.
She heard the first familiar ring in her ear, frozen.
The cracks accelerated across her walls and ceiling, seeming to
burn her scant pictures with invisible fire. Gina heard herself gasp as she
watched one curl up and blacken to ash in an instant.
A second ring. Her hand gripped the phone to her head with such
force that it made her ear ache, but she was only dimly aware of the pain. Her
apartment tore itself apart around her. Deep, thunderous cracks sounded as her
hardwood floor panels split and burst up into the air.
“...Hello?” Gina’s eyes widened as Snyder’s familiar but groggy
voice answered the phone. Fear was finally fully loosed from its bonds,
shooting ice water through her veins as the apartment destruction suddenly
quieted around her, as though mindful that she were on the phone.
“Muh... muh...” she stammered with lips that felt too thick,
trying to force her voice into a whisper, thoroughly unnerved by the sudden
silence.
“Harwood? What the hell, it’s two in the morning, are you ok?”
“Morgan,” she managed. “Help.” Her voice was still barely more
than a whisper, her tongue fighting against forming words.
An animalistic keening sound erupted, loud and alien. Startled,
Gina dropped the phone with a loud clatter, watching helplessly as the battery
and backplate skidded across the floor and the comforting screen light blinked
out of existence. “SHIT,” she cried, noticing with frustration that her voice
had no issues being loud and clear now. The cry sounded out again, a long whine
following by an inhuman click-hiss. Gina whipped her head around, scanning
behind her for the source of the noise, while her feet propelled her backwards
toward the hole.
BAM! She heard the sound and saw the bedroom door reverberate
from the force of whatever hit it. BAM! Turning her head, she saw her front
door also straining against something trying to force its way in. Her body hit
the wall with a soft thud and her fingers ran their way along the portal’s
nearest ragged edges. The air beyond the wall was neither warm nor cold, nor
thick as she’d expected from the impenetrable blackness. It felt like nothing
at all.
The creatures outside her living room threw themselves against
the doors in a strangely syncopated rhythm. She heard herself shriek as the
handle of the front door was ripped out by something awful and nameless, some
sickly oozing thing with claws and suckers that moved in twitches and
undulations. Unthinking, Gina leapt through the hole, surprised to be standing
on something that seemed solid enough. She could barely make out the faint
edges of the black staircase, but threw caution to the wind as she bounded down
the steps toward the yellow glow. Keening cries of anguish followed her
descent, floating eerily down through the hole and seeming to dissipate in the
darkness.
Gina slowed a bit as she could see the staircase’s end, a
torchlit platform with two ornately carved, massive stone doors. Two
cloaked figures stood guard in front of the gate, heads down under ponderous,
heavy cloaks whose stitching seemed to dance at the edges of her vision.
“Gina...”
She stopped in her tracks, confused.
“Morgan?” she called out tentatively, though she knew neither
man was her partner. The two figures raised their heads to reveal
ancient-looking men with long, braided beards and clouded white eyes. Their
faces were etched with age, but their expressions were blank. She shivered.
“Harwood, wake up.”
She awoke with a start, eyes flying open, to see Morgan Snyder
squatting in front of her. He was gently shaking her arm. Gina shook her head
and looked around, fighting off an intense feeling of wrongness. She was
sitting on her recliner. There was no hole in her wall. Her pictures still
hung, safe and sound, and not charred to ashes. She shook her head again. “What
the hell?” she whispered slowly.
Snyder sighed and stood up. Gina saw that he was wearing only
boxers under a long brown coat and grinned, some of the shock and confusion
floating away as reality reasserted itself. “That’s what I’d love to know,” he
muttered, following her gaze and whipping his coat shut. Gina noticed he was
slightly flushed in the soft lamplight. “You call me in the middle of the night
sounding scared off your head and when I get here, you’re dead asleep.”
Startled, Gina noticed her phone sitting on the end table next
to her. Swiping her finger across the screen, she viewed her call log,
frowning. “Huh,” she said. “I did call you.” She looked back up at the current
time. “Damn, you got here fast.”
“Oh? Even after the long drive and the stop for donuts?” he
retorted, faintly mocking. Since inclusion with the Unit, they’d been provided
their own cushy living quarters on “base.” It had taken some getting used to
for her, as she’d been living independently since she was sixteen. Now she knew
virtually all of her neighbors and saw them nearly every day, unless she or
they were on assignment somewhere. His run over had taken him three minutes,
according to the logs. Even so close, he’d have had to be moving like
lightning. “It’s not exactly far,” he finished, tiredly, eyeing the door.
“No, I uh... I guess not,” she stammered, feeling suddenly
exhausted as the adrenaline started to wear off.
“If you’re okay...?”
Gina nodded, eyes down and embarrassed.
“Good. I’m going to try to rescue what’s left of my sleep then.
You can tell me what this was all about in the morning.” Belting his coat up,
Snyder strode across the room to the open door.
“Morgan, please stay,” the words escaped Gina’s lips before she
knew what she was doing and her mind fumbled around for something to undo the
sentiment. “...safe,” she finished lamely, clamping her mouth shut to prevent
any more damage. ‘What am I doing?’ she thought, confused.
He cocked an eyebrow at her. “I think I’ll be alright in the
next five minutes, and then I’ll be in bed,” he replied without much edge to
his voice. He took a half-step back towards her. “Are you sure you’re okay? I
could...”
“No, I’m fine,” she chuckled mirthlessly, scrambling for words.
“I’m sorry I woke you. I don’t really remember doing it.” This was a blatant
lie. She remembered the dream as clearly as any she’d ever had. In fact, it
felt more real to her than Morgan Snyder standing in her door with only his
underwear on, offering to... ‘stay? Was he going to offer to stay?’ she
mused foggily. An ache started in her belly and worked its way up through her
body and she observed it clinically. Did she want him to?
“Okay.” His face hardened back into the all-business visage she
was so used to seeing on her partner’s face, and she winced. She opened her
mouth to call after him, but he’d already walked out the door and was closing
it behind him. “Lock up,” he ordered gruffly, and then he was gone.
Review:
Totally
creepy and exciting is how I would describe this book. Gina, a telepath, and her partner, Morgan,
investigate paranormal activity with a clandestine group. Gina is still learning to control her powers
and block out unwanted activity. Helping
her learn to do this is Victor, a vampire.
She has prophetic dreams and unintentionally links with her partner on
occasion. According to Victor because
she doesn’t want to stop. Now she may
have to learn and quickly…
It’s
funny because even in her dreams when she gets into a place where she needs to
wake up or is in danger, she calls her partner.
I raced through this story. The
initial few chapters were a bit challenging because it flips back and forth
between Gina’s story and a group of kids who are making a music video in a
haunted house. Eventually both stories
come together, but they get totally creepy before they do.
I couldn't put it down and can’t wait for the next book. I give this book 4 out of 5 clouds.
This product or book may have been distributed for
review; this in no way affects my opinions or reviews.
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