A hunted community. A haunted author. A horror that spans centuries.
Men are disappearing from Toronto’s gay village. They’re the marginalized, the vulnerable. One by one, stalked and vanished, they leave behind small circles of baffled, frightened friends. Against the shifting backdrop of homophobia throughout the decades, from the HIV/AIDS crisis and riots against raids to gentrification and police brutality, the survivors face inaction from the law and disinterest from society at large. But as the missing grow in number, those left behind begin to realize that whoever or whatever is taking these men has been doing so for longer than is humanly possible.
Woven into their stories is David Demchuk’s own personal history, a life lived in fear and in thrall to horror, a passion that boils over into obsession. As he tries to make sense of the relationship between queerness and horror, what it means for gay men to disappear, and how the isolation of the LGBTQ+ community has left them profoundly exposed to monsters that move easily among them, fact and fiction collide and reality begins to unravel.
A bold, terrifying new novel from the award-winning author of The Bone Mother.
I honestly thought I was going to utterly love this book. For several reasons.
First is, there are a couple of Bookstagrammers I know who count this either as their all-time favourite horror novel, or count it in their top reads.
The second reason was that I’d quite enjoyed meeting the author. Wonderful guy, and he’s the primary reason I purchased the novel at the same time.
And the final reason is, because it started out very strong. Unfortunately—and I’m going to focus the blame solely on me here—is that the ongoing story didn’t capture me as I thought it would as it progressed.
Overall, the story is an interesting one, with both some really well-drawn characters that I learned to care for, and some exceptionally creepy and well-written scenes of horror. The author also did a great job of tying the characters together in unexpected, yet meaningful ways. And, there’s also the central mystery of the buried iron box as well.
So, all the elements are there for a really good horror novel. And, while some of the author interjections throughout the story and between the time jumps felt a bit jarring, again, he managed to tie it together toward the end. That being said, I did find that those sections really pulled me out of the main story, more than I should have been. Again, it’s a me thing, but when I go into any story, I count on the author to really support me as I suspend my disbelief and let them take me away into their story. So anything that yoinks my ass back out of the story, to me, tends to be annoying.
And in this case, Demchuk does a great job of creating a lot of darkness, a lot of dread, and a lot of atmosphere in the various story sections. Then when he cuts in, it’s like someone’s thrown open the curtains and suddenly the room is filled with daylight. So, that didn’t work all that well for me.
But if there’s a central aspect to the story that limited my enjoyment—more than the author interjections, that is—I believe it was the excessively large cast, and the minutiae to which we experienced every aspect of their lives, whether it fed the characterization or the plot, or not.
There was just…too much of the daily stuff, and I felt it slowed the story down too much or, at times, obscured it altogether. I guess you could say, between that and the author interjections, I found myself continually losing the plot.
I understand the story the author was telling and it’s a good one, an important one, and it should be told. Again and again.
But for me, as well as understanding and experiencing the underlying thematic elements, I still want to be entertained, and unfortunately, as the novel progressed, I was less and less entertained.
Not a bad book, and one I’m quite glad I read, and obviously others get more out of it than I did. Which is good, because this novel actually does deserve to find its audience.
