I picked up Drew Starling’s terrific “Night Dive” short story a while back and loved it. So I was eager to dive into one of his novels and bought “Sentinel.”
The story had a very Stranger Things vibe. A family in a small town starts noticing strange occurrences in the forest, including some kind of giant walking creature. Things progress from there into weird cults, eviscerations, and more.
The prose was great. Starling is a canny wielder of words.
But my interest in the story flagged as it went on. There were a couple issues.
For one thing, the protagonists lacked any real inner tension. They were all basically good people who looked out for each other. BORING!
Plot-wise, things go about where you’d expect. I could have used a few more surprises or betrayals.
A lot of the dialogue could have been condensed into summations. I don’t need every word of a back-and-forth conversation that goes on without revealing much.
But your mileage may vary. Fans of verbose (at times neo-Lovecraftian), atmospheric, philosophical horror may love this. There’s definitely skill in the writing, which leads me to a 4 out of 5 rating.
Fair warning: this is the first in a series and does not have a complete resolution at the end.
