Who Wrote It?
Chuck Wendig.
- Website: Terrible minds
- Twitter: ChuckWendig
First paragraph
“Edmund Reese Walker was a man of numbers. Not an accountant, or a mathematician, but, rather, a man of simple interests, and it was here and now, in the Blackledge SCI – State Correctional Institution – that he sat strapped to an electric chair, running the numbers.”
What’s It About?
Nate’s a cop. His wife, Maddie, is an artist. His fifteen-year-old son, Oliver, is over-the-top sensitive and literally sees other people’s pain and emotions.
“Oliver didn’t have any armor. He felt people’s pain – literally, he could see it, feel it, like a dark star pulsating. Sometimes the pain was small and sharp, other ties like a geyser of sickness fountaining out of a person.”
Nate thought he’d left his abusive father behind when he left his hometown for good. When a lawyer informs Nate that his father is dying and he’s offering to sell his house to Nate for one dollar, Nate’s first instinct is to turn the offer down.
“I’m not buying the house. I’m not buying anything the old man is selling. I wouldn’t buy a cup of water from his if I was dying of thirst. I don’t know what his game is, except to saddle me with a house I don’t want.”
However, Oliver is having a difficult time at school, so Nate and Maddie decide to take the offer in the hopes that a change of environment will be good for all of them.
Nate trades in his cop’s badge for a job with Fish and Game who are responsible for Ramble Rocks park. Ramble Rocks has an eerie history and a reputation that wasn’t helped when a serial killer named Edmund Reese Walker killed girls there when Nate was a child. Walker received the death penalty for his crimes, but rumours say that just as he was being electrocuted, his body disappeared in a flash of light.
“Let me ruin the story for you,” Nate said. “My father was a prison guard at Blackledge, where they sent Reese to Death Ros. And I promise you, he died there in that chair.”
The move has unforeseen consequences for Nate, Maddie, and Oliver, all of whom struggle with their new lives. When a strange boy named Jake insinuates himself into Oliver’s life, things start to go downhill fast. Oliver’s drawn to Jake because he can’t read him like he can other people.
“He was a blank slate. Empty of the pain so common in everyone else. No misery, no fear, no worry. None of that darkness coiling up, bleeding out, or pulsing like a black hole. Oliver had never met anyone, not anyone, who was devoid of pain.”
Nate, Maddie, and Oliver all start to experience their own unnerving, paranormal happenings, and try to deal with them in isolation, not realising what the others are going through or how they’re related.
What Should You Expect?
- Expect a story that starts fast and picks up pace the whole way through. There’s barely a lull in the action.
- Expect to experience the story through the eyes of Nate, Maddie, and Oliver. The three different perspectives work especially well for such a complex novel.
- Expect to be genuinely creeped out – at least during the first half of the novel until things start to make sense.
- Expect characters that feel real and that you both like and dislike at various times. None of them are perfect, just like the rest of us.
- Expect to feel uncomfortable and not know who to trust.
- Expect to feel like everyone is being haunted or hunted in different ways. Expect to wonder if there’s more than one bad guy.
- Expect to wonder if the cycle can be broken and even if it should be broken.
- Expect to still feel hungry for the story at the end because at least one thread is left unfinished. Will there be a sequel? Who knows?
Should You Read It?
If you like fast-moving, well-written, good-versus-evil horror stories that have a lot of story threads in them, then absolutely you should read it.
The threads are very nicely woven together to make a great storyline. This is one book that will keep you thinking about it long after you’ve finished it.
