4 / 5 for 'Erebus' by Shaun Hutson
Another new author (at least, new to me), as I attempt to broaden my genre-fiction horizons. Shaun Hutson is an English author from up north in Yorkshire, who is affectionately known as 'The Godfather Of Gore'. This is the first of his works that I have read, and I was pleasantly surprised.
From the cover blurb - "Something deadly is affecting a small farming community. A selfish and secretive chemicals group protects its interests regardless of the cost to the local people, or even the rest of mankind."
Hutson certainly earns his nickname - the gore in 'Erebus' is plentiful and beautifully disgusting, suiting the tone of the book and, in some places, really making the toes curl. Be warned - there is violence towards animals and even children in this book. Hutson's descriptiveness within the rest of the book is perfectly fine - not overly descriptive, or poetic or impressive in any way - but his descriptiveness when it comes to gore is fantastic.
The book itself is told in 3rd person, mainly from the POV of two main characters and dual protagonists - Jo, a reporter, and Tyler, a local farmer. We occasionally get asides from the Big Bad Guys, and we often get asides from the POVs of various locals as they meet their gory end, or witness someone else doing so. These asides are good in both ways, as the Bad Guy asides give us a better understanding as to what is actually going on at Vandenburg Chemicals, and the gory local's asides progress the plot and allow us to see the local people devolving into these bloodthirsty 'Zompires' (see what I did there?).
Hutson writes well, telling an exciting story through short, fast-paced chapters, keeping those pages turning at a fair old pace. His dialogue is good and any exposition is handled well, never feeling clunky. There is a fair amount of characterisation for the two MC's, and the Bad Guys hitman too, but despite a large supporting cast, we don't really get too much characterisation for them, and some of them do kind of blur into the same person at some points.
The story itself is highly plausible, and the plot progresses in a logical way, with the tension never really letting up straight from the start, only to ramp up magnificently towards the end. The gore and scares come more and more frequently as the book goes on and you do find yourself rooting for the MC's and being reviled by the Bad Guys and Zompire locals both. The real-life disease explanation is totally believable and pretty well researched by Hutson, and only makes the story feel even more real, even more possible.
It's not quite a perfect book though - there are some clumsily written and awkward love scenes, and a fair old bit of male-gazey sexism. Also, Hutson has a tendency to finish a chapter with a short sentence letting us know how many minutes it will be before so-an-so arrives back in town, or how many hours until sunset. This becomes quite grating after a few chapters and by the end of the book, I did find myself eye-rolling at the end of each chapter. The MCs reluctance to go to the police, in case the police don't believe them, felt like a blatant plot device and it stood out like a sore thumb. Finally, and I can't be too harsh here as this was written in the early eighties when personal computers were still a reasonably new thing.... but, the sequence near the end where a certain character instructs all the PCs in the building to 'self-destruct', via one single terminal, leading to the whole plant, and nearby lorries(!) and annexes, to go up in sudden explosions and flames, really did make me laugh out loud. This sudden and very naive piece of absurdity kind of gave the ending sequence a bit of a silly vibe.
Having said that, the rest of the book was great - especially the actual final ending. Nothing like a bleak finish to a horror book! Overall, a thrilling page-turner, with loads of scares and gore, and a story whose plausibility only makes the horror of the story itself even more horrific. I really enjoyed this book, and I look forward to my next Hutson read.
4 / 5