Rhiannon
I kept staring at the cover of this before I read it thinking “I swear that looks like a crazy lamprey-DuneWorm creature...” Heh.
Great horror centering around grief and loss. (This review is tricky, I'm trying not to give any spoilers here, but it's not easy!)
Alex is raised by his uncle Matt in a rather poor town that seems to be running itself down through bad luck, economic downturns and general malaise, yet despite this Alex and his uncle have a pretty good relationship. Alex gets up to teenagerly things, some not so great, but he seems overall like a decent guy. After a brief experimental go at messing with an occult book with his teenage girlfriend, that seems more like a lark but has dark underpinnings for what comes later in his adult life, Alex eventually moves on to actually making a decent life for himself.
A falling out with his uncle Matt followed by that same uncle's death become the catalyst for Alex making some truly tragic choices as he attempts to (poorly) deal with his grief and guilt over how their relationship went. The fallout drags his newly pregnant wife, that old teenage girlfriend, and his uncle Matt's best friend into the horror show that violently erupts.
Franklin's style was rather reminiscent of Stephen King's in his characters and that nostalgic look back on growing up in a small, poor town. He paints a picture of this town and the deep melancholy of enduring a life in it until Alex finds a way out and seems to be making a real life for himself, but all the while there is a deep underlying dread.
As Alex tries to claw back from the horror he's unleashed on his loved ones, the action really amps up into a truly terrifying showdown.
I kept staring at the cover of this before I read it thinking “I swear that looks like a crazy lamprey-DuneWorm creature...” Heh.
Great horror centering around grief and loss. (This review is tricky, I'm trying not to give any spoilers here, but it's not easy!)
Alex is raised by his uncle Matt in a rather poor town that seems to be running itself down through bad luck, economic downturns and general malaise, yet despite this Alex and his uncle have a pretty good relationship. Alex gets up to teenagerly things, some not so great, but he seems overall like a decent guy. After a brief experimental go at messing with an occult book with his teenage girlfriend, that seems more like a lark but has dark underpinnings for what comes later in his adult life, Alex eventually moves on to actually making a decent life for himself.
A falling out with his uncle Matt followed by that same uncle's death become the catalyst for Alex making some truly tragic choices as he attempts to (poorly) deal with his grief and guilt over how their relationship went. The fallout drags his newly pregnant wife, that old teenage girlfriend, and his uncle Matt's best friend into the horror show that violently erupts.
Franklin's style was rather reminiscent of Stephen King's in his characters and that nostalgic look back on growing up in a small, poor town. He paints a picture of this town and the deep melancholy of enduring a life in it until Alex finds a way out and seems to be making a real life for himself, but all the while there is a deep underlying dread.
As Alex tries to claw back from the horror he's unleashed on his loved ones, the action really amps up into a truly terrifying showdown.
