My first foray into Christian fiction is the Young Adult/Action-Adventure novel House of Dark Shadows. I read a lot of Young Adult novels and love any kind of action-adventure. And a touch of magic, supernatural, or spooky doesn’t hurt, either.
Xander is a teenager uprooted from his home in Pasadena when his father has to move to Pinedale. They start house hunting and find a Queen Anne style home. A murder occured in the house thirty years ago, and it’s been unoccupied since then. After the family moves in, strange things begin happening, and a mysterious man is seen on several occasions. Xander and his brother David discover that the house contains portals to other times and places, often with dangerous results.
Eventually, it becomes apparent that not only can Xander time travel, so can people from the other places. And these visitors have more devious things in mind than adventures.
This is the first book in the Dreamhouse series, with another planned book to follow. The House of Dark Shadows felt like it was setting up everything for the next book. I kept looking for a basic goal of the story or a problem Xander had to solve, and there wasn’t one. The book was light on story, and unfortunately, heavy on padding.
We spent the first third of the book dealing with the characters deciding to move, looking for a house, and moving in. A few rather cliched spooky things happened to establish that something was weird about the house.
Eventually Xander got to do some major action–but even it felt like not a lot was happening. I wanted the book to make me eagerly turn the pages to find out what happened next, and instead I was tempted to put the book down.
In the last fifty pages or so, we finally get the story itself, but it was too little too late. I found myself wishing that the ending had opened the book. Instead, the author left the story unresolved with a “cliffhanger” ending that’s supposed to draw us into the next book.
It was a disappointing read. I need a little more story with my action-adventure.
