Tome: The Juniper Series

"In all his time at Juniper Correctional, he'd never once had to draw his gun, but he'd be a fool if he thought he would never need it. The moment that thought crept in was the moment a guard ended up leaving in a zipped-up bag. He'd rather be judged by twelve than carried out by six."

Tome is the prequel in the Juniper series by Ross Jeffery. Even though it's the prequel, if you have not yet read Juniper, I would highly recommend starting with Juniper first. Juniper did a fantastic job setting the stage for Tome in how the jail, Juniper Correctional, was portrayed.

Tome is definitely a much darker and frightening tale in this series and I am very excited to see how it ends when the third book is released. This story focuses on the inmates of Juniper Correctional and the extremely corrupt warden and several of the guards. The living conditions and treatment of the inmates is abysmal. The worst part - there is something even more corrupt and abusive in the jail that is slowly making its rounds and causing madness, eventually ending in horrible deaths. Because of the high number of deaths, U.S. Marshals are sent to investigate and the dance begins as all parties involved try to avoid detection, shift blame and carry out their own agenda.

As a book lover, there is one element in this story that is just the absolute WORST. There is an object, a talisman, which is used as a sort of vehicle for this malevolent force to move around with. LOL! Come on Ross, you just had to make it THIS particular object....I mean, it's funny, I have to admit.

I love the nods the author gave to other indie/self pub authors in the genre. I got so excited every time I recognized an author name I love and titles of their books I've read and loved. That was such a heartwarming touch. It was the ONLY heartwarming touch. This story is very, very dark. If you are not someone who reads horror normally, this is not the book I would recommend you start with. This sucker is definitely written for us avid horror readers.

The spelling choices used for words and dashes in words to show additional syllables to show deep Southern dialect in print were ones I'd never seen before, several of them took me a while to figure out what they were supposed to be. I know I speak this dialect - but I don't write the way I speak and trying to read it interrupts my immersion into the story. Instead of "Ah wish you'd call them bah their prison name," I would much rather see "I wish you'd call them by their prison name," said the Warden, his thick Southern accent making his "I" sound like "ah". Something like that, and then let me as the reader do the rest.