My first acquaintance with this author did not go well, then I decided to take one of his old books (it was published in 2014) and came across the longest book by this author.
I'll start with the cover, because the Russian version is different. It shows a monster wrapped in polyethylene and tubes sticking out of it, and a wall of pipes behind it. This is a spoiler cover, but it looks scary.
Briefly about the plot. Stephanie moves into an old three-storey house due to problems in her life, but after the first night she tries to leave, which the landlord prevents her from doing.
The book is divided into two parts. I liked the first one better. It's about living in an old house and there is a minimum of the supernatural here, more attention is paid to the heroine's attempts to survive and leave home. Let the moments with the supernatural frighten, but I consider the scary part here to be conversations with landlords, because these are two freaks, one of whom increases the deposit for the heroine's accommodation, >! because as it turns out they want to make a brothel out of the house, and the heroine is one of the workers and that's why they break her.!< It's just something that can happen to a real person. Well, this is also a fairly dynamic part, the tension begins from the very first chapter and continues until the end of the first part.
But the second one turned out to be less interesting. It is a supernatural thriller and tells how the heroine tries to live after the events in the house. And it was mostly boring. The explanation of the background of the house looks drawn out, as if they decided to stretch a small chapter to 200 pages, there were also few scary moments, although when they are, they are well done, and the end turned out to be normal. It's messy, not all the questions are answered, but the story looks finished.
Stephanie turned out to be a pleasant heroine. You understand her tragedy, you empathize with her, you want her to succeed, and when terrible things happen to her, you want it to stop as soon as possible.
The antagonists of the first part, Knacker and Fergal, are terrible (in a good way). Knacker is pathetic, cowardly, but lies as he breathes and it is he who puts pressure on the heroine emotionally. Every scene with him gives me goosebumps (and my sick fantasy imagined him as the Frog Kurtis from Black Dynamite), but that's until Fergal shows up. This is a psycho from whom you can expect anything, especially since with his height he moves silently. Both of them are very creepy and scare better than any monsters. Speaking of the main thing.
Black Maggie turned out to be an interesting monster. She is frightening, her mythology is quite interesting, and her real form in the form of a baby created from body parts is creepy.
I liked Nevill's writing style in this book. He writes quite simply, which is why, with a volume of 666 pages, I read the book in three days. But he likes to repeat himself, although here it did not interfere with immersion as much as in "The Reddening".
As a result, this is a very good book, it would be even better if the second part were not boring and there would be much more scary moments in it (in the second part).
by mystery5009