Last Days
by Adam Nevill
Blurb:
When guerrilla documentary maker, Kyle Freeman, is asked to shoot a film on the notorious cult known as the Temple of the Last Days, it appears his prayers have been answered. The cult became a worldwide phenomenon in 1975 when there was a massacre including the death of its infamous leader, Sister Katherine. Kyle's brief is to explore the paranormal myths surrounding an organization that became a testament to paranoia, murderous rage, and occult rituals. The shoot's locations take him to the cult's first temple in London, an abandoned farm in France, and a derelict copper mine in the Arizonan desert where The Temple of the Last Days met its bloody end. But when he interviews those involved in the case, those who haven't broken silence in decades, a series of uncanny events plague the shoots. Troubling out-of-body experiences, nocturnal visitations, the sudden demise of their interviewees and the discovery of ghastly artifacts in their room make Kyle question what exactly it is the cult managed to awaken – and what is its interest in him?
My Reaction:
I listened to the audiobook version of this novel while piecing quilts. At the start, it made a nice alternative to talk radio and podcasts, but at some point my interest began to wane...
Early in the book, the story was pleasantly creepy, and I was interested in seeing where it was going. (I even had a little theory, early on, about how the story would develop, which I'll return to in a moment.)
Unfortunately, aspects of the novel began to feel repetitive, and after Kyle returns from the USA, it felt like it landed in a quagmire and just sort of stalled out. Then we get the loooooong info-dump / exposition / history lesson with one character, followed by another history lesson from a different character... This type of writing just doesn't hold my interest. It starts to feel bloated and in need of the editor's pen.
A few nitpicks:
—I didn't like the way the American characters' dialect was written. Maybe it was worse to listen to than it would've been to read on the page, because of the nasal interpretation of the American accent. However, the persistently poor grammar also annoyed me, as an American who doesn't use "ain't" in every other sentence. It's especially jarring when the character with the over-the-top dialect refers to a flashlight as a "torch". Somehow, I begin to wonder if the author has ever known or met an actual American person...
—I felt like we never really get to understand Sister Katherine at all, beyond the summary of "evil cult-leader". Maybe that's intentional, to maintain an air of mystery, but it felt disappointing.
—This book does that annoying thing where a character who has encountered paranormal entities still can't bring himself to accept that another, different paranormal occurrence could be possible. (Something like, "Yeah, okay, so vampires are real. I acknowledge that. But werewolves?! C'mon, man! Do I look crazy to you?") That might be how people would tend to react in reality—simply unable to absorb any more blows to their concept of how the world works, in such a short space of time—but it always irritates me!
—It also does that other annoying thing where a totally new character is just dumped on you in the last quarter or less of the book, with no satisfactory explanation for why you're just hearing about him when another character has clearly been working with him for months, if not longer. The new guy is an irritating, painfully clichéd character, too, which makes the whole situation even worse. At this point in the book, we're just waiting to see how it all wraps up, though, so... whatever.
—If you dislike open endings, you might be disappointed here. I'm choosing to just believe that it ended the way I want it to have ended, but I would have appreciated a little more indication of what happens next.
As for my theory, it involves spoilers, so...
SPOILER
WARNING
Ok, if you're still reading now, prepare to be spoiled!
I wondered if one of the children who survived (and then specifically the "Clean Child", once he was mentioned) would turn out to be Kyle. I thought perhaps Max knew or had discovered Kyle's origin, while Kyle himself had no memory of this early trauma. That would have explained why Max insisted on involving Kyle, because he was already involved in the cult's history—and was perhaps crucial to its future, in one way or another, either for its destruction or revival. The documentary would've been just a ruse to get Kyle on-board to visit the locations and slowly remember or realize his connection to the case.
Of course, as it turns out, none of that was true! Instead, it's basically a more convoluted version of the move titled The Skeleton Key. (I liked my idea better!)
END
OF
SPOILERS
On the whole, it was fine. I didn't lose any sleep from the creep factor, but it was entertaining, apart from the times when too much exposition slowed the pace. I was glad for it to be over when it was, though, which is a bit sad. The beginning was much stronger than the end, and the supposedly scary stuff gets less and less frightening, the more it's described.
This was my first experience with this author, incidentally, and I'm not sure whether to go back for more... What was good was good, but it didn't land quite right for me.
