{"id":10363,"date":"2024-08-20T23:32:14","date_gmt":"2024-08-21T03:32:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/?p=10363"},"modified":"2024-08-20T23:32:14","modified_gmt":"2024-08-21T03:32:14","slug":"book-review-stolen-pallor-by-sean-eads-and-joshua-viola","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/book-review-stolen-pallor-by-sean-eads-and-joshua-viola\/","title":{"rendered":"Book Review: Stolen Pallor by Sean Eads and Joshua Viola"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"cover<\/a><\/p>\n

Stolen Pallor <\/em>by Sean Eads & Joshua Viola<\/p>\n

Blood Bound Books, 2024<\/p>\n

ISBN: 9781940250649<\/p>\n

Available: Paperback, Kindle edition<\/p>\n

Buy:\u00a0Amazon.com<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

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With Stolen Pallor<\/em>, the authors throw a twist on the old saying\u00a0 that “suffering creates great art”.\u00a0 Here, great art creates suffering.\u00a0 Readers won’t suffer from boredom while reading this horror\/mystery novella that snaps right through its 99 pages in impressive fashion.<\/p>\n

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Cole Sharpe is a private investigator called in to investigate some bizarre happenings at a museum in the fictional town of New Florence, a community basically dedicated to all forms of art.\u00a0 The town itself is an interesting study in setting: what would it be like living in a town where artistic concerns trump most other routine matters?\u00a0 The strange events at the museum consist of people suddenly going catatonic while staring at random paintings, later shuffling off and\u2026vanishing.\u00a0 It’s Cole’s job to find out where they go.<\/p>\n

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Cole is a strong lead character with a pretty firm moral compass and some emotional baggage from childhood trauma.\u00a0 He would have been good enough to carry the story on his own, but his lover and part-time detective partner Mikey adds some good color and contrast to the story.\u00a0 Mikey is more lighthearted, less serious, and also a bit more self-centered, and the conversations between Cole and Mikey add a good dose of emotional heft to the story.\u00a0 The two of them together provide the material for one of the book’s most important questions: how much of what you have are you willing to risk to do the right thing?\u00a0 In this story, there’s not an easy answer for that one.<\/p>\n

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The story also does a good job incorporating the fantastic into the mundane, as shown with the parallel version of New Florence, which the authors tie back into the obsession with art that permeates the original New Florence. That being said, the ‘alternate reality’ New Florence does allow the door to be opened to a darker realm, with fun characters like soul-sucking wraiths… and how can you not love a vampire whose name is Fangsy?\u00a0 The story ends in a Hitchcockian fashion, and the final ambiguous pages leave it up to the reader to imagine where the story will go.\u00a0 It’s a good way to finish up a book that works with some shades of gray, instead of just black and white.<\/p>\n

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Bottom line: there’s a lot of good stuff crammed into 99 pages: this one is definitely recommendable.\u00a0 Hopefully, this won’t be a one-off pairing for the authors. It would be interesting to see what they could do with a full-length story.<\/p>\n

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Reviewed by Murray Samuelson<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Stolen Pallor by Sean Eads & Joshua Viola Blood Bound Books, 2024 ISBN: 9781940250649 Available: Paperback, Kindle edition Buy:\u00a0Amazon.com     With Stolen Pallor, the authors throw a twist on the old saying\u00a0 that “suffering creates great art”.\u00a0 Here, great art creates suffering.\u00a0 Readers won’t suffer from boredom while reading this horror\/mystery novella that snaps<\/p>\n

Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[458,645,749,5332,5745,5746,5747,5744,5743],"class_list":["post-10363","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-detective-fiction","tag-horror-book-reviews","tag-horror-books","tag-horror-novellas","tag-joshua-viola","tag-museums","tag-parallel-reality","tag-sean-eads","tag-stolen-pallor"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10363","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10363"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10363\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10368,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10363\/revisions\/10368"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10363"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10363"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10363"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}