If I were to write a serialized novel, I'd imagine the hardest part would be pacing. As opposed to a 500 page continuous novel, each separate entry needs to grab the reader with the opening, keep their attention for the next 80 pages or so, and then end in a way that leaves you anxious for the next installment. It's not just any apocalyptic doorstop novel that could work as well as John Taff's The Fearing has so far.

Part 3 picks up with Mark and Monday, and finds them in a camp made up of survivors of the various events that occurred throughout the United States. We learn an awful lot about these two this time around, and glimpse just how important they may be to the final product. I appreciated (enjoyed seems inappropriate here) hearing about the other large-scale events that the Fearing unleashed but the characters we've been following weren't privy to. This camp is where we end up spending most of our time in part 3 and in addition to opening the reader up to a whole wide world of fears we get some major league foreshadowing about what's to come in the finale.

To my mind, this is the strongest entry so far at delivering straight up nightmare fuel. Part of this is due sheer variety. In a series that hits us with a wide number of different fears, this one gives us a taste of an everything-at-once barrage and a preview/hope for what's ahead. Without spoiling, there is one monster in particular that made my teeth hurt and will definitely rob me of a bit of sleep.

Despite spending a great deal of our time at camp, and meeting a new, formidable, and instantly unlikeable antagonist, we do get to check in with the other characters we've grown to care about. Taff does such a fantastic job of writing this meet-up in the aftermath of the events of book 2. The king of pain is pretty good at making us feel. Lest we forget Adam and Jelnik, Book 3 drops a pretty big bomb about their involvement before it leaves them to be revisited in Earth & Ember.

Ultimately, this installment does everything it needs to. It moves the story forward and gets our characters one more step toward their endgame, ups the anxiety in terms of what these horrors and fears can do and how they can manifest, and leaves its' readers, in equal measure, ecstatic over tackling the final part and wistful that it's almost over. Thankfully, book four is supposed to be about 200 pages. The end is just about nigh, my friends, and I've loved every damn minute of it so far.