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Book Review: Clive Barker’s Next Testament by Mark Alan Miller

Next Testament

Clive Barker’s Next Testament by Mark Alan Miller
Based on the BOOM! Studios graphic novels by Mark Alan Miller and Clive Barker
Earthling Publications, 2017
ISBN-13: Not Available
Available: Limited, Deluxe, and Lettered versions (direct order from Earthling Publications here)

Is there truly a God? If there is, what is he like?  Why would he put up with the hell on earth for the past millennia, and what would he think of what humanity has become? Clive Barker and Mark Miller have posited these questions in The Next Testament, and answer them in a fascinating tale.

Clive Barker’s Next Testament is a novelization of  BOOM! Studio’s graphic novel series of the same name. While Miller has written the actual novel, Barker’s touch is everywhere here: he drew the artwork both for the cover and interior, which is typically disturbing and splendid. With an introduction by the iconic F. Paul Wilson, readers are in for a special experience.

The story itself is horrific and bombastic, bleeding weird imagination all over the place. In the scorching desolation of the desert, billionaire Julian Desmond is driven to uncover a truth that has eluded humanity for ages, something he doesn’t quite understand himself.  Desmond digs up a strange structure in the middle of nowhere, falling into a darkness that feels like nothing he’s ever imagined. There he meets Wick, a man covered in myriad colors, but not in tattoos; a true illustrated man. Wick claims that he is God, the one true being who sculpted the world, and that he needs to witness what has happened to his creation.

Readers may wonder why he needed to be released from this structure and who locked him up… but not for long.  When Wick is introduced to the modern world, he is enraged, and his actions are those of an Old Testament deity. Julian’s son Tristan and Tristan’s fiance Elspeth may be the only ones with a chance of stopping this destructive god.

Miller and Barker’s creation is brutal, in the fashion of Barker’s classics, such as Books of Blood and Hellraiser. The Next Testament is bloody, unflinching, and unhinged in its free-flowing swath of “hell-on-earth”. This is classic hardcore horror with a philosophic bend to it that will draw Barker’s faithful, but introduce many more to the talents of Miller. The Next Testament is a welcome, and recommended, return to the horror that readers have been craving.

Contains: graphic gore, extreme violence

 

Reviewed by David Simms

Book Review: The Loney by Andrew Michael Hurley


The Loney, by Andrew Michael Hurley

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016

ISBN: 9780544746527

Available: Kindle ebook, print, Audible audiobook

The Loney, set in 1976, is told in a series of recollections for a majority of the book by our narrator, Smith. It centers on what was supposed to be a pleasant trip to a small community, followed by a pilgrimage to a shrine in northern England. Father Wilfred, the priest of the local church, has passed away suddenly, and the bishop has selected Father Bernard as his replacement. Father Wilfred often took a small number of his parishioners, including the Smith family, to the shrine, during Easter. Father Bernard proposes a trip for his first Easter at his new post, much to the chagrin of the young Miss Bunce, who suggests a new locale; but the parishoners venture to the traditional place. This is a key theme throughout the novel: the “new” wanting to, according to traditionalists, encroach on the “old”, especially when it comes to religious practices and belief.

This trip with Father Bernard is meant to be special: a time for the new priest to engage with some of his new flock, for the parishoners and other guests to visit the shrine, and for God to heal Hanny, the narrator’s disabled brother. Hanny only communicates through objects, and only Smith knows how to translate his language of things. When the boys aren’t in prayer or at meals with the group, they wander out to the coastline known simply as the Loney.

Much of the story juxtaposes the old guard with the new, especially when it comes to the endless comparisons between Father Wilfred and Father Bernard by the matriarch of the Smith family. She is so used to how things had been done for years that she can’t seem to accept that things inevitably change. She is constantly telling Bernard exactly what the previous priest did, and when, and she expects tradition to be obeyed. She’s highly unlikable, from my perspective. While it can be argued that she is just doing what she thinks she needs to protect her fellow parishioners, that she knows how things need to be handled, her self-satisfied smirks make her an unsympathetic character. She “knows” that God will heal her son, even though it hasn’t happened in years previous. She “knows” the exact time when the priest is to lead the visitors in prayer, and where he is to stand. She just knows how everything is meant to be. When the religious pilgrimage happens, and they find the shrine uncared for, she can’t believe that the caretaker would have left it in such a state. When someone mentions that there may not be a caretaker, as shrines aren’t used as much anymore, she is in complete denial. How she treats Hanny, her own son, in this scene, is particularly heartbreaking.

There are times when the narrator discusses his time under Father Wilfred’s guidance as an altar boy, and his perception regarding his mother’s want for him to enter into the clergy when he graduates. One striking feature of Father Wilfred’s personality is his strictness. Given what happens to him during his last trip to the shrine, it makes me wonder about his religiosity from the very beginning. This is also a story of a priest in his seventies who loses his religion, and it terrifies him. With that realization, he tries to save a dead man from being pulled under the waves, finding there is nothing, just nothing. I can’t help but wonder of his strictness was more for himself than his congregation. Was he doubting, and not admitting it to himself, long before that time?

The last quarter of the book switches from the events at the shrine 40 years ago, to the present day. Smith, who abandoned his religion years ago after reading Father Wilfred’s diary, is now seeing a psychiatrist and working as a museum archivist. Hanny can now speak: he has a wife, children, and a career as a priest. Then a child’s remains are discovered during a winter storm on the Loney, and Hanny goes to Smith to try to piece his memories of the past back together.

The Loney is not fast-paced and plot-driven, but is more of an atmospheric, literary horror, although suspense is threaded very well throughout the story. The wet English coastline and small community create the perfect setting for a Gothic novel. The suspicious small town inhabitants and their behavior toward the visitors lends the story the perfect amount of tension. Things meant to frighten people away from certain areas are found in the wetlands, such the silhouette of what looks like a hanging man in the dark of the wetland forest, but turns out to be something else entirely. Horror also lies in relationships between some of the characters. It can also lie in the Catholic symbolism and the relation to various happenings in the novel.

I found this to be a very well written-work. The story was incredibly engaging, and lingers with me. Perhaps that, too, is where some of the horror lies. It haunts you for some time after you finish it.

Hurley won the Costa First Novel Award for The Loney in 2015.

Recommended.

Reviewed by Lizzy Walker


Book Review: Burning the Middle Ground by L. Andrew Cooper


Burning the Middle Ground by L. Andrew Cooper

BlackWyrm Publishing, 2012

ISBN-13: 978-1-61318-138-6

Availability: Paperback, eBook(Kindle)

 

Ronald Glassner is a successful web journalist who runs and writes a webzine called American Sane.  Publishers have been calling him to go to the next step, and    write a book. Glassner  decides to tell the story of Brian McCullough. Five years ago Brian was a small town teenager who came home from school to find that his ten-year-old sister, Fran, had murdered their parents. Then she killed herself in front of him. Brian did not speak for a year. Ronald goes to the small town of Kenning, Georgia to investigate, and get the facts firsthand for his readers. He meets with Brian, who is still living in the family home where the murders occurred. Brian seems to be a regular young man. That evening, Ronald stumbles into a pack of dogs that attack him, and he ends up in the hospital. Concurrently, a fight between two churches emerges. One is the established First Church, headed by the mysterious Reverend Michael Cox; the challenger is the New Church, run by the rebellious Jeanne Harper. Before he knows it, Ronald is caught up in the middle of small town intrigue that is more than he and his webzine readers bargained for.

This book started out well; the suspense built steadily and kept me interested. The characters were distinct; their voices were easy to separate. The pacing was good, the descriptions were adequate, the main theme, “good vs. evil” was developed nicely, and the book was well-written, with very few typographical errors.  But halfway through the story it lost me. It just didn’t work for me anymore. The religious aspects got too thick for me personally, and I just stopped caring what happened. Possibly, other readers might be more engaged.

 

Contains: homosexuality, profanity, adult situations

Reviewed by Aaron Fletcher