Book 60 of 2012: The Donors

I received a free ebook copy of Jeffrey Wilson’s The Donors in exchange for reviewing it. The story follows the mysterious happenings taking place around a hospital where two of the main characters work and where a young boy, Nathan, is being treated following an attack by his mother’s abusive boyfriend; people are missing and the medical staff are being used to harvest their organs.

It was an interesting idea and for the most part I enjoyed the story. I liked the way that the story was told, with each chapter being told through the perspective of a different character. As with many of the review copies of ebooks that I’ve received, it’s not really the sort of book that I would pick up to read myself, but once I started it, I enjoyed it.

In terms of the characters, they all had very distinct voices. Considering the format, with the point of view changing each chapter, this was really important. If I’d put the book down midway through a chapter, I could tell who the main character was as soon as I picked it up. I particularly liked the way that the character of Nathan was handled; he felt like a five-year-old, rather than an author’s attempt to write a five-year-old.

I liked the relationship between the doctor, Jason Gelman, and the nurse, Jenny. The main three characters, Jason, Jenny and Nathan were very well-rounded, however this highlighted the lack of information provided about some of the other characters, specifically the Lizard Men but also Jazz and Steve. The good characters in this book were quite clearly and obviously very good, whereas there were no redeeming qualities in the bad characters. In the case of Jazz and Steve you only really saw them in the dream world where they were being tortured by the Lizard Men, which meant that you didn’t really find out what was going on to them in the real world. One thing which was never made clear for me was where the Lizard Men actually came from and what their actual purpose was. At the end I wasn’t entirely sure where they went as well.

Aside from these little nitpicks it was a really creepy story – it certainly made me feel more than a bit nervous about taking the dog out in the garden late at night, I was on the look out for people with weird creepy eyes. It was a little bit gory in places and some of the descriptions of the torture inflicted on characters such as Jazz and Steve were maybe a little over the top. On the whole it was a good book, ideal for people looking for a bit of horror.

“The questions rattled inside him like background noise, rarely rising to a level that demanded attention. When he could provide no answers, they settled stubbornly and pouted like children.”
Location 651