From New York Times bestselling author Jonathan Maberry comes a standalone supernatural thriller Ink, about a memory thief who feeds on the most precious of dreams. Tattoo-artist Patty Cakes has her dead daughter’s face tattooed on the back of her hand. Day by day it begins to fade, taking with it all of Patty’s memories of her daughter. All she’s left with is the certain knowledge she has … certain knowledge she has forgotten her lost child. The awareness of that loss is tearing her apart.
Monk Addison is a private investigator whose skin is covered with the tattooed faces of murder victims. He is a predator who hunts for killers, and the ghosts of all of those dead people haunt his life. Some of those faces have begun to fade, too, destroying the very souls of the dead.
All through the town of Pine Deep people are having their most precious memories stolen. The monster seems to target the lonely, the disenfranchised, the people who need memories to anchor them to this world.
Something is out there. Something cruel and evil is feeding on the memories, erasing them from the hearts and minds of people like Patty and Monk and others.
Ink is the story of a few lonely, damaged people hunting for a memory thief. When all you have are memories, there is no greater horror than forgetting.
more
Ink is an outstanding piece of work that focuses on personal growth, self-realization and acceptance, loyalty, and love, all under a supernatural umbrella filled with darkness and obsession. Maberry again shows he’s a master storyteller. From start to finish I was on the edge of my seat! Definitely my favorite of 2020!
Set in Maberry’s iconic Pine Deep town in Pennsylvania, INK is a deeply emotional and horrifying read. My heart bled for these characters as their memories were stolen away. Another stellar narration from Ray Porter.
Man that was intense and horrifying. The darkly detailed bits are something you want to close your eyes for, but then you hear a buzz. FREAK OUT ! Seriously this would make a cult classic movie. Warning it’s got all the triggers. I am so going to kill ever fly I see for a awhile.
I had some trouble staying focused. The story is fragmented into several stories for most of the book. I have concentration issues so this type of writing is a challenge. Even with that I really enjoyed being horrified by Ink.
I really enjoy this author, I think he is the only one to read about the zombie genre. This novel was trying to hard to write in the style of Stephen King or Clive Barker, and it did not reach either. I only made it thru about 15% then gave up, which for this author has never happened for me. I thoroughly enjoy the other genres this author writes about: zombies, vampires, dystopian futures. But just not this novel.
I received an e-Galley ARC of Ink, authored by Jonathan Maberry, from NetGalley and the publisher St. Martin’s Press; below follows my honest review, freely given. I am thankful for the opportunity.
I rated this novel 4.5 stars.
This is a standalone novel, but connected to the Maberry universe. First time readers can crack this open without fear of being lost from starting with this work, while regulars will not feel bogged down with filler chapters dedicated to catching everyone up. But as a reader returning to Pine Deep, let me just say, I was doing the happy dance all the way into town.
I usually feel pity, sympathy, or some indescribable emotion that serves as conflict towards my final judgment of the antagonist in any given story; not this time. I despised Minor the whole novel, and Maberry wrote him in such a way that I felt unclean reading the sections primarily on him or from his view. There is a clear divide between the good and the bad here, the good shining with an almost unbelievable purity. I waffled quite a bit on if the characters being so easily defined should be viewed as a weakness in the storytelling; but then I thought about how the story made me feel, and I needed one where the good guys were just… good. Not to say they had easy lives, because you will find that Maberry will run his creations through the emotional, and physical, torment wringer, and then do it again and again. 2020 has not been the easiest year for anyone, and for me, reading has been the one hobby I can still do easily, most of the time. So yes, this may have halos on the heroes and horns on the villains, but I was swept up in a novel where I felt better after reading it, does that make sense? I got sniffly at the very end, I was on a journey with people I wanted to see make it, to succeed, to all live to the end, because they were good people fighting the good fight.
I did remove a half star because I felt there were two dropped strings in this woven tale. Not big ones, not enough to change the story I’m sure, but enough that I noticed and it bugged me. One was an interaction between two characters that was started, cut away from, but then never finished. The other was more of someone’s life being presented in one way, but them not living like it for most of the book without consequence. It’s done a lot in television shows as well, so it’s not uncommon. But it irks.
I think this is a great read for anyone looking to revisit Pine Deep, see what new terrors await, see who is up for the fight, but also anyone that likes dark fiction with extra kick.
“To have memories carved out of one’s mind and discarded forever was obscene.”
I LOVED this book. It is the best horror book I’ve read – in maybe forever. I’ve read many of author Maberry’s books but this is definitely way above the rest (and I enjoyed the rest).
One thing I did discover – the book takes place in Pine Deep, Pennsylvania and frequently mentioned prior happenings in the same town. After some research I found that Maberry wrote the Pine Deep trilogy (which I’ve since downloaded) and, if given the chance, I think the reading experience for INK would be even better reading the trilogy prior to reading INK.
This story triggered a deep visceral response in me. The concept scared the bejeezus out of me. A despicably vile man moves to Pine Deep and he is able to steal peoples tattoos AND the memories that go with them. This isn’t a big thing when it’s simply a decorative tattoo but many people get tattoos to commemorate important, pivotal moments in their lives, such as the deaths of family members or friends. And once the tattoos are gone, so are all memories of that person or event. One of the people in the story compares it to a rape, an invasion.
I really enjoyed the different characters in the book, which were described in great detail. The book was scary yet full of tragedy, too.
I highly recommend this book if you enjoy horror.
I received this book from St. Martin’s Press through Net Galley in the hopes that I would read it and leave an unbiased review.
In the horror novel Ink, someone is stealing tattoos and the memories associated with them.
Content Warnings:
Transphobic language; biphobia; homophobia; child rape; racism
Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for the ARC. The opinions in this review are honest and my own.
I’m pretty sure I’ve never read this author before, and I don’t know why. I started reading this, and I could tell almost immediately that this was a slow build-up. I am not a huge fan of those types of books more because I must be in the mood to read them. However, this book was skillfully done in its execution. Add to that the wonderful characters and spooky atmosphere, this was an engrossing read from start to finish. I do wish that the book had a little less page count, but the author did make every page mean something. A little bit horror, a little bit mystery, and a lot of great writing equals a book that’s hard to stop reading. I’ll be looking at reading more of his books. Recommend. I was provided a complimentary copy which I voluntarily reviewed.
Jonathan Maberry returns to familiar stomping grounds in Ink, moving two of his newer characters, the tattoo artist Patty Cakes and her heavily tattooed bounty hunter friend, Monk, both of whom featured heavily in 2018’s Glimpse, from New York to “The Spookiest Town in America,” Pine Deep.
Although Maberry’s fans will fondly recall Pine Deep from the mid- to late-aughts trilogy set there, as well a handful of locals who continue to play prominent roles here, like police chief Malcolm Crow, his wife Val, and their adopted son, Mike. For those who haven’t explored Pine Deep previously, Maberry makes this visit highly accessible for newcomers, guiding us through this small town’s quirks and oddities alongside newcomers Monk and Patty, as well as Mike, Crow, and a few others. It’s worth nothing that the cast Maberry has assembled here is pretty large, and while there’s a lot of people and relationships to keep track of, they do help serve the story and make Pine Deep feel like a real and well-populated small town.
Shortly after arriving in Pine Deep, Monk finds himself caught up in the town’s eerie weirdness after discovering Patty blackout drunk in her tattoo parlor, bleeding from her head and hand. On her hand is the defaced tattoo of her dead daughter, Tuyet, who was brutally murdered a number of years ago, and who Patty now claims to have no recollection of at all. She’s not the only resident of Pine Deep to have a sudden onset of memory loss, though, and soon others in town begin to become aware of missing tattoos and holes punched into their own personal histories.
Ink has an intriguingly weird premise – a deranged madman who feeds off people’s tattoos and the memories that inspired them – that could easily get bogged down in ’80s-styled silliness. Thankfully Maberry plays it all straight, crafting a decidedly serious, and dark, horror thriller. He capitalizes on the importance of tattoos in their wearers own personal narratives, and leans hard into the heartache that would follow their disappearance, as well as the associations tied to that art. Imagine having a tattoo to memorialize a dead child inexplicably vanish and struggling to cope with the guilt that goes with being unable to remember them. Or, in the case of one couple, a husband whose has lost a tattoo commemorating his wife’s victory against cancer. The rift that tattoo’s absence creates between them is heartbreaking, both because you can understand the wife’s anger, but also because you sympathize with the man who has lost it and finds himself now accused of lying and transgressing against his spouse. Other characters don’t have it nearly as lucky, though, as mental victories and years of therapy to combat suicidal tendencies are stripped away, along with the symbolically victorious semicolon inked on a hand.
Maberry crafts a sprawling narrative around this central conceit, creating a minor epic of small town horror. The use of psychic vampirism, and attacks against the citizens of Pine Deep that are analogous to rape, albeit one that is wholly mental rather than physical, presents a number of gut-twisting moments. It’s difficult to ignore, too, the ways in which the attacks against women are fittingly centered around metaphorical examinations of toxic masculinity and entitlement grounded in our #MeToo era. Women are victimized, both directly and indirectly, but they don’t succumb to being passive victims and are quick to fight back when the time comes, and Maberry showcases their strengths in a number of ways over the course of Ink. It’s bleak subject matter to be sure, but there are still some rather brilliant points of light in all this darkness. Take for instance the burgeoning relationship between housewife Gayle and psychic reader Dianna. The former is unhappily married and beginning to understand and cope with her own sexuality and lesbian desires, particularly as they relate to the fully out-of-the-closet Dianna. I really dug the hell out of this relationship and appreciated the delicate ways in which Maberry explored their burgeoning friendship with the possibility of more.
On the other hand, my only real complaint about Ink is that, for having such a large number of prominent characters, we don’t get quite enough resolution for all of the big players to fully satisfy. For as much effort is devoted toward Gayle’s relationship with Dianna, and the complications that ensue on a number of levels, they’re sadly forgotten in book’s resolution. I could have done with a few more details to solidify the nature of their will they or won’t they relationship and to answer the lingering questions surrounding their relationship. And for as thick as this story is, I wouldn’t have minded a bit in the way of more gory details relating to psychic vampire’s final comeuppance. Maberry gives us a multi-pronged climax, but not all of them deliver in equal measure, proving the old adage about less being more isn’t always correct, nor as gruesomely enjoyable.
Despite the climax being a bit rushed and skimping in several of the areas I really wanted to see explored after 450-some pages of build-up, it was great to spend more time with Monk, a character I really wanted to learn more about after his introduction in Glimpse. Maberry does an excellent job fleshing him out, as well as his relationship to Patty. Moving Monk and Patty to Pine Deep opens the doors for further strange going-ons, and I can only hope Maberry is scheduled for another visit to these parts sometime soon.
INK by Jonathan Maberry is a standalone supernatural suspense / horror novel. It is set in and around Pine Deep, Pennsylvania. This is the second book that I have read by this author, and it is a very type of book. The other book was Rage, an action thriller and the first book in the Joe Ledger and Rogue Team International series. However, a few things stand out equally well in both: They are well-written with characters that have depth and there is an interesting plot where the story line pulls the reader in and never looks back.
Monk Addison is a private investigator whose skin is covered with the tattooed faces of murder victims. He is moving to Pine Deep to be close to his friend tattoo-artist Patty Cakes. When tattoos start to fade on multiple people, their memories associated with those tattoos also start to fade. Who or what is causing this? Will they ever get their memories back?
The characters are compelling, fascinating, and felt three-dimensional. There was enough at stake to keep me engaged throughout the story. The world-building was excellent and gave a clear sense of place. Themes include friendships, paranormal phenomena, loyalty, loss, memories and much more.
Overall, this was a creepy, dark and excellent read. I would recommend it to those that enjoy extraordinary supernatural suspense and horror novels. There are some intense scenes. I look forward to reading more books by this excellent author.
Many thanks to St. Martin’s Press – St. Martin’s Griffin and Jonathan Maberry for a digital ARC of this novel via NetGalley and the opportunity to provide an honest review. Opinions are mine alone and are not biased in any way.