Item: Fear
Rating: 3
Author: Yvonne

I received this book for free from the Publisher in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

Fear by Rob Bliss
Published by Necro Publications on 13 Jan 2021
Genres: Thriller
Pages: 265
Format: eBook
Source: Author
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three stars - Fear by Rob Bliss | Book Review

Nurse Stitch has her mouth sewn shut and her memory erased.

John Doe has undergone 'nightmare surgery', his memory also erased, replaced by crippling trauma and delusions.

Mahmoud Farouz is a captured insurgent from Iraq who is going to be used by a special Black Op organization to make America feel fear again.

When these three prisoners of a secret underground torture facility band together to escape, they cannot realize that not only has their torture been orchestrated, but so too will be their path to freedom.

Fear by Rob Bliss is a thriller novel filled with action, horror, gore and a story that is both uncomfortable and unnerving in its narrative. Although predominately a thriller novel it has plenty of horrific themes running through-out. it’s a story that has fear at its absolute core. If the government and subsequent authorities have no fear instilled in its citizens, then they have nothing…no control…nothing. Although I enjoyed the story, I did find it extremely slow at times and it felt a lot longer than the two hundred odd pages it was.

It was an ambitious story with a ton of promise, but it just failed to hit the mark for me.

One thing that seriously had me excited was that prologue. It was haunting and eerie with a serious sense of atmosphere and place and it was the perfect set up to a story that I’d gobble up. A scene with a man in a bathroom with only a razor for company. A little girl being reflected in the mirror. Something unpleasant happening to him. It very symbolic and it did bring a shiver down my spine. The writing was precise and delivered whilst balancing on a knife’s edge.

Fear is exactly that, Fear. We are taken to an underground facility run by a secret organisation. The doctors there are performing what they like to call Nightmare Surgery. It’s the ultimate tool in inducing fear. The procedure with trigger nightmares in the patient, I found this quite frankly, terrifying. Imagine being put through that time and time again. Ghastly. We meet the resident sociopathic shrink – Dr Scylla. Let me just tell you, I have never hated a character more than I do him. He’s disturbed, evil and he uses the phrase, any means necessary to do terrible things to the patients.

The characterization was good from Bliss. Nurse Stitch and her stitched lips, the imagery, the fear. John Doe, a soldier previously serving in the US Army in Afghanistan and Iraq. The facility’s most successful patient. He’s weak and at the doctors will. Mahmoud Farouz, an Iraqi watchmaker, who turned his usefulness with clocks into making IED’s and blowing up and killing many foreign soldier. He’s handy with a gun, but what will happen to him once he is transported to the facility? Will their ultimate plan be realized, or can they find a way to escape but then what?

I can’t fully pinpoint what I found slow about Fear. I had been expecting a bit of a horror story and although there were elements of it, it was mainly a thriller story. A little too political for my individual liking but overall a decent story with good protagonists.