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Book Review: Haven by Tom Deady

Haven by Tom Deady
Greymore Publications, 2017
ISBN-13: 978-0990632726
Available: Paperback, Kindle edition

 

With the release of Haven, it is clear that Tom Deady is ready to make his mark in the horror world.  While “coming home” and “coming-of-age” stories have been done masterfully before in books like Dan Simmons’ Summer of Night, Robert McCammon’s Boy’s Life, and the monumental IT, Haven is a fresh take on the trope. With characters who stand out and plot twists that push comparisons to the side, the pages fly by.  Deady weaves a story of mystery and horror that will leave readers not just frightened, but feeling a powerful emotional impact.

Paul Greymore has been locked away in prison for 17 years, serving a sentence for being a child murderer, despite evidence to the contrary. Disfigured in childhood, and already an outcast when the murders occurred, he was blamed for the deaths as he emerged from a lake with a wounded girl. With his imprisonment, the killings stopped. The town of Haven has not been a “safe haven” for him.

Paul’s main ally, the local priest, believes it best for Paul to return home and start anew, yet the killings begin again just as he arrives. Sheriff Crawford, the cop who put Paul away despite the evidence, is still hellbent on putting him back behind bars. Along with his friend Billy and young Denny, the damaged crew set out to solve the mystery of who, or what, is actually killing the children. More than any monstrous outside force, though, Haven explores the the darkness within the human characters, and how that line of good and evil burns pieces of our souls off with each struggle.

Deady’s writing is strong here, sidestepping many of the first novel pitfalls, a big accomplishment for a story that tops five hundred pages. The characterization, especially of Paul, shines. Haven is definitely one of the best debuts of the year. Highly recommended.

 

Reviewed by Dave Simms


Posted on April 29, 2017 by , 1 comment

Monster Kid Request: Sea Monsters from A to Z

Not surprisingly, the Monster Kid loves monsters. He especially loves cryptids and sea monsters. So although he hasn’t actually asked for the ABC’s of sea monsters, I’m pretty sure he would if he could. I’m not sure about sharing this with him, as I’m not really up to explaining Cthulu to a six year old (nor do I think it’s appropriate, although I’m sure a fair share of parents who read this have probably given their kid a plush Cthulu- and I have it on good authority that it can get rid of closet monsters). But he would LOVE seeing some of his favorites– known, unknown, and fictional– on this list provided by Tor.com. It’s all kinds of awesome, with everything from the Kraken (with a great pic from Clash of the Titans) to the Gill-man, from the Fiji Mermaid to the vampire squid. This is just one article from Tor’s Sea Monster Week, which actually appears to be this week. I’m so sad I didn’t find this till now! In addition to a week’s worth of posts (one of which is about the Gill-man, a favorite of the kid’s), there are excerpts from several related books at the bottom. These are way too old for him, but something you might enjoy, even if you aren’t personally obsessed with sea creatures and killer animals. Moby Dick, anyone?

Posted on August 17, 2012 by , Reply

Defining the Scary Story

In explaining horror fiction for reader’s advisory librarians in The Reader’s Advisory Guide, Second Edition, Becky Siegel Spratford defined it as

…a story in which the author manipulates the reader’s emotions by introducing situations in which unexplainable phenomena and unearthly creatures threaten the protagonists and provoke terror in the reader.

We argued with her definition of horror fiction in our review, because here we consider genres such as human horror and killer animals as subgenres in horror fiction, as do many, many readers.

When I talk about scary stories for kids, I’m talking about something a little bit different, though, because what I consider “scary” doesn’t necessarily easily fall into genres (and sometimes it’s not especially scary, but has a focus on Halloween, or on creatures traditionally considered scary). I decided to ask my Monster Kid what he thought about all this.

Me: Does a scary story have to have a monster in it to be scary?

Monster Kid: No, a dripping, dark wood where you are lost is scary. That can be a scary story.

Me: So there doesn’t have to be a monster for the book to be a scary story?

Monster Kid: No, getting lost far away from your village in the dark is scary even without a monster. Even when there’s no monster, that’s a monster.

There you have it. You don’t need the unexplainable, otherworldly, or supernatural to make a scary story a scary story.

Here’s a list of the kinds of things that fall beneath the large umbrella of “scary stories” in children’s literature, according to several scholars in the subject:

Nursery rhymes
Fairy tales
Where the Wild Things Are and other picture books
A Series of Unfortunate Events
The Graveyard Book
A Tale Dark and Grimm
The Vampire Diaries
Twilight
The Hunger Games

Whether all of these REALLY qualify as scary stories (or horror, for that matter), or whether I should include Halloween books and not-so-scary monster tales in the “scary stories” category here, is certainly up for debate. But that dark and dripping wood that emerged from the mind of my six year old son… well, he certainly scared me with that, more than any monster could.

Posted on August 8, 2012 by , 2 comments
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