The Twilight Zone Book 3: Deep in the Dark [Paperback]

Bravo for Deep in the Dark! Great 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 great 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 great 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 story. If you like ghost stories and supernatural occurrences you'll like the series. Books one and two are quick reading and I think they are totally worth reading because of the series finale. Deep in the Dark, book three of this original Twilight Zone series, is a great 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 think people who read this book will be very impressed. The world-building added great dimension to the story and imagined the world 150 years from now.

All the ghost stuff and the fifth dimension aspects are ideas that really appeal to me. It's funny 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 beautiful human face among the horribly ugly doctors and nurses who think she's hideous to behold. It's so cool that he picked those particular two episodes and put 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 great homage to the great TZ episodes of yesteryear.

Book three is the most evocative of the series, but I did enjoy reading book one, and I think book two got really good 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 think Russel Davis is an excellent writer and he had some great scenes, especially the ending. He also had some great 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) ended up to be a really great 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 think it's hard to pull off something with such a grand scale as the ending of Deep in the Dark, but it came out great. 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 great twist. I especially look forward to reading John Helfers' novels in the future.

Paul Genesse (aspiring writer)

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