Title: The Slayer's Apprentice

Author: Zaythan Priest

Genre: M/M suspense

Summary: Phoenix has learned to survive the only way a young man with half his life ripped away from him can; the hard way. Only he isn't alone. He has five-year-old Echo to take care of, and there is nothing in the world that he won't do for the boy. When police Officer Daniel Heart stops Phoenix from stealing his wallet one night, a disastrous domino effect plunges Phoenix, and everything he's built, into the black hole he thought he'd escaped from.

Now, people are dying, the notorious Crucifix Slayer is back on the rampage and all evidence points to Phoenix. Only Daniel knows he's innocent, but knowing it in his heart and proving it are two different things. In the end, belief might not be enough to save Phoenix.

My Review: I hardly ever read suspense. Throw in a serial killer and the dark, dangerous recesses of a broken mind, and it is totally not my bag of goodies. So why I bought this book, I will never know. But I did, and since I shelled out good money for it, I figured I'd better read it.

Everything about this book got under my skin. It dragged me into the mind of a young man shattered by the horrible things he'd seen and done, and twisted the idea of love into obsession and manipulation. It showed the very darkest side of human nature, and the worse places a man, even a good man, will go to prove he's right. Every character in this book lies, most especially to themselves. So how can it be a good book? How can you possibly like these people, weak, fragile, self-deceiving, manipulative creatures that they are?

Well, that's the amazing thing. You do fall in love with them. Somehow, the author draws you in and makes you care, and want them to overcome and survive. You want to bad guy to get his, and you yearn for the HEA, as unlikely as it is that such an ending could possibly happen under the circumstances. And I'm not going to go into that here, because even if you think you won't like this kind of a dark, gritty tale, you have to read this. I guaranteed you won't regret it. I didn't.

As dark as it gets, there is an equal amount of selflessness and honesty, even if it's hard to recognize and harder to hold onto. We've all heard the saying, nothing worthwhile in life is easy, and this book shows just how hard it can be to rise above the very human desire to look out for number one. What makes it work is a healthy dose of uncertainty that anyone is going to come out the end of the ordeal, and the honest reality that nothing is ever guaranteed.

Zaythan Priest knows his shit, folks. You want to know how to write a compelling, satisfying, completely worth-every-penny-and-more story, you want to know how to grip your audience by the balls and keep them frantically reading till way into the night? This, my friends, is how it's done. Read. Study. Learn. Some day, I want this kind of writing chops.

My Recommendation: Read it. Just. Read. It.