This is Dan Wells debut and what a debut it is! While I have a few gripes about the book overall, the first half kept my eyes glued and I finished the entire book in two days. The book is a little over 200 pages long and I happily applaud Mr. Wells who now is in the midst of watching his book turn into film with Christopher Lloyd being part of the team of actors. Another actress, Laura Fraser, has an extremely long list of credentials as well. Think Kate from Knight's Tale, she was in Flutter a British Indie film for all you dark comedy lovers out there and was also present in other British films such as Cuckoo who enjoyed a 11% on Rotten Tomatoes, but split professional critics. I digress, this isn't about the film or the actors who I am excited to see in the film.
None spoiler territory. This book crafts a wonderful story. I felt like it was rushed in the middle and it had to be rushed. The mystery of the first part of the book combined by a completely different form of horror in the second part of the book didn't leave room to explore either part in depth.
Our protagonist, or more of an anti hero, is a boy named John. John is a diagnosed sociopath and spends the first part of the book discussing serial killers and how he's created a set of rules to keep himself from becoming a serial killer. This is genuinely interesting. In fact its wonderful! As fate would dictate John lives in a funeral home so he gets to see and play with all the dead bodies he wants (for the most part anyway) and when a new serial killer arrives in town it sets off a great "Who will find who?" game that John plays while trying to stick to his rules.
John is morally ambiguous. His actions are often based on the idea of the "Greater Good" and his relationships and interactions with other characters are brilliant and wonderful and wrote in a way that you get a new view of someone who is "sociopathic". The second part of the book changes the rules, not just for John but also for the story being told. Eventually the game is more of a cat and mouse game and you're never quite sure if John or the antagonist is the cat or the mouse. They tend to switch roles sometimes.
The last pages of the book were done extremely well. I won't go into context unless you read further, but this ending is one of the most believable endings I've read in a while. This book gets placed easily on the Must Read list of books. It's short, it won't take that long, while i have some complaints with the pacing in the middle and I believe that the grand twist of it all creates complication, its not a bad story and you have to appreciate how realistic of a sociopath John is.
Conclusion: Must Read
You want spoilers, baby? Well here they are! Stop reading if you don't want Spoilers.
Spoilers! Did I mention that?
John is a sociopath. He has one friend who he loses in the book. He has one love interest who he obsesses over, so much so that my young father's heart wants to have a rifle near me for my daughter's sake and he will do anything to accomplish his goal of killing the killer in teh story.
The killer in the story? Yep its a demon. A full on, I'm going to transform into something awful demon.
Why does any of these disconnected thoughts matter? Because it seperates what I thought was the great story from the mediocre brush against a demon. The best part about his book is that our protagonist is someone who will probably end up on the FBI's most wanted at some point. John meticulously plans how he will deal with the demon, how he handles his friendships, how he connects with people and how he controls the monster inside of him.
All of these things are done so well that I would have loved this story to just skip past the demon and stick with his neighbor being a human serial killer. That would be so much better. We don't get that though, we get this demon. The demon has to exchange parts with a human to keep itself from dying so we're on a quest to kill a demon. Yay. I'm not going to say that it was a terrible story. The book did a fine job of working in parts of John's sociopath nature while still including your normal killing a demon story. The demon dies while very weak and the town never discover's John's dark nature. One neat little package, right?
Not so much. I think the part that has to be spoke about the most is that John's ending isn't a happy one. He's still a sociopath who did terrible things to win. He loses his friend, Max, who is essential to keeping himself anchored. He can't pursue his love interest without it becoming a creepy movement in stalking and possible murdering of other suitors. Most of all, he can't recreate a safe atmosphere to live in. His nature is completely let loose at the end of the book. While he is trying to get to know his mom better, there's an obvious underlying darkness within the last pages that make me happy to recommend the read.
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