PAINTER’S GREEN

By Cyrus Wraith Walker
Damnation Books
ISBN: 978-1-61572-128-3
2010; $12.36

Another little novella arrived not long ago from newer publisher Damnation Books. They specialize in Novellas and do both POD (Print On Demand) and E-Book versions of their titles. This new one is Painter’s Green by Cyrus Wraith Walker, his first book.

Painter’s Green tells of a young man named Terry Painter, who fittingly runs his struggling longtime family business (started by his Grandfather and carried on by his father) in a dying small town in Oregon. Terry has been forced to travel further and further away for jobs and times are getting tough. One day he’s cleaning out his garage shop and he discovers a can of green paint. He quickly finds out the paint magically replenishes everything it touches. Unfortunately, because of the origin of the green paint things go wrong very quickly.

Not a bad little tale all and all. It has the feel of some of Stephen King’s multi-character small town tales. A couple minor knocks though is one, it’s a tad slow getting going and two, the last third of the book where things start going wrong feels a bit rushed. Everything goes wrong too quickly. I think it could have been fleshed out more and the characters developed more to draw out the suspense. Too many side characters aren’t developed enough for us to care about what happens to them. I could easily see this being a blueprint for expansion to a novel later on.

So a good debut overall. The positives definitely outweigh the negatives here. Walker takes what could have been a silly premise in the wrong hands and makes it work. The only other beef I have is the weird pricing that Damnation has for their books. Some are $8.39 and some are $7.29 and Cyrus Walker’s book here is $12.36 (for only 35 pages too). A bit more streamlined pricing system would benefit the publisher and unfortunately will probably deter some from picking up some of the newer authors books. Don’t let that stop you from picking up this one and my feeling is Walker will be an author to watch in the future.

- Reviewed by Trever Nordgren