The Colony by F G Cottam This was a stunning novel– right up until the last few pages it could have been my best read ever but tn very sadly it fizzled out without any real climax. So I’ve read Cottam before; The Waiting Room must have been one of the last real books I read before the arrival of my Kindle last Xmas. That was a very solid and interesting ghost story. I’d marked the author down to revisit later and having recalled my intention I had a look on the Amazon reviews to see what else he had out. This seemed quite interesting and had good reviews. Based on the tale of a Scottish Hebridean island where all of the inhabitants went missing at the turn of the century. Recently, a wealthy newspaper owner was to solve the mystery and it looks like it’s to boost the sales of his flagging newspaper but the reality is that he is a UFO-ologist, determined to prove that the islands inhabitants were taken by visitors from another planet. He enlists the help of various experts such as geologists, phsychics, medics etc to go up there, and at the last though a cleric, in order to ensure that all angels are covered. However, even before our intrepid party lands the security team sent ahead suffer a fatality and then discover the empty craft of a rival news team. The horrors of this story are n’t spawned out of alien beings but in fact voodoo, the curse of a vodoo priest brutalized and murdered by a sea captain coming back to haunt the living. I have to say it was a very powerful and unusually for me had shivers running down my spine on a number of occasions. There are two entities to deal with (although one gets sort of forgotten at the end), there is the daughter of the sea captain who flies around (quite literally) with wholey black eyes and then the black demon. The final confrontation with the demon though is over in what can’t be much more than a page or two (remember, I’m on my Kindle!), there is no build up of intensity to the story it’s like a balloon that somebody lets go of before they’ve tied it. On saying that, I will read this author again because overall it was an excellent novel, just work on your endings man ;-) Now, finally I guess, I have a date with a girl with a dragon tattoo!!!