Bleed Away The Sky is the latest cosmic horror offering from Brian Fatah Steele. The weird girl, Audrey, learns that she has a half brother and they go on a cross-country adventure to get to know each other. What she doesn’t know is that she is the last of the Crimsonata, a hereditary power that is passed on down from mother to daughter that keeps Cenobite-like creatures from crossing over into our world. Unfortunately, her mother died when she was a little girl and she has no idea about these powers that are laying dormant within her. Without Audrey “flowing”, the creatures are slipping through into our world and wiping people out. A secret government X-file-like agency is investigating these murders and the strange happenings. They all merge together and attempt to save the world.
The premise had promise and I went in with high expectations. Brian has ability, there’s no doubt. There were some good things in BLEED. Unfortunately, the execution needs some work. While the creatures were good, the constant description of them using the same words was tedious. Audrey’s legacy was definitely an interesting thread that I would have liked to learn more about. The fact that her and her brother seemed to take the world going to shit all in stride seemed to be a misfire. There seemed to be too many times where they easily accepted the ultra extraordinary without much resistance. Some of the characters had a little bit too much of cartoonish qualities to them and blew out any suspension of disbelief for me. A little too one dimensional without depth. Another was where was the military and/or police during all of this hell breaking loose? There were just too many areas that needed tightened up for me to enjoy this one. I really do think Brian would’ve benefited with more proofreaders going through BLEED to point out all the discrepancies so that he could’ve tightened up the story. I do feel that, if that had been done, BLEED could’ve been that much more.
2 Dormant Traits that aren’t Blue Eyes out of 5
You can also follow my reviews at the following links:
Into The Macabre 