The epic military fantasy writer really shakes off that genre when he tells the tale of the Hastings family. I remember looking for fairy stones afterward just to make sure nothing was lingering around my house in the woods.
I use the phrase "scary fairy book with no fairies" when I describe this book to customers. McMahon offers her read a fairly mundane explanation to the meat of the book, but then blows it all up in the reader's face right at the end.
Taking a cliche subject and making it normal isn't the only thing Brooks does right in this oral history novel. The characters and their "realness" get into your head so easily that every bump in your house becomes a zombie. Don't read if you live in a bumpy house.
The audio version of this book is narrated by Doug Bradley. Not familiar? He is Pinhead from The Hellraiser films. A sort of light and gravelly voice fit to read horror novels. The first person narrator is Mister B, a demon trapped within the book. The story becomes an almost pleasant history, but all the while, Mister B is becoming more upset that the reader isn't burning the book (the first thing he asked the reader to do, not to read).
So why did this scare me? At the end of disc five, Mister B was telling me that he was behind me and was going to cut my throat. It was pretty violent. But then he paused, and the disc ended. I switched it with the sixth disc, and Mister B said, "I'm behind you." And my car's disc player was suddenly unable to read the disc and ejected it. I pulled over and looked behind me. No fictional (?) minor devil. Then I looked at
the disc. No scratches. I opted to listen to NPR for the rest of my drive.
--April
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