Tuesday, October 16, 2018

Kill Creek

An abandoned home lies in wait in Kill Creek, Kansas as four horror authors and an Internet personality agree to a promotional interview. Wainwright, the Internet host of WrightWire, a website for horror media has a special event every year for his site. This year he decides to invite some of his favorite authors to a mysterious abandoned house that he learned about through a forgotten non-fiction book. Authors Daniel Slaughter, T.R. Moore, Sebastian Cole, and Sam McGarver make this journey in hopes it will help them continue to remain relevant. Each author is known in their fields. Slaughter writes Christian based YA horror. Moore writes books that ride the edge between erotica and terror. Cole is an older cosmic horror author who has left quite a legacy. McGarver writes mainstream horror. They all bring their own personalities and fears for the trip. However, can Kill Creek sense these? How far will the house go?

Kill Creek is a debut novel by author Scott Thomas. As haunted house stories go, this one has several interesting quirks that made the story very enjoyable. Our protagonist Sam McGarver begins the novel by telling us how he personally defines a gothic horror novel. First, emanation from a single location. Secondly, the location has a forbidden history. Third, there must be some decay and ruin. Finally, there should be some corruption of the innocent. Thomas fulfills his own rules but does so in an interesting way. Emanation occurs but it toys with our authors. They're allowed a sense of escape but never release. The house craves attention just as our authors need it. It will not allow itself to be forgotten. Decay and ruin comes from both within the house but the land and also our team. Our authors are people with trauma and secrets. They carry scars both on the outside and within.
The pacing of this book is superb. The novel is a little bit on the longer side. My copy checks in at 414 pages. It's broken up into four sections. The story flows well and maintained my interest throughout. I generally enjoyed the characters, although we only received surface details of some of them. The main focus of the book centers around McGarver, Moore, and well, the house itself. The spooky scenes were written quite well. I don't really feel much of a sense of terror from books in general but I was definitely able to imagine some fantastic scenes. I imagine someone will eventually buy the rights to this book for film or television. It could easily be translated to the screen. The book was filled with a sense of dread that eventually explodes to a well composed climax.

I suppose my biggest issue with the novel is the history of the house. I found the story behind the hauntings to be far less interesting than the effect it was having on the people in the home. I wasn't really satisfied with how the house came to be haunted. We have a character who appears around the middle of the story that provides us with a reason but it felt a little strange to me and seemed to only exist so we could compare it with the motivations of the authors who agreed to the initial interview. However, this is probably more of a personal taste issue. It doesn't really harm the narrative.

4/5 - Would recommend to fans of gothic horror fans and those who enjoy a good haunted house.

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