If you enjoy dark, psychological horror – inclusive of disturbing nightmares and ghosts – don’t miss this haunting story of a single father’s downward spiral into despair and questionable madness.
When his six-year-old daughter Seren starts talking of a ghostly woman who visits her room each night, young widower John Gimmerick isn’t too concerned. After all she already has an imaginary friend. … imaginary friend. But when his own nightmares begin to merge with reality and when unexplainable things start to happen around the house, he realises that by revisiting the home of his childhood, in the Northeast of England, he’s stirred up things he’d tried hard to forget – as well as something that should never have been stirred in the first place.
In order to save his little girl from an evil that speaks only of death, reclusive John must now face up to the horrors of his past.
And what he discovers runs deeper and is far more terrifying than he could ever have imagined…
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4.5 stars!
EMERGENCE is the third novel that I have read by author R.H. Dixon. I continue to be impressed with her writing style, story ideas, characterization, and the atmosphere that she so easily manipulates to fit the scenes she creates. EMERGENCE was a rich tale, filled with intricate twists, revelations, and emotions that I could honestly feel.
John Gimmerick, a young widower with a six year old daughter, Seren, finds himself called to house-sit the home he left behind nearly twenty years ago. For reasons of his own, he hadn’t been back to stay since. His mother’s entreaties, and those of his daughter–lonely with her father always working and her mother’s untimely death, finally get him to agree to go there “as a holiday” for Seren.
“. . . death offers no true opportunity for consolation, no words to sugarcoat the finality of a shortened life . . . ”
Once they arrive, John is distinctly ill at ease, especially when his daughter seems so excited to be there.
Even more so when her “usual” imaginary friend is swapped for one more . . . authoritative and demanding.
“. . . he was little more than a ghost coming back to haunt the setting of his youth, coasting along a different plane to the one he’d known . . . ”
In the early stages of this novel, we are introduced to several different, distinctive individuals. At first, I was honestly confused. Although each had stories that were incredibly interesting, none of them seemed to connect back to John in any way. They were simply off-shoots of the same storyline, I felt.
In this, Dixon really impressed the hell out of me. Ordinarily, I’d be frustrated, anxious to get back to the main theme; however, here I felt as compelled to read their separate stories as well. I compartmentalized each into my mind, leaving a mental door slightly ajar for any tenuous links that might emerge.
“. . . Life changing days, the type that turned out for the worse, seldom started with an inkling that catastrophe would strike . . .”
Each character–in all of the storylines–felt authentic in terms of personality, emotion, and motivations as soon as their second “appearance” in the novel. Keeping them straight wasn’t an issue, as I first feared it would be. Each section had its own mysteries to unravel, but the one I felt the most drawn to was that of John and Siren.
“. . . something within the house was stirring, awakening to the sound of him being there.”
The house of John’s childhood seemed to change, atmospherically, as the novel progressed. There was an unrelenting tension that intensified page by page, offering no respite, but only more baffling mysteries.
I won’t say anything more about the story itself, for this is one each reader truly needs to discover on their own.
There’s more to a person than skin and bones. All that stuff’s superficial.”
Overall, I feel the author did an excellent job of creating a complex tale in which I was interested in all the different “chapters”. The characterization was full with each individual, and the story was presented in such a way that I honestly couldn’t predict any part of it. This was a haunting novel that crossed over many areas in different ways, and one that will certainly stay with me for quite some time.
Recommended!