James W. Bodden ‘Coffin Riders’ Review

Written by: Vitina Molgaard

“My blood goes hot, A dark cloud swirls into a storm inside my guts. Electricity sparks arund the grip on my gun. I can’t help but get a thrill out of this-something close to the rush of stealing.
“A smile cuts across my face as I deep throat the barrel, and pull the trigger.”

-Excerpt from Coffin Riders

This book starts off quickly with what is to be a double suicide between the main character, Bloom and his lover, Lorraine. Well, he is successful in achieving just that and soon finds himself in an afterlife oddly enough named Paradise Cove. An interesting and yet horrific name for what most would refer to as Hell.

This book takes us through his journey there, as he engages in various battles with other dead people and creatures, all the while trying to find his way back to life. Not an easy task no matter how determined he is to succeed. Revenge is his main motivation since he has discovered Lorraine is not there with him.

My personal thoughts on this book are pretty basic. With a warning about some extreme content, I would list this as a young adult horror story. Mr. Bodden offers some stretches in this story that definitely held my interest, well written though these moments clearly had much more of an adult context to it. Unfortunately though there just were not enough standout sequences to maintain my interest. I began to grow weary of a number of the ways Bodden handled the main character and his decisions.

I’ve got to close this review on a somewhat unhappy note, as – in the grand assessment, it did not work for me. But it may very well tap a nerve for the mature teenager who loves the atypical. It is unfortunate because I believe that James W. Bodden has a talent worth developing, I just can’t bring myself to call Coffin Riders a success. There’s still work to be done for this young author.

Order it here.

Rating: 2.5/5