Customer Reviews

Covenant

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Covenant is spine tingling and addictive. John Everson delivers a twisted treat that is loaded with suspense, a strong multifaceted plot, and taut characters. His words and imagery give us a firsthand feel of what it's like to reside in a small town, a place fueled by secrets and driven by fear.

Enter Joe Kiernan, a reporter for the small town of Terrel. After having worked at several fast-paced and prestigious jobs, he looks forward to the change of scenery and the quiet ways of a smaller scale way of life. Until the sad truth bites him in the ass. Stuck with low-level tasks and listening in on police radios for the latest minuscule town's perils, he questions why he bothered. One evening, things come to an abrupt change, but not necessarily for the better. Joe reveals a news story that threatens to pull the rug right out from under the tight-lipped residents. Terrel's Cliff has become the official site of a coincidental string of suicides. Each year, on May 22nd, a child jumps to his or her death. The townspeople try to pretend otherwise, but for five women - it's an event that haunts their every waking moment. A pact, a twisted covenant is revealed, that was entered into over a hundred years ago as the only means of survival. But not survival for the children.

Joe digs into his own investigations, visits an eccentric seer, and tries to get to the bottom of what it is about Terrel's Cliff that compels a child to end their life without so much as a warning? And why have the people accepted it as a normal way of life? The truth as it is revealed, is terrifying and will keep you plowing through the pages. Hidden among the dirty secrets, we learn of a demon with an agenda so powerful, no one is safe. John Everson's style is composed and direct. He gives us believable small town characters, complete with their own set of skeletons and superstitions.

Covenant will whisk you away into a deep embedded darkness, where you are sure to wonder if you'll ever get back out. I highly recommend this fast paced, solid read by an articulate author who has what it takes to give readers exactly what they want.

Everson's writing has enough quality to make him durable on the paperback market, but unfortunately his first novel has too many flaws.
*Setting: Everson gives us a cliched small-town setting with little to no memorability (a staple overused in the horror genre.)
*Characters: Everson's cast is full of horror conventions: a typical "Average Joe" main character (whose name is actually Joe), an old janitor that warns people away from the "evil place," a gypsy with a persistently false accent, and a blonde teenage girl whose boyfriend is killed that the main character catches on the rebound.
*Writing Style: Everson's writing style is rather direct. I have to give him credit for constructing several admirable similes and metaphors to describe and add a dark atmosphere to his writing.
*Dialogue: Everson's biggest problem is dialogue attribution (i.e. "he said," "she said," etc.) Instead of opting for the elegant and invisible "said" as an attribution, myriads of cumbersome tags are used, including: murmured, whispered, muttered, answered, breathed, mocked, grinned, countered, warned, pronounced and demanded. The list goes on. This attribution problem reeks of amateurism in writing, of a writer trying to "spice up" those dialogue tags and instead drawing attention to his use of words. Many of the attributions are physical impossibilites (how can you "grin" words?) I must say, though, this is the easiest problem to edit.
*Miscellaneous: Everson's novel has good pacing, but falls victim to noticeable writing errors. Joe, the protagonist, is frequently shown riding in his car on the way to a scene where something is actually going to happen instead of just starting the chapter with him arriving. Much of the opening chapters is encumbered by page after page of newspaper accounts of the cliff jumpings. Every agonizing detail of Joe Kieran's collecting of the newspapers is shown. Every date is written down and described and contemplated by our hero Joe. Everson should cut out these miscellaneous problems to make his writing more streamlined.
*Premise: I won't reveal plot details, but I will say the novel's premise and the nature of the Covenant was indeed original.

There's my two cents on Covenant. I'm sorry to be so hard on Mr. Everson's first novel, but I wanted to say everything I could. Addressing these problems could be the difference between Mr. Everson rising in the hierarchy of writers or floundering in the midlist for quite some time.

When I started this book, I was interested in where it was going, I liked the main character, I enjoyed meeting the secondary characters and their stories. I was entertained by the experiences and the attitude with which the book was written and some scenes while a bit 'over the top' fit in well with the book. The demon was a bit obnoxious for my taste, but when I mentioned this to someone I loaned the book to, she responded with, "He's a demon." She had a point, there aren't very many 'nice' demons out there...lol. The reason I gave this book three stars, is because some readers might actually enjoy this book...and the obnoxious demon. It was well written, the story had depth, the scenes were easy to visualize and it contained several suspenseful moments.

Joe, a big city reporter from Chicago moves to the little sleepy town of Terrel. Soon he'll discover that the suicides from Terrel's Peak are more than coincidental, they are connected. Since the beginning of Terrel people have jumped from the cliff on May 22 and Halloween, but why? He'll discover a secret Covenant was made with an evil sprit that's yearly collecting his dues. Joe will meet Angelica, the locale fortune-teller and soon learns the latest jumpers were all related of sorts. Joe will hear the demon himself and soon takes on the quest to discover where Angelica's lost daughter is. He'll also find love in a young college student who has also heard the demon's voice.

This was a page turner, easy to read, and entertaining. There is a lot of graphic sex and violence in this book, but then if you want a good horror novel, these are essential.

As John Everson's first novel, Covenant definitely has some problems, but the book is undeniably an absorbing read.

The story follows reporter Joe Kieran on his quest to solve the mystery behind the annual suicides at Terrel's Peak, a cliff overlooking the ocean where each year people jump to their deaths--deaths that Joe believes to be murders, sacrifices to some false god. His investigation uncovers legends of an evil entity living in the caves of Terrel's Peak, a supernatural monster that sups on the unfortunate souls who smash against the rocks below; his search also leads him to a circle of friends, women who have lived in Terrel their entire lives--women who have each lost a child to the peak. As Joe digs deeper into the town's dark past, he begins to realize that he might be digging his own grave--and that HIS life isn't the only one at stake.

Unfortunately, Covenant's most noticeable flaw is awkward prose. For the most part, the writing is clean and direct, but some clauses are so cumbersome, or phrased in such a strange way, they're hard to overlook, especially approaching the end where I believe Everson was stretching for words he hadn't used. Also, some of the metaphors, similes and sexual euphemisms ring absurd. These hiccups made me very aware that I was reading, a death sentence for some books.

Nevertheless, Covenant's story and concept make it easy to overlook the flaws. Joe's step-by-step investigative reporting lends a procedural flavor, a pragmatic lens through which the reader can view something extremely chaotic. It creates a sense of realism, and it renders the speculative elements that much easier to believe. It also spins a mystery; the truth, the whole truth, slowly unravels throughout the narrative and doesn't fully unwrap until the climax--this has to be the most satisfying part of the book. Everson knew to take the most interesting element and hide it, leaving just enough bait to keep the reader drooling. Overall, the story arc deserves high praise.

In the end, I really enjoyed Covenant and was able to set my differences aside. If you pick this up, know that it is a first novel, and with that in mind I think the sins of the book will be easier to forgive.

I can see why COVENANT won the Stoker Award for best first novel. It's an ambitious story on many levels, and for the most part, Everson pulls it off. A wonderfully creepy first third slides into some predictable patterns, but Everson throws so much danger, sex, and mythology at the reader, you're bound to enjoy yourself. I think he maybe gave too much information away in chapter three, because I would have liked to piece the story together myself as our main character begins his investigation, rather than have the secret given away so soon. I was also confused at some of the decisions some of the characters made... like witnessing an abduction and not calling the police when there was no reason not to, etc.


The author does a nice job keeping the fantastic material grounded in a reality that is believable and sympathetic. Everson's skill as a technical writer is just as strong as his storytelling ability and that is something I don't see very often. Usually someone is much stronger in one area. John Everson seems to have the entire package as a writer and his love for hardcore horror is readily apparent, and one I very much welcome. The pros heavily outweigh the cons in this story and I'm definitely looking forward to reading his new book, SACRIFICE, the sequel to COVENANT.

COVENANT is a dull tale of demonic possession and human sacrifice, where the reader must plod through almost a hundred pages before anything slightly interesting occurs.

The story revolves around an unlikable former Chicago reporter named Joe Kieran and his investigation into a small seaside town's long history of seasonal suicides. Instead of building any sort of strong narrative, author John Everson chooses to burden readers with Kieran's horny daydreams and creepy thoughts for a girl barely out of high school, or overload us with the graphic details for raunchy roadside sex and a teenaged girl's masturbation fantasies. Rather than being truly a horror novel, COVENANT reads more like a lame thriller bordering on cheesy porn lit. I don't know how this book deserved a Bram Stoker award.

5.5" x 8.5" hardcover, limited numbered edition of 250 copies signed by Everson. 307 pages.

At first, Joe Kieran "had assumed there was some kind of serial killer at work here, something that the Terrel cops just didn't know how to handle, and didn't want to talk about with a relative stranger." But after plying his trade as an investigative journalist and doing some research, Joe realizes "this was not about serial killing"--that is, "unless the entire town was in on it."

Could this be the fatalistic covenant of this novel's title? Had Joe relocated to the sleepy town of Terrel only to uncover his own Village of the Damned, where the locals willingly aid and abet a murderous criminal? Or, as Joe fears, is it "something much more deadly than some guy with some rope and a thirst for hearing screams from flailing people" on their descent down the side of Terrel's Cliff, a notorious spot that claims at least one life every year since the late 1800s. And every year the date is the same: October 31st, Halloween night.

"Terrel's Cliff, Joe decided, was haunted" and nobody "knows what spirit dwells in that cliff." Regardless of "whether it's a lesser demon or the devil himself" that inhabits that ill-fated peak, all the townsfolk agree that it "is a deadly place where bad things happen." It is Joe, the protagonist of our tale and an everyman representative of the reader, that is convinced he should uncover the truth and stop the deaths.

Presented in too straight-forward a fashion to be considered a mystery, the tale unfolds at a steady pace without distracting the reader with any sum of unnecessary tangents. By the end, all aspects are cleanly and tightly meshed together into one cohesive and intertwined whole. The climax is devoid of surprises, as all clues clearly indicate one solution, but the tale as a whole succeeds.

Covenant is not a mystery, attempting to force the reader into predicting a solution, but rather a ghost story with all the trappings. It is an exhibition of what can only be called a pleasing terror: derived from horror but not meant to truly inspire terror. Herein is a lengthy and modernized variation of the campfire story, dosing out goosebumps and smirks in equal quantities.

I can't believe this book won the Bram Stoker Award. I was very dissapointed in this book. The only reason I finished the book was because I figured it had to get better since it was a Stoker Award winner. Wrong. This book is considered horror but I did not find any part of the book scary. Also, the sex/rape scenes were ridiculous. Clearly the author was writng out some teenage fanatsy but that does make for good literature. Save your time and money.

Without giving away too much of the plot, "Covenant" goes like this: A sex crazed and perverted demon, a bunch of unexplained suicides, 3 or 4 graphic rape scenes and a reporter who somehow manages to see how everything ties together.
It's a simple (if not a little gross) plot, but I'd be lying if I said I didn't enjoy this book, even a little bit.
I suppose credit goes to the author, John Everson. Of course "Covenant" isn't exactly the best written horror novel I've read, but as far as debut novels go, it was far from the worst book I've ever read either. Everson can write, very well in fact, and despite it's graphic content, there is a shining talent in him that cannot be denied.
The downfall for "Covenant" however comes with it's over the top sexual content. Look, as I state in all my reviews of horror novels, sex and horror are like peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. They just go together. Seriously, how many horror films open with a couple having sex in the back seat of a car or making out only to be killed by some psycho or monster or something? ALL of them. I have no problem at all with sex in books or in movies or anything, but it has to come to a point where enough is enough.
I understand how sex revolves around the plot in this novel (even if at times it doesn't exactly make sense) but c'mon, how many times does the reader have to be subjected to rape and shame at the cost of a character? Not to mention the reporter seems to be a bit of a sex predator as he has sex with a girl that is implied to be underage.
As I said, for a debut novel, "Covenant" is a decent read and I don't think it will be long before Everson will be a common name in the horror genre, but I'd like to see something with a little bit stronger of a plot and something that doesn't rely almost solely on sex to shock the reader.