ETERNITY BY TAMARA THORNE AND NARRATED BY JAMISON WALKER.
Zach Tully quits his LAPD homicide job to take a job as sheriff of Eternity. Little does Zach know that this small,isolated town has a high homicide rate,due mostly to a serial killer who Zach battled back in LA,and who also murdered Zach's wife and child. Zach's first impression of Eternity is a crazy old guy who runs a dive that promotes Big Foot and two headed snakes. Zach not only is battling the serial killer but also a secretive and very odd city council, assorted weirdo's who think they are Elvis, Jim Morrison and Amelia Earhardt and his own demons and memories.

To say that ETERNITY has registered a ten on my weird book o meter is an understatement. As I listened to this book as an audiobook I will also say that the narrator, JAMISON WALKER did a really good job keeping the weird book o meter well up there!

I recieved this audiobook free in exchange for an honest review. ( )

June 3, 2003
Eternity
Tamara Thorne

Of the Tamara Thorne Books I’ve read (Haunted, Candle Bay, Eternity, Bad Things, and Eve), I liked this one least of all. Lately I’ve been a little irritated by Thorne’s protagonists, because I really dislike certain types. This book’s two primary protagonists were the types I dislike the most – the heroic, divorced single mom, and the tragically widowed, haunted male hero/detective. Yuck, yuck, and triple yuck.

Even when Thorne’s characters annoy me, I can usually get into the premise of the story itself, but even that was sorely lacking here. At first it sounds okay, but it ends up being a little tongue-in-cheek for my taste. Eternity is the name of a northern CA town where our little hero-man takes a job as sheriff, and Single Mother goes there to get away from her mentally abusive ex-husband to “start a new life with her chyyyyld” (vomit). Anyway, Eternity is a very strange place with a disproportionately high number of violent, grisly murders, and on top of the mountain there is a druidic-type circle where strange things happen - people die, see things, disappear, etc. There are people in town who you’d swear are Jim Morrison, Ambrose Bierce and Elvis. There’s talk of Jack the Ripper. Somebody’s stalking the sheriff, and it seems to be the very same serial killer who offed the sheriff’s wife and son the year before.

Blah, blah, blah. It’s as silly as it sounds. It has some good moments, but I found myself fervently hoping that Kate, the Dreaded Single Mom, would meet an untimely and violent demise. No luck. I would have much preferred seeing the sheriff get together with the obnoxious, single-no-children reporter. Actually, I don’t want “romance” of any kind in my horror. Lots of sweaty, graphic sex is good – a required element, actually – but not this sappy, teen thriller let’s-end-up-together-and-live-happily-ever-after crap. Gag.

This was a dud for me. I don’t recommend it at all. I’ll give Tamara another chance, though, since the only one of hers I haven’t read is The Forgotten. Right now I’m reading the Horror Writer’s Association anthology The Museum of Horrors, and when I’m done with that I might delve into The Forgotten. I might read some Bentley Little, Douglas Clegg or Graham Masterton first, though.

Once I have no more Tamara Thorne to read, I’ll be depressed! ( )