Sections
Between Two Fires is a powerful horror story set in medieval times. Its strength derives from its unhinged willingness to physically and morally test its main characters while playing with the religious beliefs of the time, displaying the horror of their tensions and contradictions.
The book opens with a tale about fallen angels, telling us how the great plague of the 14th century was a test intended not for men, but for God: a test to see if He would really allow his children to die horribly and haplessly. He does indeed, so the demons can only conclude that the world is unprotected and they can unleash all kinds of horrors onto the people.
The first chapter has a [...]
Stephen King’s Revival is a novel that experiments with cosmic horror to tell a story much less interested in providing cheap scares than in discussing how our search for order (and justice) in life leads us to embrace a religion. The real horror of its narrative is not crafted around the danger of eldritch beings, but how our concept of an afterlife shapes our worldview and dictates our actions: to pose the question “but what if we are wrong”, that way madness lies.
The book is narrated in the first person by Jamie Morton, an old man who begins to recall his childhood, beginning on the day the new Methodist minister, Charles Jacobs, arrived in his town and changed his life [...]
The Gutter Prayer presents an imaginative fantasy world populated by so many different horrors – eldritch and scientific – that its inhabitants live in a constant state of fear and shock. Its plot may be convoluted, but this only reinforces the overwhelming feeling that besieges the characters, who are hopelessly manipulated by inscrutable and unforgiving forces.
The book opens with a description of the city of Guerdon, marking the importance of the setting to the story. Guerdon is presented as a derelict place haunted by its past, the urge to escape from it, and its inability to do so. As the narrator describes it, “Guerdon has always been a place in tension with itself, a [...]
The Hollow Places is a cosmic horror novel that is a bit afraid of scaring you too much. Its narrator is frequently making jokes and downplaying the grotesque events she’s witnessing, which may add to the character but also hampers the overall tension.
The narrator is Kara, a recently divorced graphic designer that decides to accept her uncle’s invitation and live with him for a while, taking care of his humble museum of wonders in a small town in North Carolina. One day, however, she finds a gap in one of the walls and a tunnel leading to some rooms that weren’t supposed to be there – physically, they couldn’t even be there. She asks her neighbor Simon to help patch the [...]
The Damned, a horror novel written by Andrew Pyper, works better than the author’s previous foray in the genre: although it’s still full of problems, the book at least has a better protagonist than The Demonologist and a more efficient structure.
The story follows Danny Orchard, a man who was pronounced dead for a few minutes during a fire when he was young. This near-death experience left him with memories of his time in paradise, which he uses to write a book and become famous. Danny, however, is unable to enjoy life because the spirit of his twin sister, who did not survive the same incident, is forever haunting him.
The Damned successfully builds an [...]
Written by Keith Donohue, The Boy Who Drew Monsters tries to insert discussions on parenting and autism in a horror story. The way it portrays Asperger’s Syndrome, however, is questionable, to say the least, and the fact that the overall narrative is marred by repetition, baffling characters, and artificial situations only makes things worse.
In the story, Jack Peter is a ten-year-old boy who has Asperger and Agoraphobia, living isolated with his parents in a house on the coast of Maine, in the United States. While his mother, Holly, works to support the family, the father, Tim, takes care of him. Jack’s only friend is Nick, a boy who was present when Jack suffered [...]