Customer Reviews

The Red Church

5 star:		(51)
4 star:		(35)
3 star:		(9)
2 star:		(9)
1 star:		(10)

 

 

...when I started to read Scott's book on my Kindle. I should have known better. This is not the genre I typically read. But since he had a recommendation from another author I recently discovered (J.A. Konrath) and he has really impressed me on the discussion boards here on Amazon, I thought I would give it a go. Good decision; bad timing!

Lights aglow (cause I am a scaredy-cat), I hunkered into my fluffy featherbed, covered with my warm comforter, listening to the wind howl and the rain dance across the tin roof, 'The Red Church' grabbed my attention and didn't let go! As the storm raged on, the hours flew by, and I was completely entranced.

And then, almost at the end, when the action in the book was reaching a new high...a large bang outside and my power went out!!

I kid you not! Convinced evil forces were now in play (vs just blaming the storm outside), I carefully hid my Kindle under the pillow next to me, closed my eyes so tight, and faded off to a fitful sleep.

By morning, the sun was shining and I was able to finish the book without further incident.

I highly recommend this book and will look for more by Scott. And next time, I will have a flashlight handy. :)

This was the first Scott Nicholson book I've read. I won't bother summarizing the story because so many other reviewers have already done that. I'll just focus on what I liked and didn't like.
First the good:
I was impressed with the writing, and the story was very engaging. You are able to see the story unfold through several of the characters' perspectives. The main character is a young teenage boy (Ronnie Day), but you also get glimpses into the mind of his father, mother, the sheriff, and several other characters as well. I enjoyed this aspect of the novel. I also enjoyed the level of suspense that was injected into the storyline. I was truly immersed in the story.

Now the bad:
I was a little uncomfortable with the religious themes in this novel. I have attended several Southern Baptist churches throughout my life (including several as a child). I was a little bit put off by the author's portrayal of the teaching of salvation by Baptists. Throughout the novel, Ronnie (a Baptist) worries about whether or not he is truly saved. His preacher "senses" every few Sundays that Ronnie needs to be saved again, despite the fact that he has already asked Jesus into his heart. This leaves Ronnie without the assurance that he is truly saved and that Jesus lives in his heart. Ronnie agonizes over this very issue repeatedly throughout the book. This was very much the opposite of what I have observed over the years in several different Baptist churches. Baptist doctrine firmly teaches "once saved, always saved." Baptists believe that if you truly believe that Christ was the son of God, that he died on the Cross for our sins and rose again, and if you ask for forgiveness of your sins, you are eternally assured of your salvation. There is no need for a repeat. So this bothered me about the novel. Not to say that there aren't some Baptist churches that hold to a different doctrine regarding salvation. But based on my experiences, it just didn't feel like a fair portrayal.

The other part that bothered me was the ending (SPOILER alert):
The last couple of pages are from the perspective of the evil entity/Archer McFall/belfry monster. Here are the two quotes that bothered me the most:
"The thing had played many games throughout the billion passages of the sun, but this new one, the one of godhood, was the best." and the last line of the novel: "The master of the world returned to the dirt from which it had arisen."
I was under the assumption throughout the whole novel that Archer McFall was either a demon or Satan. Therefore I was expecting this character/entity to face some sort of punishment at the end. I was wrong. The entity essentially gets a way scot free- he is able to command those in the graveyard to rise up and follow him into the river. And then it is clear that he will likely be back to torture humans another day. Not a satisfying ending at all for me.
Finally, as you've probably guessed, I am a Christian. Therefore the misuse of God's name (g.d.) really bothers me. There were two such uses in this book, so I thought that bears mentioning for other Christians who might like a heads up.

All in all, I think this is a talented writer. I just didn't care for the ending, and I didn't like some of the religious implications in this novel.

I am not exactly a "thriller" or "horror" fan, so when I came across The Red Church by Scott Nicholson I hesitated at first, thinking I probably wouldn't like it. After the first few pages into the book, I realized how limiting and inaccurate such labels really are. To be sure, there is plenty of blood-curdling and scary stuff in the novel. However, there is much more to the book than "blood and gore." A tight, fast-moving plot, vivid, psychologically complex characters that jump off the page and are so real you remember them long after you finish reading the book, and a very accurate depiction of the emotional and mental powers that religious fanatics or new-age gurus can yield over their trusting victims make this book a truly fascinating read. I can only recommend it.

Red Church begins with two boys, Ronnie and Tim, discovering a playboy in the graveyard. This brief beginning of boys will be boys and brotherly squabble is both fun and real, and I'd recommend enjoying it as much as possible because a scene like that won't appear in the book again. This book isn't just about the Red Church: it is obsessed with it.

The story is clearly in the vein of Stephen King, and saying so is really just stating the obvious. The similarities are sometimes striking. The writing will often switch to interior monologues that ramble on and on in incomplete sentences, carrying more a stream of thought designed to convey the character's horror. Sometimes it is effective, sometimes not. At times it worked, while other times it felt obligatory. "Must be a scary part," I'd mutter to myself. "Another italicized monologue."

But the Stephen King similarities are also in Scott's overlaying of both religion and worldly problems upon his characters amidst the supernatural. Ronnie's parents are struggling, with divorce looming in the distance more frightening to Tim than the monster living in the bell tower. Unlike King, however, these matters seldom trump the actual supernatural. In many of King's stories (say, Pet Sematary for example) how the main character deals with the mundane in his life drives him to the supernatural and decides the strength of its power over him. In this, the obsession with the Red Church reduces that.

I guess I should explain what I mean by obsession. We're given the viewpoint of many different characters, and with every one, we gain glimpses to their thoughts. Barring the very beginning, everyone is thinking of the Red Church. They worry about the monster in the bell tower. They worry about the returned son that has taken over the congregation. They discuss the murders. They discuss sacrifice over and over and over. This might not seem a problem, but what this means is that at no point do we see any glimpse of a normal life. Ronnie goes to school, he talks about the bell monster there. When the cop is investigating the case, he's remembering the death of his brother at the Red Church. When we hop into Ronnie's father's head, he's worrying about his wife...but not his relationship to her. Not anything I can relate to: just her involvement with the Red Church.

What precious detours we might get outside this narrow focus tends toward backstory only. So while all this kept the dread of the Red Church omnipresent, it also made it take far, far longer to get a feel for the characters and bond to any of them. Even now, I feel a little fond for Ronnie...and that's it. And maybe Mama Bet, but that's because I'm a little sick in the head (just like Mama Bet).

But despite this (rather shockingly wordy review, my gosh) I haven't touched on the true star of the book, and it ain't the Red Church: it's Archer McFall. The second son, the shapeshifter, master of the bell monster, a messiah of blood and sacrifice so delightfully twisted that if another book were written with him as villain I'd snap it up and vault it to the top of my TBR pile. He's the creature form It, only with a god complex this time. It doesn't matter to me that he swayed people too easily, or that his seeming invulnerability removed a bit of tension from certain scenes. While his true form at the very end may lack grandeur or near as much horror as his earlier renditions, his sweet words remained. For him alone I recommend this book.

Just one complaint: be ready to read the phrase "livers for eyes" about 500 times. It just isn't scary. Nothing at all is scary about the word 'liver' unless the phrase "eat your" is before it. But you'll see it, again and again and again and again, and every time I tried to see it, I saw big gooey human livers glued to a man's face like some goofball let loose in a meat locker playing a practical joke.

Bah. This is long enough as is. If you want psychological horror, where faith matters as much as bullets, where your own mother is tempted to deliver you as a blood sacrifice, and the goals of the Evil are far beyond a few simple killings, then I whole-heartedly recommend Red Church. Or if you like Stephen King. But that should be obvious by now.

This is the second of Scott Nicolson's books I have read (Skull Ring was the other). The Red Church is a similarly creepy book.

The story centers around a red church that has been abandoned. The rural community says it is haunted by the ghost of a preacher that was hanged by his congregation for heresy. Because this is static rural community the family of both the preacher and his community are still here about six generations later.

The heresy is unique (at least to me.) The preacher said that Jesus was the older of two sons and failed to redeem the world, so God allowed his younger son to come to Earth to redeem what was messed up by Jesus.

Like many cults there is a distortion of Christian faith by the community that continued on the original preacher's legacy. The sacrifice of Jesus is seen as insufficient and the body and blood of the Eucharist are taken as a literal need for body and blood. (Early Christians were often thought to be cannibals because those around the church, but not actually in the church heard the language of the Eucharist, but did not participate in it.) There is also a central idea of sacrifice (like Abraham sacrificing Issac.)

Like I said with Skull Ring, I have not read a lot of horror genre. But I enjoyed the writing and the voice of the book. My internal discussion around the book really centered around the horror genre. I have read Dracula and a variety of Vampire books. Those do not seem "dangerous" for lack of a better word to the Christian faith. But this book was directly discussing heresy. And like many vampire books, the Christian faith discussed in this book was real and very present. In many ways, it was more present than in some Christian fiction books. There is power in the Christian faith and in Jesus that is not of the "self-help" variety.

I need to read some more horror genre books to really explore the ideas that this brings up for me.

I am a fan of Mr Nicholsons writing and had read this book a few years ago and I loved it, when I saw it was on Kindle I automatically loaded it to reread on a plane trip. Still fantastic. Mr. Nicholson like King before him creates an entire world in his books with fully realized characters, which is not to say that he cant scare the hell out of the reader, becaue he can and does, it is just that the level of his writing makes the reader more involved and therefore able to care more about the characters, so it doesnt get much better than that.

I rarely review books, but I honestly have to write about this one. It is a book I could not put down. I had no idea where this book was going when I started, but I so enjoyed getting there. This is the best book I have read in many years and I will be looking for more books by this author.

i don't like horror movies or books so i've come up genre, "spookie". This book is spookie but well written and pulled me in so quickly I could not put it down. I hardily recommend this book to everyone! (O, by the way, it is very, very well priced for those who have to watch their pennies!)

This book was absolutely gripping.

I loved the plot.... an old town with a dark, dark history. Characters with a pretty horrid past. Revenge. The search for religious "truth". Family dynamics. And alot of scary scenes.

Just wait until you meet the character, ARCHER MCFALL. I cringe as I think about him! Truly frightening!

Nicholson is one of the best horror writers out there. His descriptive style is part of his charm. I can read excerpts like this forever! For instance:

"His laughter echoed through the trees, as deep as the glacier-cut and time-eroded valleys, the human vocal cords vibrating strangely as he threw back his head and chilled the spine of the forest"

"Only the river mist remained, like the shroud of a final burial"

Honestly, I love this guy's style, and have become a big fan.

I highly recommend this book to anybody who likes "scary". This tale certainly WAS.

A thought-provoking, atmospheric tale, unmistakably Southern. Having grown up in a Southern Fundamentalist family myself, I recognized many elements of the story, from the haunted quality faith seems to have here in the South, to the unforgetable villain, Arthur McFall. His perverted charisma is worth the price of admission all by itself. And Sheriff Littlefield is a richly drawn, interesting character in his own right. Can't wait to read his next adventure!

Many have commented here on similarities between Nicholson's work and King's, and I don't necessarily disagree, but I would add that almost any novel in the horror genre written after 1975 has been touched by King. Hell, much of fiction itself bears the man's influence.

If you're looking to discover a strongly regional writer that knows how to build suspense and scare all hell out of you (yes, Arthur McFall is one creepy preacher)and sells his work at a great price, look no furthur!