“Solid, scary, gross, and it’s not afraid to put some characters in the crosshairs, even if you want to see them make it.
I’ll say this, the Troop is brutal when it comes to death. Death is not a pretty, dignified thing here. It’s disgusting, sad, and completely unfair at every turn. It’s a bleak-ass book in that way. Which I liked. I don’t care for life-affirming horror all the time.
A friend I talk to online now and then said he’s not a Nick Cutter fan because Cutter will go into way too much backstory on every single character. There’s some truth to that for me, and that’s the only thing that kept this from being, basically, a perfect book. If you’re looking for a speedy, gripping read you’ll find that here, but you’ll also find some slower sections. The pace changes a lot, and sometimes it works better than others, and with some characters the backstory is more effective than it is with others. It’s a place where Cutter’s style and my preferences diverge a little. I like a little less history, or history that’s told in a more compact way.
All that said, if you’re looking for a book that gives you mixed feelings, the old “Well THAT was fucked-up” combined with “That was a pretty damn good book,” then you should give this one a shot.”