An ennui-soaked misfire.
A teenage boy is possessed by a demon.
There is a tunnel near the park where the local high school kids smoke, drink, and canoodle. The most daring teens run through the tunnel and come out possessed by a demon. The tunnel is called Falter Kingdom, and one afternoon, disaffected senior Hunter finds himself hanging out by the tunnel with his friends. (Absent racial cues, readers will likely infer that he’s white.) After a couple beers, Hunter runs through the tunnel, contracting a demon that goes by H. Hunter could get an exorcism, but he likes the spark H brings to his life, despite the demon’s villainous motivations. Told through Hunter’s first-person, present-tense perspective, occasionally addressing H as “you” and other times adopting “we” as the demon digs in, the novel sets up an interesting idea but does very little with it. Hunter is an unappealing protagonist, with little apparent ambition or investment. His possession muddles his motivations and characteristics, but everyone around him is so flat and his relationships so attenuated, there’s little emotional resonance. The novel thuds on and on, hitting the same brooding note over and over, and when the violent climax finally comes there’s simply not enough on the line for readers to care.
An ennui-soaked misfire. (Horror. 14-17)Pub Date: Aug. 9, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-939419-75-0
Page Count: 188
Publisher: Unnamed Press
Review Posted Online: June 21, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Gory horror that thinks nihilist incoherence is the same thing as edgy. It's wrong
A court-mandated hike becomes zombie flick, laden with 1980s pop-culture references.
Seventeen-year-old Nick's life could be better. Since his worthless father, the Dude, "Has Other Concerns" than buying groceries, Nick works at the chicken factory to earn food and medicine for his oddball baby sister. An accident at the factory leaves Nick jailed for...well, it's not clear what he's jailed for. Living in an unjust world, perhaps? Nick’s troupe of realistically foulmouthed delinquents are soon fighting off chicken-gnawing, entrails-chomping zombies at the top of a mountain, calling one another “fag” every step of the way. In prose that consists of far too many one-sentence and even one-word paragraphs ("Had to see. / If it was. / Skoal. / Another step"), Nick has masturbatory fantasies about the hottest girl zombie, even while mooning over the object of his affections, Petal Gazes, a manic pixie punk-rock girl with anime eyes and a "Bauhaus" hoodie. Like Pete Hautman’s Rash (2006), this over-the-top boys'-prison-camp adventure resembles a grown-up Holes (1998), but lacks the heart and ultimate optimism of either. The sexed-up face-eating may please dedicated fans of the shambling undead, despite self-aware sarcasm that explicitly mocks the commercialism of current zombie fandom.
Gory horror that thinks nihilist incoherence is the same thing as edgy. It's wrong . (Horror. 15-17)Pub Date: Sept. 25, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-7636-5947-9
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: July 17, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2012
Plenty of mysteries and betrayals set up the trilogy’s forthcoming conclusion, which fans will eagerly await
Earth’s few remaining normal teenagers struggle to survive in this gruesome, bloody post-apocalyptic sequel.
The world’s gone completely to hell: All nonelderly adults are dead, and most teenagers are Changed into zombielike feral children who eat humans alive. Survivors huddle into protective enclaves and protect themselves with deadly force. The cliffhanger ending of Ashes (2011)—Alex flees from the strangely religious community of Rule only to stumble into the bone-strewn larder of a pack of Changed—takes 100 pages to resolve, mostly due to the shifts in perspective to other un-Changed teenagers driving these action-packed short chapters. Alex is a prisoner of the Changed, and as they drive her through the snowy wilderness, she sees that their behavior is, disturbingly, growing less feral: They use guns, make uniforms and practice profitless cruelties. The remaining adults seem nearly as cruel, practicing Josef Mengele–style experiments and killing children to cover ancient political feuds. Sometimes it seems like the only difference is that the Changed eat their prey, devouring them in sensuously described murder and torture scenes packed with fountaining blood and festooned guts. Nearly every chapter ends with a cliffhanger, keeping the horror appropriately unending: “And then Spider squeezed the trigger.” “The knife hacked down with a whir.” “And then, it moved.”
Plenty of mysteries and betrayals set up the trilogy’s forthcoming conclusion, which fans will eagerly await . (Horror. 14-17)Pub Date: Sept. 11, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-60684-176-1
Page Count: 528
Publisher: Egmont USA
Review Posted Online: June 19, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2012
© 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
