An original and imaginative mix of macabre lore and psychological horror.
A bridge collapse becomes complicated by an outbreak of Native American sorcery in this debut supernatural thriller.
When a wet spring in upstate New York leads to heavy flooding and the collapse of a bridge over the Schoharie Creek, soccer coach and fireman Aaron Bonner almost drives his pickup into the suddenly gaping chasm on the I-90 thruway. Even more unsettling is the apparition of a Native American warrior in buckskin, war paint, and a braid beckoning Aaron from across the gap. More frightening visions plague Aaron as he does emergency flood work: He sees the warrior, who is invisible to others, scalping the corpse of a drowned motorist and starts hearing the voices of dead people shrieking inside his head. He thinks he is going crazy, as do his girlfriend, Sara Harrigan, and her dad, Ben, a hard-bitten sheriff with a prickly attitude toward him who remembers that Aaron’s half-Iroquois father also exhibited bouts of insane violence before he was killed by police. Things escalate when the warrior manages to cut off Aaron’s toe. The talisman enables the warrior to turn Aaron into a puppet compelled to repeat any act he pantomimes, no matter how horrifying. Johnson creates a believable world of small-town people and first responders with long memories and complex relationships as a setting for eruptions of eeriness. She writes vivid action and flood scenes, filled with “the rush of untamed water, the splatter of the endless downpour, the grunts and shouts of workforce prisoners who heaved sandbags to and fro, and the whining motors of rescue boats fighting a swift current.” In her evocative prose, the novel’s magic feels both realistic and picturesque. (Gathering his powers for a catastrophic strike, the warrior “held out his arms as if presenting the sky with a large and bulky gift,” then “dropped the imaginary package…as if it had gained an obscene amount of weight.”) Aaron’s helpless subjection to a malevolent force that no one else perceives makes for a queasily terrifying read.
An original and imaginative mix of macabre lore and psychological horror.Pub Date: Oct. 5, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5439-0767-4
Page Count: 254
Publisher: BookBaby
Review Posted Online: May 30, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Although this sequel doesn’t break new ground, it will appeal strongly to fans of the first book.
More steampunk adventures of a samurai prognosticator, his clockwork octopus, and his human lovers.
Five years after her charming debut novel, The Watchmaker of Filigree Street (2015), Pulley brings back the main characters for another scramble through the dangers and consequences of clairvoyance. Readers of the first book already know the big reveal: that Keita Mori—the eponymous London watchmaker—has an unusual memory that works both backward and forward. (Readers new to the series should put this book down and start with Watchmaker.) This time Pulley sets the action principally in Japan, where Mori; Thaniel Steepleton, a British translator and diplomat; Grace Carrow Matsumoto, a physicist; and Takiko Pepperharrow, a Kabuki actress and baroness, are working together to foil a samurai’s power grab and turn away a Russian invasion. At least, that’s what Mori’s doing; the others are rushing blindly down paths he’s laid out for them, which may or may not get them where he wants them to go. But if Mori knows what’s coming and what steps they can take to change the future, why doesn’t he just tell them what to do? The answer is half satisfying (because, as in any complicated relationship, communication isn’t always easy; because the characters have wills of their own and might not obey) and half irritating (because if he did, there wouldn’t be much of a story). Pulley’s witty writing and enthusiastically deployed steampunk motifs—clockwork, owls, a mechanical pet, Tesla-inspired electrical drama—enliven a plot that drags in the middle before rushing toward its explosive end. Perhaps more interesting than the plot are the relationships. The characters revolve through a complex pattern of marriages of passion and convenience, sometimes across and sometimes within genders and cultures, punctuated by jealousy and interesting questions about trust.
Although this sequel doesn’t break new ground, it will appeal strongly to fans of the first book.Pub Date: Feb. 18, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-63557-330-5
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: Nov. 9, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2019
Not his best, but a spooky pleasure for King’s boundless legion of fans.
Horrormeister King (End of Watch, 2016, etc.) serves up a juicy tale that plays at the forefront of our current phobias, setting a police procedural among the creepiest depths of the supernatural.
If you’re a little squeamish about worms, you’re really not going to like them after accompanying King through his latest bit of mayhem. Early on, Ralph Anderson, a detective in the leafy Midwestern burg of Flint City, is forced to take on the unpleasant task of busting Terry Maitland, a popular teacher and Little League coach and solid citizen, after evidence links him to the most unpleasant violation and then murder of a young boy: “His throat was just gone,” says the man who found the body. “Nothing there but a red hole. His bluejeans and underpants were pulled down to his ankles, and I saw something….” Maitland protests his innocence, even as DNA points the way toward an open-and-shut case, all the way up to the point where he leaves the stage—and it doesn’t help Anderson’s world-weariness when the evil doesn’t stop once Terry’s in the ground. Natch, there’s a malevolent presence abroad, one that, after taking a few hundred pages to ferret out, will remind readers of King’s early novel It. Snakes, guns, metempsychosis, gangbangers, possessed cops, side tours to jerkwater Texas towns, all figure in King’s concoction, a bloodily Dantean denunciation of pedophilia. King skillfully works in references to current events (Black Lives Matter) and long-standing memes (getting plowed into by a runaway car), and he’s at his best, as always, when he’s painting a portrait worthy of Brueghel of the ordinary gone awry: “June Gibson happened to be the woman who had made the lasagna Arlene Peterson dumped over her head before suffering her heart attack.” Indeed, but overturned lasagna pales in messiness compared to when the evil entity’s head caves in “as if it had been made of papier-mâché rather than bone.” And then there are those worms. Yuck.
Not his best, but a spooky pleasure for King’s boundless legion of fans.Pub Date: May 22, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-8098-9
Page Count: 576
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: March 4, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2018
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
