A supernatural thriller with several surprising and satisfying twists.
Troubling disappearances and violent murders rock a small town in this horror novel.
Oneka Falls is a sleepy little town that happens to be ground zero for supernatural activity. When 11-year-old Toby Burton disappears, his friend Benny Cartwright is the first to notice and start looking. Benny is nearly lured into the same dilapidated home into which Toby disappeared, tempted by a creepy old man (a demon) who can hear his thoughts. Soon, Oneka Falls comes under attack from the demon Herlequin and a sharpshooting killer who is egged on by the fiend’s beautiful and seductive offspring. Toby doesn’t return, and Benny can’t shake Herlequin from his mind as his family flees for safety. The horrors of the past don’t fade away but morph into a troubled present. Vick’s narrative jumps between 1979 and 2007, with the formerly quiet and safe Oneka Falls now a town full of demons with an ineffective police force and a shady town manager. Professor and forensic pathologist Drew Reid finds himself drawn to the town and the opportunity to indulge his demon-hunting side job. And though Drew has no memory of his past, Oneka Falls feels incredibly familiar. Local law enforcement grapples to get a handle on the dark happenings in and around town in the present, and those who were children in 1979 are reunited in their efforts to destroy the demon king and his followers. Vick’s (Errant Gods, 2017, etc.) supernatural horror story is evocative of Stephen King’s work in its use of a small-town setting and a gang of friends facing a powerful evil. The narrative’s chronological leaps are an effective method in building tension in both the past and present. The author doesn’t pull any punches when describing the violent results of a demonic encounter, and the rape and murder of a police officer’s family is particularly horrific. The weak link is Shannon Bertram, a victim in 1979 and a main player in 2007. Her character’s development is rushed, and her unexpected romance with Benny feels unconvincing and forced.
A supernatural thriller with several surprising and satisfying twists.Pub Date: March 30, 2018
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 411
Publisher: Ratatoskr Publishing
Review Posted Online: March 21, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.
A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.
"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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