The Void

Rating:
Summary: Nevermore Magazine Review
Review: ...In her debut novel, The Void, Teri A. Jacobs describes in grisly detail a truly horrific and disturbing vision of a hellish world known as Xibalba. This netherworld is comprised of a desolate landscape covered with the bones and decaying flesh of uncounted lost souls, drenched in blood, and scorched with fire and brimstone. Xibalba sports a wide array of "life" including the most perverse and despicable of demons, grotesque beasts and cruel, sadistic gods who hunger for human pain and suffering.

Alternately, residing in the real world is the story's heroine, Leslie Starr, a successful photographer with a bit of a dark side. She carries within herself a powerful force, a latent ability which is as yet unknown to her, but one which she must learn to control to save all of mankind.

Haunting Leslie's nightmares and threatening the lives of her family and friends is a mysterious "Dark Man" named Coatl. A practitioner of the dark arts, specifically the death rites of Aztec mythology, Coatl plays host to a parasitic demon and travels between the two worlds entering the dreams of the living, tormenting them with glee.

Jacobs' writing style can best be described as prose that is beautiful yet morbidly gruesome--elegant in its structuring, even rapturous at times, with a command of highly descriptive phrasing, and yet, certain phrases illustrate such horrors and atrocities that readers will actually find themselves shuddering. In fact, the scenes in this book might be considered a "gross out" if not for the excellent use of some uncommon but well-placed words in equally well-structured paragraphs.

A prominent portion of this story is devoted to descriptions of torture and death, so much so that the development of the few interesting supporting characters, such as Leslie's cousin who is involved in a secret military operation to use ESP as a means of killing, are somewhat neglected in the scheme of things. Character development, however, can sometimes be tedious (bringing to mind the style of either Stephen King or Anne Rice). But this technicality can be excused since Jacobs wastes absolutely no time stabbing into the bloody heart of a wildly vivid horror story which keeps pace with even the most impatient of readers who crave constant action.

The Void delivers all the hard-edged, unrelenting horror that a fan of this genre could hunger for, all jam-packed into one novel. Beware to those who cringe at the mere mention of blood, this book is not for the squeamish....

Rating:
Summary: Rockin' First Novel!
Review: a book of great promise. a father makes a deal he shouldn't have, binding the family to the actions of gods. a servant search for a woman, the daughter, who has a particular role in the scheme. the woman is already terrified of the void, and is now also hunted by the initiated servant. this is all i will reveal. the grizzly descriptions really disgusted me. any way there are 2 things making this book great: 1) J presents a fantastic world (the gods' world) described as something truly horrible, and links it to the plot in an uncommon way. most writer seem to think it is enough just to present a horrible world, destroying the plot or coming with irrelevant details, etc. 2) J presents a great deal of real tormenting helplessness in this book which i haven't read since blackwood, not any of that "it only seemed so"-stuff, or focus only on survival. all in all this book may present what is missing in contemporary unreality - books. and of course, the descriptions and some of the details are reasons to but the book too. i have to subtract one star for the ending. bad closure of the plot that should have been developed a step further too, and i could see it coming.

Rating:
Summary: SFReader.com Review
Review: I usually keep my opinions to myself when it comes to matters of personal taste, but I'm having a hard time seeing how all these reviews can be so glowing. This book is unreadable. I managed 100 pages before I had to put it down. Obviously, I'm not the target audience for this type of story (even though I thought I was), but I can't even assume there was an editor involved here. Someone compared it to Lovecraft, and I'm thinking Britney Spears is the next Aretha Franklin. I don't want to be rude, or entirely negative, so I will say that the writer has a good imagination. The premise of the story is a good one. It's the delivery that falls short. Oh well, I guess you can't please everybody.

Rating:
Summary: Gets into your head
Review: In THE VOID, Teri Jacobs tells an interesting story that happens
to be dripping with vivid and gruesome images, as well as
unexpected moments of humor. I was definitely drawn in by the
beautiful prose; there were things in this book I'd never read
before-Jacobs is a fearless storyteller who knows how to grab
your attention. This was a genuinely frightening and intelligent book, filled with all sorts of malicious fun.

Rating:
Summary: Sweet stuff
Review: Leslie is a photographer who is haunted by the death of her father and troubled by visions of a hellish underworld and of a Dark Man stalking her. Having left her hometown and severed all contact with her past after being raped by her stepfather years ago, she is suddenly called back now after one of her old friends has been murdered. One by one, others once close to her die in unexplainable ways. She feels her Dark Man getting closer even as an unearthly power within her threatens to emerge.

Just when it seems that the only things people write about anymore are vampires, Jacobs gives us a fresh subject (or at least one you don't see very often): Mexican death gods. Her writing has a flowing, literary quality that possesses a strange kind of beauty even as she describes sickening acts. It vividly depicts a surreal nightmare of a realm called Xibalba, where demons routinely torture unfortunate souls in sacrifice to higher powers. But unlike many of the current crop of horror authors, there is far more to her story than graphic violence.

The fact that it is so well-written and original makes the final act that much more disappointing. It is all but incoherent. The fate of the story's primary antagonist is also unsatisfying. It is indicated from the start that he is someone who knows Leslie, but apart from him being a servant of dark gods, no motive is revealed. And when we do learn his identity, it is done in such a casual way that you could miss it if you aren't paying attention.

Despite the letdown at the end, the novel is still good enough to recommend. If you're tired of the same old retreads, this should satisfy on most levels. I'm eager to read whatever she comes out with next.

Rating:
Summary: Sweet stuff
Review: Leslie is a photographer who is haunted by the death of her father and troubled by visions of a hellish underworld and of a Dark Man stalking her. Having left her hometown and severed all contact with her past after being raped by her stepfather years ago, she is suddenly called back now after one of her old friends has been murdered. One by one, others once close to her die in unexplainable ways. She feels her Dark Man getting closer even as an unearthly power within her threatens to emerge.

Just when it seems that the only things people write about anymore are vampires, Jacobs gives us a fresh subject (or at least one you don't see very often): Mexican death gods. Her writing has a flowing, literary quality that possesses a strange kind of beauty even as she describes sickening acts. It vividly depicts a surreal nightmare of a realm called Xibalba, where demons routinely torture unfortunate souls in sacrifice to higher powers. But unlike many of the current crop of horror authors, there is far more to her story than graphic violence.

The fact that it is so well-written and original makes the final act that much more disappointing. It is all but incoherent. The fate of the story's primary antagonist is also unsatisfying. It is indicated from the start that he is someone who knows Leslie, but apart from him being a servant of dark gods, no motive is revealed. And when we do learn his identity, it is done in such a casual way that you could miss it if you aren't paying attention.

Despite the letdown at the end, the novel is still good enough to recommend. If you're tired of the same old retreads, this should satisfy on most levels. I'm eager to read whatever she comes out with next.

Rating:
Summary: De-Void Of A Plot
Review: Teri Jacob's The Void has an interesting concept. A girl's father makes a pact with a Mexican-Indian shaman who is actually a priest for the deities of the Mayan hell called Xibalba (pronounced shee-balba). The price of this bargain involves his daughter,family,and town in a nightmare of astronomical proportions which leads to the sadistic and tortured demise of most of them. The daughter Leslie is pursued by The Dark Man, another servant of the underworld who's identity is perhaps supposed to be a shock at the end of the book but is utterly transparent yet dropped almost casually in the hopes that readers might miss it.

The concept, while imaginitive, is sorely hampered by the delivery. Haphazard plot development, excessive verbiage construed to appear as proficient literacy, and a lack of any character development makes it impossible to root for or against anyone(including our villain, the Dark Man). The villain's motives and reasons for serving hell are never explained and in the end the book has an incredibly disappointing conclusion. Most readers will lose interest before the convluted plot begins to make even rudimentary sense and choosing a mythology virtually unknown to most readers does not help in capturing their attention either.

Jacobs obviously savors the detailed gore and carnage the of her amalgam of the Aztec/Mayan mythos she has woven and it is indeed a frightening place, well researched in all aspects. But inventive deaths do not make good books. Even Stephen King realized that a book cannot be all shock unless there are more compelling issues in a book like plot, structure, and engaging characters. This is where The Void falls short. Fortunately there is potential and with a solid editor and some economy of words Jacobs can achieve a much better work then this rambling debut.

Rating:
Summary: Couldn't Stop Reading It ! ! !
Review: Tired of reading books that leave you wanting more, ones you end up throwing across the room? The Void is your answer. I could not stop reading it!

Teri A Jacobs is a new, fresh voice in horror who will give the Top Dawgs of horror some frightening competition. The Void has the bite of early Clive Barker (Damnation Game and Weaveworld), the demonology of Tom Piccirilli (The Deceased, Hexes, and A Lower Deep), and the gutsy, in-your-face, slaughter house prose of Charlee Jacob (This Symbiotic Fascination).

This is not your run-of-the-mill horror novel. The Void has a style all its own that keeps you riveted to the page. The scenes with the demons are so hallucinatory that you long for the moments with Leslie, the main character, to keep you grounded. The mythology and Jacobs' writing style make The Void truly original.

I can't wait for her next book!