The Watchers by A.M. Shine is the author’s debut horror novel. The premise of the story got me captivated almost immediately. I’ve always loved stories where humans were hunted or studied by an alien race instead of the other way around. Sadly, if you were in the same category, you’ll be disappointed because this novel is anything but that. Instead you have your usual cliche storyline whom most experienced readers and movie watchers would have seen coming a long way ago once the horror element was introduced.

The shadows were theirs, and the shadows were everywhere.

Mina

The saving grace for this novel was that it managed not to make me quit in the beginning. It honestly held my attention but it slowly crashed and burned the further I went. I didn’t necessarily mind Mina as the main female lead. She’s weak, has social issues along with a bunch of others and seeing her thrust into a claustrophobic environment made her someone I wanted to root for. One of the major shortcomings of this novel is that there seems to be a lot of fluffing and padding along the way. This is especially noticeable towards the end when I entered my dreaded “just get it over with” reading mode and skipped sections of Mina’s thoughts and description of things simply because it hardly mattered, was repetitive and not written in a way that actually made me want to go over it. So, towards the end, I skipped those sections and went straight to where there was character dialogue.

Nocturnal creatures have all the luck.

Mina

Dubbed an Irish adventure/horror, you’d hardly have noticed nor does it really make any difference in the overall story. The only stereotypical thing I caught that remotely hinted at the location setting is the mention of a pub/bar. None of the characters in my opinion exhibited anything that related them to being of Irish origin, if they were indeed so, such as talks or mention of religion, beliefs, usage of words, specific behavior, etc. In any case, this doesn’t detract from the story so I didn’t really dock any points for it.

I wished that the author would have spent more time on the alien species. It was such a wasted opportunity. Instead, we get to read about the other characters whom none are what you’d call exciting or interesting. It definitely matched the depressing setting though that’s for sure.