There’s a few things I always worry about when I do a review. I worry that I’ll come across as one of those who can’t do and therefore is left with nothing but criticism. I worry that I’ll end up giving a gushing review when I really didn’t like the material. I worry that I’ll be forced to give away too much of the plot while doing the review. And finally I worry that I’ll have nothing good to say about something someone I admire made.

Welcome to my personal nightmare.

Jack Killborn is J.A. Konrath’s pen name. J.A. Konrath is a legend among indie novelists. One of the first to step away from the traditional publishing industry and one of the loudest supporters of indie publishers, I’d read Konrath’s blog religiously while I was still working for FetishMovies.com dreaming of the day when I’d finally feel strong enough as a writer to strike off on my own. So it’s with a heavy heart that I have to admit that I didn’t enjoy his novel Endurance (A Tale of Terror) at all.

There’s a lot not to love about it: the way the story opens with a character who almost immediately seems to die (they don’t but it’s several hundred pages before the reader knows that for sure) the use of rape and mutant freaks as tools of terror, the fact that the strongest women in the world are the targets for all these horrors. But mostly it’s just the way that I felt reading it, page after page of a story that failed to terrify but certainly managed to disgust me.

I’d say that Endurance (A Tale of Terror) is ready made to become a movie of the torture porn variety. I’m not a fan of that type of horror and up until I’d read this book, I had been blessed with thinking it didn’t exist in written form. Suffice it to say I’m not happy I was wrong.

That said, I’ve got other Konrath books in my Kindle library waiting for me to get some free time and give them a read and I’m hopeful that they’ll take the bad taste of Endurance (A Tale of Terror) out of my mouth.