Have you ever wondered if your life is nothing more than a story? I’ve spent hours watching movies like Matrix and Alice in Wonderland, where fantastic things happened… only to discover they weren't real. And then there's fate. Fate basically tells us that we have no control over our own lives. That our course was set eons ago by beings we've never heard of. And we can't change a single thing.

L. B. Milano takes it to another level however. In Rage, the people not only have no control over their own life… they're not even real.

Blaize Donovan had it all. A good life, a loving fiancé, and she knew what she wanted out of life. Then, said life gets shot down in flames when she finds out her beloved fiancé is cheating on her. As she runs from him, and the shame, she gets right in the path of an on-coming truck. A massive head injury, along with a lot of internal damage plants her in the hospital for weeks as her body heals and she re-learns how to operate the limbs that had gone into business for themselves after the accident. Blaize came back… different from her injuries. She sees visions. Hears voices that aren't there. Blackout episodes where a blinding rage consumes her.

She keeps it all quiet until she's invited to The Play, hosted by reclusive writer Algernon Pierce. Algernon is a wonderful writer, think Stephen King, but he's a few fries short of a Happy Meal, if you catch my drift. He's convinced that the characters in his books are coming to life and that they're coming for him.

Blaize isn't the only one invited to Algernon's party. Burned-out rocker Spyder Rains, a man who played hard and doesn't have the energy to live to tell about it, is the second guest of honor for Algernon's get-together. Spyder is riding the coat tails of his previous fame, regurgitating old hits for the same old fans before drugging himself to sleep, when he starts having the most erotic dreams of his life about a beautiful woman he's never seen. Those dreams kick-start his muse, and he begins making the music that will give new life to his fading career.

That is, until he starts to kill the woman in his sleep.

Three lives are spinning out of control. A cult is convinced they've produced the next Messiah, and using Algernon's swift coming insanity to protect themselves. Everyone's lives, and the lives of the people they care about most, are subject to the whim and wish of a man who is losing his grip on reality.

L. B. Milano has penned a fascinating, terrifying novel that will hold you on the edge of your seat until the last page of Rage is read.
 

Reviewed By Marissa
© July 2007