Little Heaven
4.5 You know, I didn't love The Troop and I am 100% not a Nick Cutter Fangurrrl. However, the premise of this book intrigued me and it wasn't as if The Troop was bad, I just didn't find it to be the genre-redefining-blasting-Stephen-King-out-of-the-park-amazing-adventure-ride everyone else thought it was. Nonetheless, here's the premise (how cool is this?): Three bounty hunters (yes, bounty hunters) meet in the 1960s. Stuff ensues, but besides their differences, including one actively aiming to kill one of the others, they band together on a job to infiltrate a religious cult (I KNOW) to just sort of get the lay of the land for a client. Some seriously weird shit ensues. Not only do we have this cult, but we have some serious (supernatural) evil a-brewing and even though we know our “heroes” escape the 1965 fun time since the novel starts in present time (more or less), we have no idea how, why, or what.
I loved this book for its sheer fun-a-palooza. I felt that Cutter revels in the sheer, can I say fun again, okay, joy of horror in Little Heaven. Not only is there a tight plot, and amazing characters in Minerva, Ebenezer, and especially Micah, but man, is there just some sheer reveling in horror tropes here. And not just tropes, but inventions on these tropes – for example, one seriously scary monster is just a henchman for an even worse sort of thing which can appear as a freakin' baby! (I swear, this doesn't spoil anything, but as I write this I realize this sounds so absurd that maybe people think we are in the world of the bizarro, but no, this works in some weird Cutter-way). It is really quite inventive. This isn't a perfect book. Cutter tends to be repetitive here – there are only so many times we can describe the same scene – and worse, he has a tendency to repeat the same scene while not explaining the scene. For example, I do not know how many times people could not explain what they were seeing. I won't quote, but it was like, “Wow, it was so mind-blowing, my mind could not process” and “I will not describe this because it was so not able to be processed yadda yadda yadda”. But then again, I read the ARC, so maybe they will cut some of this. But even if they don't, it is worth plowing on, because the good bits, which is most of this book, are so freakin' worth it. Read it. Buy, Burn, or Borrow? Buy! And send one to your friend.
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