This book is just cool, it's so rad and stylish but also violent, upsetting, weird and in a vein similar to Grindhouse/Exploitation film. It's like if a Quintin Tarentino film got merged with a David Cronenburg flick and Rob Zombie also added a little bit of spice in there.
I'm not a great judge on if things are scary or not but I just know that on vibes alone this carried it for me. I hope that I'm not going to be the minority on liking this book, I had a great time.
I loved these main characters, I know that I'm throwing love around a lot in this thing I do but GOD, I liked their chemistry, I liked their personalities and I certainly liked their style. We have Micah Henry Shughrue an ex-army vet who has a massive chip on his shoulder and while not a good man has his own set of principles that he stands by (meeting the other two mercs when they were dispatched to kill him after he fell afoul of a drug dealer peddling a particularly nasty product). Then of course London born Ebenezer, a man of similar background to Micah but also needing to deal with the racism teeming in the 60s and 70s and far less scruples who has a tie with our final mercenary, Minerva who is seeking to avenge the death of her father and tangentially her brother while still being newly minted to the work.
The three of them take on Ellen Bellhaven's job of infiltrating a religious compound to find her nephew and everything goes to hell. Literally. Little Heaven is desperately reminiscent/based on Jonestown - a tragedy in of itself but quite readily it feels like our preacher, Amos Flesher is heavily based on Jim Jones himself in appearance and personality. There's even a KoolAid drinking scene described in very gory detail. But we know that while Amos is the mouthpiece to evil, the real thing is something known as 'Father' hiding within the mountains adjacent to the compound whose influence taints everything. What a cool ass concept. A being that calls out to the particularly heinous and evil, leading them to it's home/prison where it needs 'food' and encouraging them to build places to house said food. Particularly children. We are never told exactly what 'father' is aside from that it takes the form of a new born baby that feeds on you from the inside for up to a century and has a loyal servant/child that works like a pied piper to bring him things to eat. The servant and all of his other spawn are reminiscent to me of wendigos with their strange 'not animal' designs and mimicry of voices.
I'll broach the elephant in the room - you can tell that Cutter is an acolyte of the church of King but honestly, that doesn't bother me. The three main protagonists remind me of The Gunslinger and this book definitely has shades of IT in there with how the servant acts and how father predominantly targets kids. We also have two timelines involving what happened originally at Little Heaven (alongside how the three were cursed) and the three reuniting to save Micah's daughter over a decade later.
Specifically the ending:
Is this ending the closest to a good ending I've read of Nick Cutter's yet? Micah sacrifies himself and blows up the entrance to the Black Rock, trapping himself with Father to be fed on until there's nothing left. But he's a fighter. While Father is sure that he will eventually wear down Micah, he's going to hold fast as long as he can in keeping his soul and humanity, thinking of his wife, daughter and home as he's slowly consumed. But his daughter, Minerva and Ebenezer leave, their curses raised. As far as Nick Cutter ending goes, that's pretty positive LMAO I thought it was a good choice honestly - I don't think it would have been as on-brand if it became a massive shoot out or great 'power of friendship' moment. I know that I walked away very sad because of how attached I'd gotten to Micah.
Can't comment much on the body horror, it has the same levels of revelling degeneracy as The Troop I'm assuming that everyone knows what's coming. The man paints a picture and that brush is covered in viscera. Big focus on uncomfortable elements involving how unhinged Amos is alongside how...unnatural Father is, lots of uncomfortable language . We have boys getting eaten alive by big snakes, babies with birth defects caused by drugs, bugs coming out of bodies, children melting together, a rapist tormenting his victim, a hunter being vivisected and unable to die afterwards, people drinking drain cleaner exasperated by vinegar, animals melded together into one horrific alpha beast, and that's only a percentage of what's in store. Who let this man cook? Also please don't let him in the kitchen.
So yeah, I could ramble on but I think honestly this was just the correct alignment of things I enjoy lmao I'm a fan of grindhouse, Western horror, religious horror, cults, body horror, kinda camp weirdness and antiheroes. I'm rating this really high but I have no idea if it's actually a great book or not. I thought it was great.
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