Seth Patrick

Lost Souls
By Seth Patrick

OMG! This had me glued to my tablet! There was so much suspense, action, terrific characters, terrifying situations, and so much more! Jonah is a Reviver, he and other Revivers can bring the dead back for a brief time (if not to mangled up) to find out what killed them and say goodbye to loved ones. But there are anti-revivers that are fighting to stop this. Being a Reviver is getting dangerous. Protesters, legal problems, and threats.
But there is another threat. Jonah and friends decide to investigate on their own but get caught. This may cost them their lives! Great action and thrills.… (més)

Reviver (Reviver Trilogy, #1)
by Seth Patrick
Love this book! It has paranormal aspects, touch of horror, love the plot and characters, and the total weirdness and creep factor! I got this on sale from Chirp and now I will be watching for the other books in the series to be on sale!
This has people that are able to temporarily bring recently dead people back from the dead. Mostly for finding out crime details but also families get insurance so they can say their last good byes. But a couple of times the revivers noticed a dark presence was voiced by the dead. Something they were scared of. Something dark was trying to come through.
But some companies decide to use revivers for a different reason. A reason so unheard of. This is where it gets spooky! Great story from beginning to end!
Great narration!… (més)

A thriller in the best possible sense. Whereas most thrillers and 'page-turners' nowadays seem to have strangled themselves into mediocrity in a cowed and desperate attempt to fit the mould of what they're told an audience 'expects', Seth Patrick's The Reviver seems to be one of the rare few to have faced those anodyne market forces and retained its individuality. It's a book that ticks all the modern marketing boxes – in tone, style, characterisation, plot and, most importantly, concept (it's C.S.I. meets The Sixth Sense) – and yet possesses an air of originality. It's a genuinely entertaining read.

That 'C.S.I. meets The Sixth Sense' label is useful (and accurate) shorthand, but another revealing one is given on Seth Patrick's Acknowledgements page. Here, Patrick notes the influence of Edgar Allan Poe on his concept, and The Reviver certainly drips with a hidden malevolence in its first half. Patrick goes for a workaday thriller style rather than Poe's more literary Gothic writing style, but the effect is the same: The Reviver, particularly its first half, is extremely creepy. Patrick has the mechanics of his story down pat, and we follow Jonah, our protagonist, through a tight suspense story that unfolds its unnerving mystery at a very rewarding pace. I tend to be inured to the cynically-engineered tactics of the modern-day 'page-turner', which is not my bag, but even I have to say: I was hooked. The second half saw a bit of a disappointing drop, but I should stress this was by the high standards the first half had set. The second half, through it veers more closely to standard thriller terrain, is still a cut above your standard thriller.

The concept is king here. Patrick's plotting, characterisation and dialogue are all pretty standard, though enjoyable; it is the fascination the reader quickly develops for the 'revivals', and the mystery behind them, which makes the book a winner. The plot revelations, when they come, feel earned, and while the nature of them might be polarising for readers, to me they were rewarding. We are thrilled by – and sometimes genuinely scared by – the "plunge into the dark rot" of deepest consciousness that Jonah explores (pg. 2), and the evident empathy in this protagonist's character goes a long way towards both alleviating the brutal toll of darkness and murder in the book, and to allowing us to forgive any tiny blips in the story mixture. Fast-paced, fascinating and fantastical, The Reviver has left me asking with indignation: whatever happened to the movie option?… (més)