Adam Nevill: Part 2

I’ve had a bonkers few months, but it’s given me a great deal of time to finish off this project. I finished the last of the summaries and reviews just last week. I’m now starting on 101 Books to Read Before You’re Murdered by Sadie Hartmann.

I’ve also been rewatching American Horror Story. Some of it is deliciously terrible rather than just terrible, and it is a huge help in seeing how something could become a great story with revision, cutting, and editing. There’s a lot of this show that should have ended up on the floor.

Anyway, on to the show.

Last Days: 4

Kyle is a filmmaker, living off the dredges of his last job and fading popularity. He’s hired by a wealthy eccentric, who uses the recent suicide of a former member as motivation, to look into the cult of Temple of the Last Days which ended catastrophically in the 70’s. They were all about tearing down the boundaries that society had placed on them– physical, emotional, and sexual— all falling under the influence of their leader, Sister Catherine. She slowly amps up her control over them until she becomes their most valued relationship.

Kyle first visits their house in London, long abandoned by them and remodeled by flippers, but still terrifying by night as something prowls the halls. From there, he follows their previous path to France, where they set up shop in an abandoned town. The villagers were also a cult that went up in flames hundreds of years ago, their forms still marked on the church walls. The scene in the church remains one of my favorite horror novel moments, providing the knowledge that nothing can stand in the way of eldritch beings on a mission. It’s also just chef’s kiss on the description of what an abandoned church full of “demons” should be. Then, he goes to the American desert, the place the family finally melted down as they gave in full-bore to whatever their leader had stirred up from the void.

During these interviews and filmings, the beings stalk Kyle every time he dares to step into a shadow. He contacts old members of the cult that survived the mass suicide/maybe murder. Some commit suicide. Others talk to him, then commit suicide. Everyone is being stalked by the same thing that follows him, and there’s some tantalizing bits about the guy who hired him. His fellow camera man wants out. Kyle wants out. The old man wants out. But you just can’t leave an evil demon cult without consequences.

Last Days is one of my favorite Neville books. I read it alongside Cutter’s Little Heaven, and cults that tap into their darker patrons and go full-on drinking-the-kool-aid crazy hit a sweet spot for me. While their real life counterparts have little explanation for throwing away everything to live in the desert and smell God, stories like this give me an admittedly false hope that real people just don’t lose their mind like this without a little, dark push. They do, all the time, fall for con men/women for no reason at all, but this is why fiction is better. 

This book is also just full of history and location as it follows the origins of the cult, then what they tapped into and their mad descent in the desert. I could have dealt without the 80’s action scene at the end, which is why I docked it half a point. Like The Ritual, it’s a huge tonal difference in what was otherwise a very serious horror story with evocative language surrounding fire, the landscape, and being prey to something both ancient and inescapable. And then Arnold Schwarzenegger and crew invade a Beverly Hills mansion and gun everything down.

The House of Small Shadows: 3

After several tragedies— a missing childhood friend, mental health issues, a bullying incident, and a miscarriage— Catherine takes a job in her home town cataloguing a doll and puppet collection that has a mind of its own. 

As she curates the puppets, dolls, and various other creepy shit, she discovers that not only did her childhood friend have some nebulous connection to the area, so does she. This book is essentially my partner’s worst nightmare— haunted dolls abound— and Nevill tries to wrap it in a neater bow than he usually does, but so many of his books leave me wanting just a little more than the atmosphere he’s willing to give.

No One Gets Out Alive: 3.5

Our heroine is down on her luck. She’s in poverty, and the only housing she can afford is a boarding house that caters to murdering down-on-their-luck women and has a crazy old god in the basement. Also, the place is full of ghosts rattling plastic bags and screaming bloody hell, and her male landlords are utter creepers, even more so than typical landlords.

I had watched the movie, which does hit differently due to its focus on the diaspora of immigrants, but the themes of old gods doing brutal shit holds true; the ending on this was on par with The Reddening for me and the building tension of random weird shit happening fit Nevill’s slapdashing-creepy-shit-everywhere style more than a lot of his stories do. Still, what the fuck, Black Maggie?