Nephilim: Genesis of Evil

This review is written with a GPL 3.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at Bookstooge.booklikes.blogspot. wordpress.com & Bookstooge's Reviews on the Road Facebook Group by Bookstooge's Exalted Permission.
Title: Nephilim: Genesis of Evil
Series: -----
Author: Renee Pawlish
Rating: 2 of 5 Stars
Genre: Horror
Pages: 345
Format: Kindle digital edition

Synopsis:

The Nephilim, the offspring of fallen angels and humans, wiped out in the Biblical Flood thousands of years ago, survive as lost spirits, yearning to return to the spirit world.
Every century they have a chance to perform the Great Release in which they possess humans and ascend to a higher plane of existence.
Now a small town in Colorado is the focus and it is up to a small, disparate group of people to stop the Nephilim from wiping out the town.

My Thoughts:

First, this is Christian Horror. Lots of references to the Bible and off handed, sideways references to Grace and Salvation. Done right, it can be alright, although I haven't read any done right yet. Not even Frank Peretti with The Oath or House really did it for me.

However, this was something that needed to be edited by a professional story editor. Not a grammar editor, mind you. The technical aspects of the writing were just fine. But the actual story telling and the characters were lackluster at best. In Horror, you can't just write that something was "terrifying". You need to show how/why it was. Unfortunately Pawlish just doesn't have the writing skills to pull this off. This amounted to a great first draft but that was it. I can't tell someone how TO write "terrifying" but I sure can tell them how NOT TO write it. Don't tell me.
I was told, a lot.
The characters were also "almost there" but really lacked something. They weren't cardboard, but they weren't real people to me either.

It was obvious that Pawlish put a lot of thought into the plot, into the characters, into this book. But her ideas weren't written out well enough. She doesn't have the talent right now to write this book. Maybe in the future? But I'm not sticking around to find out. I really struggled to finish this, so I won't spend any more of my time on her stuff.

There is a bunch I could write on the theological level, but why bother? It won't make or break this book for anyone, trust me.