Devil's Creek

Rounded up from 2.5 stars.

My only other experience with Todd Keisling is his The Final Reconciliation, a novella hyped as, “The finest take on the Yellow Mythos I have ever read,” by Mercedes M. Yardley. My personal response to that assessment was (a) No, it is not, and (b) Really, no, it really is not. Keisling’s novel Devil’s Creek shows that the author has improved, although the finished product is a mixed bag.

Let’s start with the good:

1. The story here may not be original but it’s a good one, and I can’t blame Keisling for wanting to craft his own take on the concept. We all love the evil in a small town trope, we all love stories about crazy apocalyptic cults, and we all love the idea that disparate groups of people who might not otherwise get along will band together to fight them. These elements are all here, and they’re all done well. There are also hints of cosmic horror here, but unlike some other writers who have been inspired by Lovecraft we aren’t beaten over the head with Cthulhu.

2. Keisling is a good writer. There is a flow and a rhythm to his writing that I really enjoy.

And now for the not-so-good:

1. You can tell me that Keisling wasn’t trying to write his own version of It but I will never believe you: six children encounter unspeakable underground evil, conquer it, and gradually grow apart as they age; they are brought back together as adults when that evil returns and again go underground to face it; some survive, and some do not. Although the finer points are altered in Keisling’s retelling, the similarity between the two works is too great to ignore. Some may not be bothered by this; I found it to be very distracting.

2. For such a lengthy book with a large number of characters, very little time is spent on characterization or explaining why the heck any of this stuff is happening. Again, the large cast seems to be an homage to It, but the chief difference here is that even the main characters are as flimsy as construction paper (when your six protagonists are distinguished from each other mainly by their jobs, then there’s a problem). Don’t even get me started on the secondary characters, who pop up for a pointless scene or two and then vanish, never to be heard from again. As far as backstory, we are given the broad strokes, but what does any of it mean? What is the ritual, exactly (there seem to be several)? What is the purpose of the idol? Why can its powers be used for good and for evil? Why is it so important to turn every resident of the town evil? Why do they need to have orgies and then kill themselves? The book is surprisingly vague on all of that.

3. The biggest problem for me, the thing that I can’t get over, is a plot hole that you can fly an airplane through: Jack, one of the six children who escape the cult at the beginning of the book, has left Stauford and built a life elsewhere. He returns to the town because his beloved grandmother died and he has to take care of her estate. We later find out that she killed herself in some sort of magical dippity do spellcasting thing so that she can fight the evil when it returns. We also later find out that the cult’s ritual apparently requires all six of the former children to be present so that they can be sacrificed to bring about whatever the evil god of this book is trying to bring about. SO WOULDN’T IT MAKE MORE SENSE FOR GRANDMA TO NOT KILL HERSELF SO THAT JACK WOULDN’T COME BACK IN THE FIRST PLACE SO THAT THE RITUAL COULDN’T EVEN BEGIN TO HAPPEN???? Yes, I know that she was going to die anyway: so send Jack an email saying, “Hi hon, when I die, you probably shouldn’t come back here cause your dead father will resurrect himself and try to kill you and your siblings in a magical and pretty gross death ritual.” Done and done.

Having said all of this, odds are quite good that I’ll read whatever Keisling writes next. If he continues to grow as a writer, I suspect we readers have a lot to look forward to.

Thanks to Netgalley for providing me with a copy of this ebook in return for an honest review.

Jacob Masters was a child molesting cult leader who demanded human sacrifice in worship of his nameless god. Fire may be cleansing, but when the Church Of Holy Voices burned after the dramatic rescue of 6 children, the evil did not die. The 6 children grew up, and as children do, some flourished and some flailed. These days, some people think the old stories of Jacob Masters and his church are just empty tales of the boogie man to scare each other with over s'mores around the campfire. Now that Jack Tremly has come home the town is about to find out there's more truth than legend to the old stories. I love small town horror, and Devil's Creek delivers it's share of villains among the few brave heroes. It's graphic and gory with huge helpings of anxiety inducing suspense, and supernatural terror. I would recommend it to all horror fans.

I received an advance copy for review