The Twilight Zone: Book 3: Deep In The Dark
Product Description
On New Year’s Day, 2159, Mason Noir (III), looking exactly as he did in the year 2002, receives a message from his technicians: they are ready to start ‘the procedure.’ Decades of research have finally come to fruition, and just in time, as this year is the beginning of a new age for mankind…. More >>
Bravo for Deep in the Dark! Fantastic read.
I just finished reading it and was hooked from the enthralling first chapter to the climactic ending scenes. John Helfers pulled off the finale of this new Twilight Zone series with fantastic flair and brought all the plot threads from the other books together extremely well. I feel strongly that Russell Davis and John Miller, the authors of books one and two, must have been impressed with how Mr. Helfers brought it all together.
I didn’t see the multitude of twists coming and was so pleased when they occurred throughout the book. The ending was fantastic and I thought it was such a “Twilight Zone” moment when I read the final page. (cue the original music)
The Noir and Derlicht families, featured in all three books, first in the 1800′s (book one), then in the present day (book two) have a very intriguing tale. If you like ghost tales and supernatural occurrences you’ll like the series. Books one and two are quick reading and I reckon they are really worth reading because of the series finale. Deep in the Dark, book three of this original Twilight Zone series, is a fantastic book and was extremely fun to read.
The ending makes me wonder: perhaps you can’t really change the future, only delay it? Or perhaps there are many realities occurring at once, and beings from one reality try to influence other realities? Intriguing stuff that has always fascinated me, and I guess millions of other Twilight Zone fans.
I aspire to write as well as Mr. Helfers. The future concepts he came up with resonated with me and I reckon people who read this book will be very impressed. The world-building added fantastic dimension to the tale and imagined the world 150 years from now.
All the ghost stuff and the fifth dimension aspects are thoughts that really appeal to me. It’s amusing for me to note that as I’ve been reading the three Twilight Zone (TZ) books at work my coworkers have often talked to me about watching the original TZ episodes and we’ve discussed our favorite ones.
I found it so uncanny that Mr. Helfers mentioned my two favorite TZ episodes in his book near the end. I’ve been telling my friends about the episodes and when I was reading along near the final chapter when I shouted out loud as I came across his mention of the end of the world episode when the guy is on the steps of a library with his books and then his glasses get broken; and also the one with the woman with a gorgeous human face among the horribly hideous doctors and nurses who reckon she’s hideous to behold. It’s so cool that he picked those particular two episodes and place them in his book because they’re my favorite episodes. The episodes I just mentioned aren’t a central aspect of the book, but it was a fantastic homage to the fantastic TZ episodes of yesteryear.
Book three is the most evocative of the series, but I did delight in reading book one, and I reckon book two got really excellent as it went along. I really liked the ending of book two and flew through the second half of the book wanting to know what would happen. I reckon Russel Davis is an brilliant writer and he had some fantastic scenes, especially the ending. He also had some fantastic twists and has a flair for dynamic narrative and description.
The character of Antonia, in books two (and also having a role in book three) finished up to be a really fantastic character, and in book three Shizume-the main character in my mind–was awesome. Shizume’s first chapter in book three was awesome. There was no slow down in the flow of the novel and the tension kept me reading long after I should have gone to bed. I need to take the lessons I learned from reading Mr. Helfers book and do my best to apply them to my own writing.
Also, his vision of the future is really well thought out and I was impressed that he took the step of modifying the future language with slang I could easily see becoming part of our world.
I reckon it’s hard to pull off something with such a grand scale as the ending of Deep in the Dark, but it came out fantastic. Kudos to the author and I would be very proud if I had written the book. The resolution scenes were well done, and I knew there would be a Twilight Zone moment at the end, but I didn’t know what it would be. The ending had a fantastic twist. I especially look forward to reading John Helfers’ novels in the future.
Paul Genesse (aspiring writer)
Rating: 5 / 5