Genre: Horror
Published: Independently published by the author, March 2024
My Rating: 2/5 stars
“He knew not to trust the voices. He called them ‘stolen tongues.”
I was first introduced to Blackwells debut Stolen Tongues when it was just a reddit-story, narrated on various YouTube-channels, and I’ve been rooting for that books publication journey throughout. It was far from a perfect story, but it genuinely creeped me out and knew exactly when to end to preserve enough mystery for my personal taste. So when this prequel novel promised to change that, offering an insight of the events and entities of Pale Peak, I was a little hesitant, but curious. You know what they say about curiosity: it kills cats. And in this case it killed dogs and my enjoyment of this book too…
The Good:
I love the blend of horror that Blackwell served in Stolen Tongues. Relying on the unsettling, uncanny, the dread-filled uncertainty and slow-building-tension, rather than outright gore and violence, tends to work for me. The antagonist at the center of both these novels fits perfectly within that niche, so has the potential to truly freak me out. The Church Beneath the Roots offered some genuinely creepy scenes and callbacks to the first book. Any scene where the mimic is at work, masquerading as people familiar to the protagonist, but justgetting it wrong is a hit, especially in audio-format.
I also loved that the author took a risk by expanding the scope of his story, from a single POV-journal-style narrative to an actual full novel. Hats off for that progression.
The Bad:
As mentioned: part of the charm inStolen Tongues was its ambiguity and narrow perspective, and I can’t help but feel likeThe Church Beneath the Roots took away from that.
You can also tell that the author is a bit newer to novels than he is to novella’s/short-stories. The structuring is a bit disjointed. Past and present timelines mingle together, and often aren’t clearly marked, which makes for a confusing experience at times.
Most disappointingly; Blackwell aims for another type of horror entirely here. In Stolen Tongues it was mystery and dread. Here it’s much more in-your-face horror and gore. Huge risk when writing a sequel/prequel, as you risk alienating the audience that loved original. That happened here with me.
Just to convey how much this relies on gore and violence as a plot point: this book commits the largest sin a piece of horror-fiction can commit. I won’t say it, but consider this your Does-The-Dog-Die-Warning”.
The Ugly:
We need to mention the elephant in the room here. Felix Blackwell is a white author, writing a novel all about Native American legends, including a lot of themes of Christian vs Native American religious conflict… I don’t need to explain why that’s thin ice to skate on… To make things worse, for as much time the book spent on the Christianity-vs-Native-beliefs-dichotomy, this barely plays into the final reveal, so it had me questioning what the point of much of it was…
Then there’s the fact that The Imposter is clearly “inspired” by a real-life Native Legend; one that’s extremely sensitive to many Natives and whom name is not to be spoken. Taking that legend as your inspiration (as a non-native) might not be the most sensitive thing to do…
Find this book here on Goodreads:
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