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Chargement... DarkWalkerpar John Urbancik
Aucun Actuellement, il n'y a pas de discussions au sujet de ce livre.  dagon12 | Oct 12, 2013 |   John Urbancik has provided such a novel here in DARKWALKER, and boy is it a doozy. Mild plot spoilers follow. Jack Harlow is an ordinary guy, with one exception: he is a seer capable of seeing all the monsters who secretly inhabit our world and live along side us. And there sure are a lot of them. Jack doesn’t do anything about the creatures he sees, he’s just a transient who feels a strange compulsion to observe these creatures and record their activities. That all changes one day when he meets a young women named Lisa, an office worker who, like Jack, is more or less just drifting through life. A whirlwind romance ensues, then an imp-like creature tries to devour Lisa outside her apartment. Instead of remaining content to just watch monsters prey upon humans, for the first time Jack stops the creature and suffers its curse: he goes from being left entirely alone by monsters to having the psychic equivalent of an “eat me” sign placed on his back. Suddenly every monster in the greater Orlando area wants to kill Jack. He and Lisa have just one chance to lift the curse: they have to find the imp who cursed Jack and kill it. They aren’t entirely alone in this struggle, they have the help of Nick, a brutal young monster-hunter who throws his lot in with the doomed pair. Things only go downhill from there. This sub-genre of people in our world becoming aware of a hidden world of things that go bump in the night are pretty common nowadays. It’s a premise that can be very effective, or it be used to churn out formulaic pabulum. Fortunately Urbancik takes this well-worn premise and puts it to good use. He’s a terrific wordsmith and not afraid to put his own spin on things. The creatures that populate the world of DARKWALKER are intriguingly done, and there are plenty of hints about the broader cosmology of the setting. I am looking forward to what I hope will be the second volume in the series to continue this story. Urbancik has a lot more to say about these characters and setting and I can’t wait to find out more. Of the three protagonists, I came to like Jack and Lisa quite a lot. They were well-developed, believable, sympathetic characters – they always seemed like real people caught up in dangerous situations that were well over their heads and just doing the best they could to survive. The third protagonist, Nick the more-or-less professional vampire hunter, had a promising introduction, but then he stalled and was never better developed as a character. If there are sequels to DARKWALKER – and I certainly hope there are – I’d very much like to see Nick fleshed out to a greater extent. If I have any complaints about DARKWALKER, it is that the plot meanders for a bit in the middle when it seems the protagonists don’t know where to go next or what to do. It fairly quickly picks back up though, so this isn’t a show stopper. I should also note that while DARKWALKER is nominally set in Orlando, I never really got a good sense of place in the story. It could be set in any urban area with a small downtown area featuring some sparsely inhabited industrial parks. It might have worked better set in some parts of the Greater Miami area where there are lots of uninhabited condo buildings, for example. But the ending – oh the ending! It’s a real punch in the gut. This is not a feel-good kind of novel, and the ending makes that indisputably clear. Urbancik is a brave author; not everyone could pull this off, but he does with alacrity. DARKWALKER is highly recommended for those who like tales of modern-day monster hunters. I try hard to avoid phrases like “hard to put down” in my reviews, but that was indisputably the case here. Urbancik is clearly an author to watch, and I look forward to more dark, urban fantasies from him. Review copyright © 2013 J. Andrew Byers (  ) bibliorex | May 13, 2013 | There's all kinds of other stuff. There are lots of monsters of all sorts. There's a sexy vampire, who kidnaps the hero and tries to help him because she falls in love with him. There's a tough as nails vampire hunter who helps the hero because it gives him a chance to kill monsters. There's even a demon with a sinister agenda. I wouldn't call it the most original thing ever, since books about people who are aware of a secret world of monsters that coexists with our own are a dime a dozen these days. Still, if you're a big fan of horror or fantasy, you should check this book out. (  ) yoyogod | Jul 6, 2012 | aucune critique | ajouter une critique
I AM A DARKWALKER By John Urbancik I crept through the dark, pen in hand, notepad tucked under my arm, in search of a drink or a lonely corner or a girl. It's hard to remember exactly. It was, after all, a long time ago. Smoke filled the air, music pulsed through my bones, strobes broke reality into an unsteady staccato simulacrum. I don't remember the name of the bar or the name of the bartender, but I know it was long and narrow and old, as old as a thing can be in a city standing less than a century. I'd caught an image. I'd captured an idea. This isn't unusual, not in any real sense, but it was particularly vivid, a girl in gothic black with red lips, soul-trappingly powerful eyes, and a victim. There might have been some truth to the image. There may have been some vague whiff of reality about it. Gothic was the most common shade of black in a bar like this, and crimson the most common shade of red. The smoke, the darkness cutting the light, the phantom faces around me seeking their own drinks, corners, or lovers, intoxicated me and, more importantly, ignited my imagination. A girl (a special girl, not just any random, freshly-met bar girl) asked me, "Have you ever seen the sun rise?" I told her I had, of course, been up that late. "And these things you see, or think you see," she said. "You're a night walker." It sounded wrong. It sounded wrong then, and it sounds wrong today. I'm not a night walker, I told her. "I'm a DarkWalker." The pieces came together rather swiftly after that. Untouched, invisible in the night, like a young poet without verse, not just ignored but protected-but where's the story in that? Hunted. There, that's a story. That's got tension. Possibility. Opportunity. Jack Harlow evolved in my head over a period of time. He didn't arrive fully formed, appearing suddenly in the dark corner of a bar instead of that girl. He didn't sit in the low, sagging sofa propped against the bar's outer wall, soaked with sweat, beer, and whiskey, and say to me, "I'm your man." He didn't throw me a grin or a wink. No, he wasn't that kind of man. He came gradually. He revealed himself slowly. He was a recluse, after all, unaccustomed to human contact, possibly skirting the edge of sanity. The things in the periphery of his perception, you must realize, include the darkest, most damnable things that have ever walked the earth. He, not I, had seen the girl in gothic black, and knew her for what she was. But Jack's got more to him than a mere ability to walk untouched through the dark. He's got to grow. He's got to learn. He's got to love and lose and fight and struggle and win and die and discover undiscoverable things. In "DarkWalker," he begins that journey. In the first of a series, Jack Harlow learns what it truly means to be a DarkWalker-what it means when the things that bump the night can, quite suddenly, touch him, hurt him, and kill him. He trades his immunity for love. He begins to dream of normalcy even as the rhythms of his abnormal life are about to be ripped apart. He is targeted. He is hunted. But even in the dark, even in the night, he is not alone. For the record, I did, that night, find the girl. That's another story. -JU Aucune description trouvée dans une bibliothèque |
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Jack Harlow spends his nights wandering the city and recording the supernatural events that he sees. He acts like Marvel Comics' Watcher who watches events and records them but does not interfere. He sees vampires drain victims, talks with ghosts, spies with demons, pretty much every supernatural element. Until one night when he interferes. At that point, his polarity is reversed and the supernatural is now attracted to him. Jack can no longer hide.
Urbancik does a great job of controlling what he does and does not put into the story while simultaneously leaving the doors open for everything. It's not just vampires or zombies or werewolves that is attracted to Jack; it's every supernatural being. The story does not become a "vampire story" or a "zombie story." The novel didn't suffer from introducing too many types either. It felt natural to have different types of beings. Urbancik also has an extensive background built up for the characters and events. Or at least it felt like that; in storytelling, that equates to the same thing. The readers don't see all of the history but you can feel there are more stories here that can be told. And if Urbancik explores the world further, I plan on being there with him. (