I’ve been hankering
for Adam Nevill’s latest book ever since I’ve known about its upcoming release.
Where his previous novels and short stories have been genuinely creepy enough
to somehow and progressively alter my brain chemistry and give me a few greys
and plenty of nightmares, The Reddening, aptly hitting the shelves on Halloween
2019, continues to hack into that amygdala-warping notch with fiendish
precision.
Adam Nevill doesn’t
let up. Having made gorgeous Devon with its rugged coasts and picturesque
countryside his home, he is now determined to ruin it for the rest of us. His
evocative descriptions of the ancient landscapes are stunning, but they’re none
of the Rosamunde Pilcher quaintness. Nevill’s nature is fierce and unforgiving
if crossed, more dread- than awe-inspiring. The characters, distracted by their
own trauma and lulled by the false security of modernity, follow a trail of
mysterious deaths and the suicide of a young man who disappeared after
recording some hair-raising sounds in one of Devon’s ancient cliff caves, the
excavation grounds of some truly terrifying remains and artefacts. And what at
first seems a mere unpleasant encounter with insular, hostile country folk, and
suspicions of a large scale drug operation, soon becomes the entry point to
something vastly older and all-pervasive, an entanglement with an ancient pagan
cult and prehistoric powers that prove inescapable.
Nevill, as ever,
masterfully crosses the boundary from ordinary scares to cosmic terror.
Apparitions of the Red Folk, descriptions of being lost in the pitch dark of
the nightly sea and isolated trails build up to a crescendo of nigh
incomprehensible nightmarish visions conjured up in pagan rituals that tears
the grounds of safe reality from under the characters’ and readers’ feet,
which left me gasping and swearing like a trooper over and over again.
The Reddening is
Nevill’s Devon Wickerman, and under his spell you might well, like me, shrivel
into Edward Woodward hollering a heartfelt, yet impotent “Jesus. Jesus Christ!”
For a sample, click here.
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