Emergence (The Necropolis Series Book 4) - Guy Portman

There’s no stopping this young sociopath.

Teenager Horatio hates his mother’s boyfriend, and there is nothing his long-suffering single mum or half-sister can do about it. The tension soon boils over into school when he attacks the class bully.

While suspended, Horatio has plenty of time to plot revenge against the man he holds responsible for all his problems. It won’t take the adventurous adolescent long to stumble across a depraved and degrading solution.

Now all he needs to do is keep deceiving the psychiatrist and wait for an opportunity to strike.

This suspenseful story will appeal to aficionados of psychological fiction and darkly humorous crime.

 

What did I think?

I absolutely love the Necropolis series and I was intrigued to see what direction it would go in after the dramatic events of book 3.  The first three books in the series follow Dyson Devereux as he kills everyone he doesn't like and book four sees the emergence (see what I did there?) of Dyson's son Horatio who has the same homicidal tendencies.

Whilst I didn't warm to Horatio as much as Dyson, Emergence is another dark and entertaining novel in this fantastic series.  I just loved reading Horatio's thought processes as he plans to murder his first victim.  Murder shouldn't be so funny but Guy Portman creates such vivid imagery of almost farcical situations that I couldn't hold my laughter in.  Just thinking about it now makes me chuckle.

Horatio is one clever sociopath as he deceives everyone around him, but the reader is privy to his innermost thoughts and can see how very dark he is underneath.  He's perhaps not as clever as his father (yet) but I'm sure he'll leave a trail of bodies in his wake as we hopefully see him develop over future novels.  More please, Mr Portman!

Emergence is as hilarious as it is dark and it's a fascinating and highly entertaining insight into the mind of a sociopath,  If you're just picking up this brilliant series now, Emergence can definitely be read as a standalone, but I very highly recommend the earlier books in the series.

Many thanks to the author for sending me an ARC to read and review; this is my honest and unbiased opinion.

My rating:

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