Rating: 
Summary: Skip It.
Review: I've enjoyed King's Mary Russell/Sherlock Holmes novels and her Kate Martenelli series. She should stick with them. This novel is okay but my main complaint is it bored me to tears. This is pretty much a textbook psycho-mystery thriller -- emphasis on the textbook (read, boring). It's been done before, and done better.I won't waste my time on her new work Folly.
Rating: 
Summary: A Good Read
Review: I really liked this book. I felt like I was right there with her in the story. I think the book was well written. The only thing that I didn't like was that the ending was was kinda abrupt. Hopefully we'll see more of Anne Waverly.
Rating: 
Summary: Not Exactly a "Nail-Biter" but Very Interesting
Review: Anne Waverly is a university professor specializing in cults and cult mentalities. When FBI agent Glen McCarthy approaches her for her help in infiltrating a potentially dangerous cult, she says no. This is work she's done for him before, and she doesn't know that she can adopt her other personality as a gullible, innocent, middle-aged woman in search of a place to belong as convincingly as she has in the past. She finally agrees, as Glen knew she would, and starts off to find her way into this cult, Change, in Sedona, Arizona. Change uses the belief that heat and pressure creates change into something better, and centers on alchemy, the practice of turning lead into gold. Her interest in cults and cult mentalities stems from when she, her husband, and her child were in a cult. One day when she went off on her own for some thinking, her husband, her little girl, and the other members of the cult drank poisoned drinks and died. When she encounters a child at Change that could be her little girls twin, she becomes fiercely protective and involved with the little girl and her older brother. As a thriller or suspense, this novel was pretty disappointing. I didn't feel like I was on the edge of my seat, or that it was a "page-turner". I wasn't at all inclined toward biting my nails and I wasn't "horrified". It wasn't much of a mystery, either. It was an interesting story of a woman trying to find out if this cult was dangerous, but that was all. Read this book because it is an interesting account of a cult, seemingly well-researched, but don't expect much more than that.
Rating:
Summary: A fascinating and revealing page-turner
Review: A Darker Place by Laurie King is a fascinating book which, once I picked up, could not put down until I was finished with it. I did nothing but read this for a few days. It was very riveting. It is a very well-researched, well-written mystery, focussing on Professor Anne Waverly's investigation of a religious cult for the FBI. It also reviews her own tragic history with a cult and her continuing emotional trauma and grief. The book is very informative about religious cults. The author obviously did a lot of research to write this book and it is interesting. However, she does base this particular cult on the literal, figurative and metaphorical use of alchemy. One does have to be able to tune in to her mindset on this theme. At times I found it a little ridiculous when it reached extremes but then I realized that many religious cults do have very strange belief systems, some that have led to mass suicides. So the extreme beliefs and actions of the cult's leaders are not so strange when one considers real cults that have or do exist. Some have questioned the ending and thought the author gave up or didn't know how to end it. I don't agree with that. While I thought the ending "went off the deep end," and was a bit too much, the author did lay the groundwork for her ending. She explained the metaphorical use of alchemy to bring transformations, she explained the destructive inclinations of the cult's leader and let the readers know he was not mentally stable. She did lay the basis for her ending. Also, she did tell us enough in the end for a satisfactory finish as much as many authors tell us, especially in mysteries. We know what happened to the main characters, to those we cared about. All in all, I was fascinated by this book--by the writing although I had to suspend belief a few times on the alchemy theory. If a book is that riveting that I can't get anything else done, I consider it a good read. I would recommend it to some people and not others, however, as I know some people would get frustrated with it.
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