“Evoking the paranoid tension of Rosemary’s Baby and the unnerving atmosphere of the cult horror film Jacob’s Ladder, The Cracks in the Labyrinth is a disturbing psychological thriller set in present-day Caracas, where the government has devolved into a “democratic dictatorship”-a creepy suspense novel meant to challenge your deeper, subconscious fears of losing control.
It consumed the sanity of an entire country…
And it was not from this world. It couldn’t have been. Whatever caused the incident known as “The Red Christmas” drove Venezuela into madness.
Even ten years since it happened, none of the survivors of that night dare to attempt to make sense of it all, including Adam. Living ostracized to hide from the brutal way of life in Caracas, he’s working tirelessly as an online writer to help his brother and sister flee the country. Now, as he’s about to have enough money to take them to safety, he receives an email from his old girlfriend … which is remarkable, considering she’s been presumed dead for years.
Adam tries to think nothing of the email or the broken video file attached to it. He convinces himself that it has to be a computer virus of some kind until he discovers something terrifying: the video might link his sister to the worst night of his life, the night his girlfriend went missing, the night of “The Red Christmas”. Then he realizes this could be a threat; his sister’s life could be in danger.
As he starts to investigate who sent the video, Adam begins to uncover dark truths about his neighbors and finds evidence that there might be a larger conspiracy at play. The problem is that he’s starting to suffer from hellish hallucinations that make him question what is real. Soon, the only clear thing to him is that someone doesn’t want him to dig up the past.
Will Adam be able to stay sane long enough to find out what really happened the night of “The Red Christmas”? Will he succeed in helping his family escape the country?”*
The Cracks in the Labyrinth is an ongoing Wattpad novel written by Christian Nava.
It can be found here.
I was approached by Nava to provide some feedback on the few chapters posted.
Wattpad seems to get a bad reputation for amateurish stories, poor grammar, and sentences that run on longer than the Nile. That being said, sometimes you’ll come across a real gem buried in all that rock, just waiting to be excavated by hungry readers. I think The Cracks in the Labyrinth falls somewhere in-between. With only three chapters (which are all apart of the prologue), it is a little bit difficult to “review” such a small amount of substance, but I’ll do my best.
I’m not typically a person who reads horror, but I’ve read enough to know that the suspense is lacking. If the description didn’t plainly describe this book as having “paranoid tension” and an “unnerving atmosphere”, I probably wouldn’t have clued into the genre. There is a mysterious vibe to it though, so I can tell it’s heading in the right direction. It comes off as more fantasy and mystery than horror, but in the book’s defence, there are only three chapters so far.
It’s worth noting that Nava states clearly that English is not his first language. In fact, The Cracks in the Labyrinth has also been written in (what I believe is) Spanish. So keep that in mind when I say the book needs a bit of polish – perhaps the Spanish version is more eloquent. In English, the conversations don’t flow as naturally as I would like, and some metaphors left me scratching my head (a euphemism involving fruit used in the second chapter is particularly ineffective).
That being said, this book intrigues me. I see potential, and I see it’s promise. I want to know what that strange light is in the end of the third chapter, I want to know what will become of Eve and how Adam comes to terms with it. The Cracks in the Labyrinth has a great hook to it and I look forward to what comes next.
Overall, with some polishing and maybe a second person to offer a fresh perspective, this book could definitely become one of those rare Wattpad gems.
*Blurb by Wattpad
The Anxious Princess 