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18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A novel for fans of both suspense and horror, April 11, 2007
I don't do plot reviews (where's the fun in spoiling the fun?), so I'll approach this in terms of elements that worked for me. I'll start by saying that I've read perhaps 300 horror novels, and twice as many thrillers of various names and styles and genres. Lotta good, lotta bad. And most novels featuring vampires, werewolves, or haunted houses don't do it for me anymore. It's just so rare that an author working in these genre-proven subjects breaks new ground.
But I went with this book because Scott Nicholson is a consistent writer who dispenses with the b.s. and just writes fun books that go to dark places in new and unusual ways. He is reliable, and that's saying something in a field where even the masters like King, Straub, and Koontz sometimes stumble.
Don't be fooled by vampires, or put off by them, as I almost was. In any good vampire novel, hell, in any good horror novel, the suspense and the real horror is never about the vampires. Or monster type monsters. It's about the people. And the majority of THEY HUNGER is all about the people. This is Nicholson's finest cast of characters. You've got FBI, you've got macho outdoor-adventure type celebs and non celebs. You've got a Native American trying to reconnect with his ancestors in unusual modern ways. You've got an extremist abortion clinic bomber and his equally odd and almost as disturbing girlfriend. And many others along the way.
As he did in THE FARM, Nicholson creates interesting characters and worms his way into their fears. He's got a nice touch, never showing his hand too early about who's good and who's bad, who's gonna get it first, etc.
In THEY HUNGER, there is a nice variety of moods and emotional rapids to match his white-water adventure. In addition to the thrills and scares, there's plenty of grim humor, beautiful nature, and believable and pulse-charging "sexy time." The novel allows the reader to go to all of these places because Nicholson takes the time to set up all of his characters as people first--before he unleashes hell on them.
THEY HUNGER is also new ground for Nicholson in that it works purely as suspense. The vampires are an added bonus, and they are a nice addition to the dangers of this already dangerous setting. The best vampire novels always take vampires to a new place, or use vampires to show us their human counterparts. Dan Simmons did this with Nazis and mind-vampirism in CARRION COMFORT. King did it with small town evil in SALEM'S LOT. And Richard Matheson used vampires to show us the depths of human lonliness in I AM LEGEND.
Without telling you exactly what he uses his vampires for, I'll only say that Nicholson puts his own spin on vampires, and we get to know them first more as natural birds of prey than coffin-dwelling beasties. I liked this a lot--it fits naturally with this tale set in "the oldest mountain range in the world."
But there is so much more going on here, and it takes a very expert hand (or pen) to weave these all together as seamlessly as Nicholson does. Clearly the author has done his homework on the wilderness setting--his descriptions of flora and fauna and terrain and how man's emotions react in these elements enrich the story without ever slowing it down.
Altogether a very, very solid piece of work that should appeal to a variety of tastes. Nicholson is, I think, poised for breakout. He's a very reliable and welcome writer in the field of horror. But he's also moving toward something more broadly defined, and that is a genuine mastery of just good old fashioned SUSPENSE or the vast genre known as THRILLER.
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9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Character Driven, Thought-Provoking Horror, June 25, 2007
When he released The Home several years ago, Scott Nicholson proved to me that he can write a darn good horror novel. I've been hanging on his every written word ever since, and what he's proven with his last few releases is that he's a versatile author who's capable of writing a completely different novel with each release.
Here Nicholson presents a character-driven rollercoaster (er... white water rapid) ride that goes intellectually beyond most of what is being released in the horror genre today. He masterfully introduces characters first to the reader, then to one another, in such a way that the characters creep off of the page. Rarely in a novel do we meet such a wide array of characters driven by such a vastly different (yet equally dark) array of motivations.
First, we meet the fantically religious terrorist, guilty of several abortion clinic bombings. Eluding a manhunt in the Appalachain wilderness, he eagerly awaits God's next message for him. Accompanying him is his female companion, who's psychological scars of past rapes and abuses run deeper than the unexpected child she holds in her womb. On their trail are a pair of federal agents, one of whom meets a gruesome fate early on, the other haunted by the overbearing presence of his deceased partner.
Nearby we find a group of whitewater rafters lead by an overzealous corporate promoter. Among their ranks we find characters driven by greed, guilt, lust, career, and chemical addiction.
Their paths will cross when an explosion rips a hole in the Appalacian earth, unleashing an ancient breed of vampiric horror. Soon they will be forced to learn which threat is greater; the wilderness, the beasts who hunt them, the threat they pose to one another, or the hungers inside that drive them. This is a tale of man vs. nature vs. beast, told in such a way that will no doubt leave you hungering for Nicholson's next tale.
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14 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Sorry...A Most Disappointing Read, November 25, 2007
This was my first Nicholson experience and judging by the other reviewers, I am in the minority. For the past four decades, I have read a great deal of horror but this effort fell flat in my estimation.
A group of six disparate individuals (with every imaginable kind of personal "baggage") participate in a publicity stunt for Proventure, an outdoor supply company that is promising a newer, better raft for white water rafting. Bowie Whitlock is the guide for each of the six "adventurers" who fit almost any stereotype that you can imagine from novels of groups in peril. This group takes 2 rafts down the treacherous Unegama River in the Unegama Gorge Wilderness Area of the Southern Appalachian Mountains.
Elsewhere along the river are two FBI agents trailing "Ace" Goodall, an anti-abortionist bomber and killer, and his current (but not totally convinced) girlfriend, Clara Bannister. Two other totally unsuspecting tourists are also in the area and as you might have guessed, all these individuals inexorably come into contact with one another at some point or another.
Being a novel of horror, we need a person or thing to bring the horror into our protagonists' lives and in this case, Nicholson introduces us to vampires. Not just any vampires but a gray, leathery, "animalistic" vampire more akin to humanlike bats than the vampires we are used to in current fiction. Although this is an opportunity to develop a unique horror perspective, no effort at all is expended to let the reader know from whence these creatures came nor how they have gone unnoticed for decades. Certainly, the rockslide caused by a bomb in the early pages of the novel cannot explain away these questions.
There is some effective creepiness to these creatures who seem to function off radar-like senses but ultimately they become one-dimensional threats. Perhaps more should have been developed with the "crossing over" of the victims.
Many of these reviews expound on Nicholson's characterizations and I agree that he spends considerable time trying to develop his multiple characters in this book; however, I found myself not caring about any of them. Several of the more superficial meet early demises but there were none I rooted for in the end. How frustrating to read almost 400 pages and not care a whole lot about who lives or who dies. How frustrating to see people used as monster fodder with no ultimate redeeming value in the novel. Is it as simple as mankind is motivated by forces, both good and evil, while nature (monsters) seeks only survival?
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