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Book Review: Devil’s Creek by Todd Keisling

cover art for Devil's Creek by Todd Keisling

Devil’s Creek by Todd Keisling.

Silver Shamrock, 2020

ISBN-13 : 978-1951043032

Available:  Paperback, Kindle edition ( Bookshop.com | Amazon.com )

 

Small-town horror is the backbone of much of the horror canon, and for good reason. When done well, it’s claustrophobic, up-close and personal, and forces readers to confront pieces of themselves that could be easily shoved away in a big city or suburbia. When done beautifully, it turns out like Devil’s Creek. Todd Keisling has succeeded in a sub-genre where many fall prey to tired tropes. This novel as a Stoker finalist belongs on the final ballot, as it is greater than the sum of its parts.

There used to be a church in the Stauford,  just fifteen miles from Devil’s Creek.  The Lord’s Church of The Holy Voices devoured many lives in a mass suicide, yet a small group fought against the preacher, Jacob Masters, who served a nameless god that harkened back to echoes of Lovecraft, Machen, and films such as The Void. Mere remnants of the cult remain, with Jacob’s children, the “Stauford Six” surviving to live with the nightmares.

Long after the massacre, Jack Tremly,  one of the “Stauford Six”, returns to Stauford to handle his grandmother’s estate. What ensues carves deep into the bedrock of the town and Devil’s Creek, the bloodlines of the townsfolk, the cult, and religion itself.

The cult/religious element is a tricky endeavor to tackle, but Keisling handles it well, and many see a performance to rival  Salem’s Lot. While I wouldn’t place the novel on that altar yet, Devil’s Creek comes close, and should hoist a few awards this year.

Written with a deft touch, it’s a smooth read that is highly recommended to anyone in the horror fan club.

 

Reviewed by David Simms

 

Editor’s note: Devil’s Creek  is a nominee on the final ballot for this year’s Bram Stoker Awards in the category of Superior Achievement in a Novel. 

Posted on May 12, 2021 by , Reply

Book Review: Bent Heavens by Daniel Kraus

cover art for Bent Heavens by Daniel Kraus

Bent Heavens by Daniel Kraus

Henry Holt & Co., 2020

ISBN-13 : 978-1250151674

Available: Hardcover, paperback, Kindle edition, audiobook (  Bookshop.org | Amazon.com )

 

Liv’s father disappeared for four days and returned with vague memories of alien abduction. Becoming more and more erratic, he lost his job and retreated to the shed in his backyard where he built weapons and vicious traps around his house in case the aliens returned. Liv’s childhood friend Doug, neglected by his own parents and ostracized by other kids, adopted Liv’s father as a mentor, helping him with designing and building the traps, with Liv reluctantly along for the ride.  After Liv’s father disappears a second time, Liv and Doug make a ritual out of testing the traps every Sunday to make sure they still work. And at the beginning of her senior year of high school, Liv finds an alien in one of the traps, and she and Doug are determined to find out from the alien what happened to her dad.

Liv has worked to distance herself from her father’s bizarre behavior, making new friends and the cross-country team, but she is a hot mess, with grief and anger balled up inside her without a healthy outlet. Doug has no one holding him back. Having the alien in their power, hidden in the shed, leads to violence, and, as Liv begins to have doubts, complicity. There are explicit scenes of body horror and torture in the book. Seeing her inability to escape participation once it has begun is horrifying.

This is a painful book to read. Kraus shows how human monsters are made in visceral and grotesque detail. Kraus refers to a CIA report on “enhanced interrogation techniques” at the end that I am sure informed the events of the book. The book is made even more painful and heartbreaking by the reveals at the end.

While Kraus does a superior job with the plot focused on Liv, Doug, and the alien, other parts aren’t as strong. The book takes awhile to get going, secondary characters’ motivations are unclear, and parts of the plot don’t make sense.  Still, he has written a powerful and deeply disturbing horror story and condemnation of government secrecy, torture, and complicity.

 

Contains: explicit body horror and torture, violence, sex, alcohol abuse, bullying

 

Reviewed by Kirsten Kowalewski

Editor’s note: Bent Heavens is a nominee on the final ballot for this year’s Bram Stoker Awards in the category of Superior Achievement in a Young Adult Novel. 

Posted on May 11, 2021 by , Reply

Book Review: End of the Road by Brian Keene

cover art for End of the Road by Brian Keene

End of the Road by Brian Keene

Cemetery Dance, 2020

ISBN-13 : 978-1587677939

Available: Paperback, Kindle edition ( Amazon.com | Bookshop.org )

 

End of the Road is a memoir consisting mainly of weekly columns horror writer Brian Keene wrote for the Cemetery Dance website to finance his 2016 signing tour, the “Farewell (But Not Really) Tour”,  which lasted from May to December of 2016. It also contains some additional material, including an introduction by Gabino Iglesias and a piece written by Tom Piccirilli, as well as epilogues going through about April 2017.  In addition to chronicling his journeys to bookstores and conventions across the country, Keene shares his experiences with grieving the recent deaths of three close friends including writers Tom Piccirilli and J.F. Gonzalez and his reflections on mortality. He attended the last World Horror Convention during the tour and recalls fond memories of past conventions and friendships, and, as a member of the planning committee for the charity weekend Scares that Care, gives that some space as well.  He writes about meeting up with friends and fans he’s made in the horror genre, the value of independent bookstores and local conventions, and the loss of individuality he sees in towns as he drives across America. His focus is definitely not on the controversies going on in the horror writing community at that time: he is looking back, not forward.

Keene also muses over his generation of horror writers (he had been a published writer and outspoken advocate for the genre for about 20 years at that time), touching on the changes in publishing and selling since he started as both a reader and a writer. From about 2000 on, I watched many of the changes from the sidelines, seeing the conversations on Shocklines on ebook vs. print, the effect of the failure of Dorchester Publications, the changes from almost entirely small-press limited editions to easier availability to a much wider variety due to ebooks.  He describes his own vision of the six “waves” of horror writers, putting himself in the fifth wave, and ready to let go for the and let the most current wave to take over the direction of the horror genre. His prediction is that independent niche bookstores and Amazon will take over and drive chain stores out of business. As a former public librarian, I think it’s telling that none of his signings were in libraries, who often feature local writers and midlisters: maybe neither of his publishers thought he would find buyers there, or lists his titles with wholesalers, but Pressure, the book he was promoting, is the only one of his books available in my public library (on a personal note, my husband, the founder of Monster Librarian, who died at the age of 40 in 2014, loved and reviewed many of Keene’s previous books, and recommended them for library collections).

Keene is at his best in this book when he writes about the people and places he cares about. His description of his grandmother, and of West Virginia, is nuanced and vivid, and his frustration over the lack of recognition for Hunter S. Thompson comes through pretty solidly. His self-proclaimed middle-of-the-road politics make the book pretty much an artifact of the times, but he really puts himself out there in speaking about his grief, his love for family and friends, and his feelings about the horror genre.

I’m not sure why it took so long for the book to come out, given that (according to Keene’s epilogue) the epilogue ends in February 2017 and the foreword was written in April 2017. While it is an interesting read ( and will be reflective of many interested readers’ experiences), it is not likely to be of wide interest outside the horror community. That said, current members of the horror community may enjoy his reminisces and appreciate his musings on the state of the horror genre circa 2016. Keene still has a blog, a newsletter, a Patreon, and does podcasts, so readers who are interested in what’s going on with him currently have many opportunities to do so. End of the Road is really a snapshot of his state of mind at that particular time, and a way to support a writer readers and friends want to support.

 

Reviewed by Kirsten Kowalewski

 

Editor’s note: End of the Road is a nominee on the final ballot for this year’s Bram Stoker Award in the category of Superior Achievement in Nonfiction.

Posted on May 9, 2021 by , Reply
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