Review of “A Mighty Rolling Thunder” by Kerry Alan Denney.

This being my first time reading Denney, I wasn’t too sure what to expect. I wasn’t disappointed though with what I found within the pages of the book. If you want a short description of “A Mighty Rolling Thunder” I would say that it’s like Stephen King’s “The Stand” if King was more brutal in his writing.

The premise of the two stories are basically the same. An apocalyptic event happens, good guys and bad guys are defined, and a battle between good and evil occurs. They differ, however, when you actually sit down and read the two. They both have their similarities and differences and one of the differences in Denney’s novel is the fact that it’s shorter than King’s novel.

According to Amazon’s Kindle stats, “A Mighty Rolling Thunder” weighs in at 313 pages while “The Stand” sits as the behemoth between the two at 1,348 pages. Being a Stephen King fanatic, if I were forced to pick one to read again it would have to be “A Mighty Rolling Thunder” hands down. The size of the book does not factor into the choice either.

Denney crafts a world similar to our own, but immediately throws that world into disarray when forces both good and evil invade it. Denney is a master when it comes to descriptive writing. The following is an example of such writing: “The universe was trying to regurgitate its cosmic bile, with Earth as its toxic waste dump.”

The characters in the novel are so well written that you’d almost expect them to spring forth from the pages. It’s a good thing that they don’t however, because I would cringe to see Victor van Danz in real life.

The first character the reader is introduced to is Livi DeSilva. Immediately, the reader sympathizes with her because she is suffering from a douchebag of a boyfriend. As the world around her collapses into darkness, she is infused with what Denney calls “twinkle-people” and “sparkle-angels.”

On the other side of the spectrum, readers are introduced to the antagonist of the story Victor van Danz who is infused with “shadow-mans” who are also known as “night-people.” Before the reader meets van Danz, Denney has Livi and the other protagonists encounter several people that are filled with “shadow-mans” and find that those people are insane, murderous, or a combination of the two. The frightening thing about van Danz is that he is in complete control of his newly granted power.

Another character the reader encounters is Conor McLain, a man that’s literally waging a war inside of himself. Infused with both “sparkle-angels” and “shadow-mans” Conor questions what type of person he is. He is a perfect counterweight to Livi’s “good” and Victor’s “bad” natures.

The most interesting and unique aspect of “A Mighty Rolling Thunder” is the relationships between man and man’s best friend. I won’t spoil the surprise in this review so if you want to know all about it, then I suggest you read the book.

As far as what I disliked about the book, I can’t say that I have any complaints. The story was well written, the characters were fleshed out and the reader cared about them as well as disliked them (in terms of the antagonist), and nothing really pulled the reader out of the narrative. The ending was somewhat predictable, but there were times along the way where I thought that my predictions were going to be proved false. There have only been a handful of novels that I would rate a 5 out of 5 stars and “A Mighty Rolling Thunder” is one of them.

If “A Mighty Rolling Thunder” is the measure of Denney’s writing then I will be looking for his past novels as well as his future ones.

“A Mighty Rolling Thunder” is published by Burning Willow Press.