The Speed of Darkness

The Speed of Darkness is written by Sarah Baethge and published by Smashwords. At just shy of 40,000 words, 18 chapters and 104 pages this book comes under the description of a novella because of its lower word count.

Sarah Baethge lives in Salado Texas on her step-moms donkey ranch with her dad and sister. She has written at least five short stories and published one book. Sarah has some more works in various stages of completion and admits she writes the stories that she would like.

Computer Professor Eric Omlup teaches adult learning and two of his students (the best and worst of the class) have him tearing his hair from his head. It is no wonder then that he miscalculates the coming fullmoon, until Ms Brenner shows him while she tries to get a date with him.
Eric Omlup, werewolf, about to be caught, with only 20 minutes to get to his apartment but with only 2 minutes remaining to get into the apartment from his car. Time is not on Eric’s side as he transforms and is left to wonder the streets. Happening across some Professional werewolf trappers and their prey Eric’s life is about to get even worse.
As if Eric’s own secret wasn’t enough the prey, Nigel, has one of his own far different from Eric’s the only problem being they are both now being hunted by the evil group known as The Eclipse.

In a world where both werewolves and what appears to be mutant-like abilities exist in secret.
Good and evil. Light and dark. We are about discover the monster that lurks inside us all.
Can Eric hold back the wolf long enough to help bring down one of the world’s greatest organisations? What is shadow skating? Who are Solar Flare? Who are Eclipse? And which side are they on? What are the agenda’s of each side?

The Speed of Darkness has an interesting plot that has the potential to go further, deeper and be expanded upon. The plot is also unbalanced to the pace of the story where one speeds up the other appears to slow down.
This is an interesting and at times enjoyable story with some colourful characters but I believe that this unbalance between plot and pace has let the story and the author down considerably which is a shame. I would perhaps be inclined to pull the story from publication in order to reassess the story in its entirety perhaps wearing a different hat. For the world created I believe this story to be merely a drop in the sand as there is great potential for this story, but I do not feel it has yet been discovered as there is so much more ground to be covered and I personally would like to see more of these organisations and how they work. The science was not bad either and I would have liked to have seen more science but perhaps less theory.
Written in third person with a miss-matched mix of first person that leaves the reader confused and having to re-read sentences to see what was actually meant to have been said. There is also an unsuited combination of single spaces and double spaces used.
The font this novel is published in is not the usual Times New Roman or Arial format we are all accustomed to seeing. In fact this story goes completely against all known publisher requirements. So I recommend it to be best read at 75% magnification.

This was perhaps one of my most difficult reviews to undertake to date and I found it so hard a task to stay on track as well as to rate but I must rate on what I see therefore I give The Speed of Darkness 3 out of 5 stars.

By R.N. Hadley