Subtitled "The Battle of Armageddon", this book tells the story of an epic fight, good against evil, for the fate of humankind. A pretty huge proposal. What it ends up as, in fact, is a fairly standard horror-fantasy with more than a touch of Mills & Boon about it (I think the equivalent are Silhouette books in the US).

It starts off well, with ominous prophesies, the subjects of which are entirely unaware of their fate.

Then we are taken into the head of Jonathan, a teenager who is experiencing strange dreams which subsequently come true. In these dreams -- and in the waking world too -- lurks a dark, evil presence. Not surprisingly, Jonathan is reluctant to confide in his mother about the reason for his partly self-imposed insomnia, but when he finally does, she sympathises. Because she used to suffer from similar visons when she was a child...

Mild mannered mother suddenly comes to the fore, and the rest of the book switches back and forth between points of view. I found this a little irritating, with the son's part being mainly Boy's Adventure material, and mom's experiences more like a romance novel. And that was the main flaw of this book for me: it's really two books forced into one. It can't make up its mind which it wants to be. That's not to say that books can't encompass more than one genre, by any means. But in this book they are so seperate in tone, the reader has to switch modes mentally with the change of point of view -- and this pulled me out of the story each time.

As the book progresses, the point of view remains more and more with mom, and so the romance aspect comes more to the fore. So it's a girl-book, overall. This may seem a rather judgemental comment, but I imagine many men reading the book would come up with the same comment as Dr Jones: "I had to skip over the slushy bits to get to the interesting stuff."

So my verdict is this: if genre romances are your sort of thing, then you're likely to enjoy this book. The writing is capable enough. The plot probably won't surprise you much, but nor will it let you down.

With Black and White Comes the Grey is available now from Whiskey Creek Press, ISBN 1-59374-304-1(Print), 1-59374-305-X (e-book).