Reaping The Dark by Gary McMahon
“What would happen if James Sallis wrote a Dennis Wheatley story?”
A drug raid that ends in bloodshed…
A violent criminal hell-bent on revenge…
A secret order of occultists…
And something summoned from the darkest depths of nightmare.
Who will survive this long, dark night, and how will it change them? And what kind of horror will be born from the chaos left behind?
If the old adage is true and we reap what we sow, then only evil can be unleashed by Reaping the Dark.
Why we’re excited about this book: Abandon all hope ye who enter here. In a genre where the word ‘dark’ is thrown about a lot, Gary McMahon stands out as being the real deal. His bleak, taut style seems especially suited to horror in urban settings, so a tale combining his supernatural leanings with a noir crime plotline sounds like a winner to us. A novella set during a single night, Reaping The Dark tells of a getaway driver (known only as Driver X) fleeing from a heist gone wrong. And his ex-comrades are not the only things after him… Having read the author’s previous novels, we can’t imagine Driver X is going to have a very fun night. McMahon has said the idea for the book came when he wondered what would happen if James Sallis (of Drive fame) wrote a Dennis Wheatley story… which sounds pretty fantastic to us.
With The Concrete Grove trilogy and the Thomas Usher books McMahon has really been on a roll in recent years and a story of his from Darkfuse seems like a perfect match. Unless you want to sleep at night.
This book will appeal to: people who want proof that crime really, really doesn’t pay.
Reaping The Dark is out today from Darkfuse.
The Three by Sarah Lotz
“What horror fan doesn’t like scary children?”
There are only four survivors. Three are children, who emerge from the wreckage seemingly unhurt. But they are not unchanged. And the fourth is Pamela May Donald, who lives just long enough to record a voice message on her phone. A message that will change the world.
The message is a warning.
Why we’re excited about this book: There’s lots of hype for this ‘horror thriller’, which the publisher describes as a kind of hybrid of Lost, Stephen King and The Passage. Normally this kind of hard sell would leave us cold, but the plot description does sound all kinds of awesome. Scary children. Planes plunging from the sky. Messages from beyond the grave. Scary children. Worldwide panic. Apocalyptic cults. And did we mention scary children? What horror fan doesn’t like scary children? Sarah Lotz is a screenwriter as well as novelist and this sounds exhilaratingly cinematic and the fact that it’s told in the same reportage style as World War Z only adds to that impression. (Let’s hope the inevitable Hollywood version doesn’t mess it up like they did with WWZ, though…)
Fingers crossed this one really will live up to the hype.
This book will appeal to: people who like to brag that they read the book before movie was even out…
The Three is out on 22 May 2014 from Hodder & Stoughton.
JAMES EVERINGTON