THE WAKENING

A retired priest, a group of young ghost hunters, and a pair of twins with supernatural powers become entangled in a demon’s revenge plot in Faherty’s supernatural thriller.

Asmodeus, known as the prince of demons, pledged its vengeance on the Rev. Leo Bonaventura five decades ago, and has come to Earth to claim its prize. The story is told over the course of a half-century, starting with the inciting incident—in which Bonaventura exorcised Asmodeus from the body of a 12-year-old boy in Guatemala—and moving forward. It jumps ahead a decade with each chapter and visiting locales around the world to show how various characters—including ghost hunters in Hastings Mills, New York, and feared Ohio twin sisters Claudia and Shari, who have very unusual abilities—arrive at the same place with the same goal of eradicating the demon. Mysterious, disturbing events ramp up over time, from spontaneous suicides and unexplained murders to a student séance gone awry and bizarre weather events, adding to a sense of growing chaos. The prose is engaging and suspenseful throughout, and the descriptions, particularly of scenes of demonic possession, are often vivid: “Dazzling bursts of white light exploded from the rafters. Everywhere they appeared, flames flickered to life across the aged wood. The townspeople tumbled over, their eyes burned away. Swarms of beetles emerged from the sockets and skittered across the floor.” Amid such fireworks, the character relationships also feel convincing. However, the offbeat chronology and shifting third-person character perspectives sometimes make the story difficult to follow. Along the way, the narrative strongly addresses themes of guilt and how it relates to religion; for example, one major character, also a priest, is an abuser of young children, and the work disturbingly delves into his thought process: “Ain’t Christianity the best? his subconscious whispered, while he mentally recited the Hail Mary. Defile your soul for what, the hundredth time? Two hundredth? But say a few imaginary invocations and all is forgiven. You’re a clean slate again.”

A tense paranormal tale with an unusual, if sometimes-disjointed, narrative structure.