Synopsis:
Fifteen-year-old Will Burgess is used to rough times. Abandoned by his father, son of a drug-addicted mother, and charged with raising his six-year-old sister, Will has far more to worry about than most high school freshmen. To make matters worse, Mia Samuels, the girl of Will’s dreams, is dating his worst enemy, the cruelest upperclassman at Shadeland High. Will’s troubles, however, are just beginning.
Because one of the nation’s most notorious criminals—the Moonlight Killer—has escaped from prison and is headed straight toward Will’s hometown. And something else is lurking in Savage Hollow, the forest surrounding Will’s rundown house. Something ancient and infinitely evil. When the worst storm of the decade descends on Shadeland, Will and his friends must confront unfathomable horrors. Everyone Will loves—his mother, his little sister, Mia, and his friends—will be threatened. And very few of them will escape with their lives.
Review:
An exemplary coming-of-age story, that will have you chuckling one minute, sobbing the next, and shivering throughout, to the point it will leave your kindle dazed, “Children of The Dark,” is a classic creature feature done well. Janz is an author who is new to me, and I’m now hugely excited to read more from him… namely “Children of The Dark 2: Night Flyers,” although I have spending problems, so realistically… everything. Janz ticks a whole host of boxes: notorious serial killer, shitty small-town cops, and of course, plenty of monsters, this one is reminiscent of books like Owl Goingback’s “Crota,” and Richard Laymon’s “The Traveling Vampire Show.” It’s a novel that I interpret to revolve around perception, and to some degree, empathy, but above all, most importantly, this is compulsive, propulsive horror that wastes very little time messing around. No soft introductions or friendly handshakes, or pleasantries of any kind, are exchanged- Janz kicks down the door and grabs you by the throat with his whip-lash inducing, maybe even break-neck pacing. When you round all of that off with the most brutal cliffhanger? Truly devious stuff, Jonathan. I read this one in excellent company, a read-along hosted by Matt Morris, and Amber Reu of Novel Nightmares- exactly the kick up the arse I needed.
We follow Will Burgess who is a 15 year old baseball player, largely responsible for caring for his younger sister Audrey (Peach), due to his mother’s addiction to prescription drugs. It’s a pretty huge task for a teenager, but beyond that, his problems are pretty normal. He’s picked on by high school douches, unsurprisingly called Kurt and Brad, and crushing hard on Brad’s girlfriend, Mia. Unfortunately, it’s these teenage problems that irreparably alter the trajectory of his life, when Will, his friends Chris and Barley, alongside Mia, and her friends Rebecca and Kylie Ann take a trip down to the lake. They don’t know that the Moonlight Killer has escaped, they don’t know that he’s returned to the town of Shadeland, and they couldn’t know that one of them won’t make it until morning. That is of course only the beginning… you don’t even know about “The Children,” yet.
The plot is tightly wound and impeccably paced but its brilliance lies in the characters that populate it. Will, our protagonist, is an exceptional example of a teenager done right. Far from a cookie-cutter adolescent, Will is witty and compassionate and righteous yet not immune from the hormonal chaos of youth. “He leaps off of the page,” is a terrible cliche, but well, he does. He leaps off of the page. On the opposite of that spectrum, we have Carl Padgett, the Moonlight Killer, who is cold and callous and detestable, and written to be so. I think Janz’s most major successes however, are Kurt and Brad. They are stock-standard bullies. They are douches. They resent Will and his friend Chris, likely jealous of their baseball prowess, and in the very first scene, deliver a beating that paints them as irredeemable jerks. We don’t finish the book with the same impression. Kurt has an abusive father, responsible for planting the seeds of his resentment. He’s a bully because he’s bullied. Brad shoulders the weight of guilt from his little sister’s tragic death, a trauma that occurred when his borderline abusive parents left him in charge aged 14. When we think about Will and his closeness to Peach, we can’t help but sympathise. They’re not quite excuses for their behavior, but explanations that elevate them beyond “douche.” When the perspective shifts, we realise that they’re flawed, broken kids, and to some degree we empathise. I was anticipating a satisfying sacrifice to “the children,” and found that in the midst of the action, (of course to a lesser degree than our much more palatable “kids on bikes,”) I cared.
In that same vein, Will, our protagonist, lives in a single-income household, his mum, who often calls in sick due to her addiction, doesn’t bring in much money. They’re poor. Chris on the other hand has two parents, a lovely home, and there’s one passage in which Will genuinely resents him for his new laptop. That perspective changes when he later learns that despite the nice house, and expensive tech, Chris’ home life isn’t particularly harmonious. Overall it goes as a reminder that we can’t hope to know everything about everybody. Every side character in our lives, every friend of a friend, as well as those who we are legitimately close to, have their own big, huge, complicated lives that we can’t really hope to glimpse- something we should take into account.
A book of goose-bump-raising calibre, if Dan Simmons’ “Summer of The Night,” Robert McCammon’s “Boy’s Life,” or the writing of Stephen King is your cup of black, brooding tea, then “Children of the Dark,” is not so much a recommendation as it is a mandate. A signed and sealed decree. It doesn’t merely invite comparisons to “the greats,” so much as it elbows its way into their club, and pulls up a chair. I have the sequel pencilled in for later this month (Jonathan Janz clearly has no regard for my already abysmal time management, nor my bank account (that backlog is insane)) and am looking forward to going back to Shadeland. I hear it’s all-out war this time around.
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