Score: 7.2 (Out of 10)

GHOUL by Brian Keene (Review)

I f you’ve never read Brian Keene, you’re in for a treat. Unfortunately, GHOUL ain't it. His debut horror novel, THE RISING and its sequel CITY OF THE DEAD, were some of the best horror novels of the last ten years, re-imagining and revitalizing the hugely popular zombie genre. His follow ups TERMINAL, CONQUERER WORMS and THE RUTTING SEASON each carved out their own unique niche in the genre, introducing us to Keene’s highly original and darkly unique view on the universe, creating an overarching cosmology connecting Keene’s books while being fully realized but unconnected standalone novels, each thrilling and satisfying while feeling brilliantly unique in the genre. That is why his newest novel, GHOUL is so disappointing. While it is still a strong individual horror novel with great potential, a lot of this potential was ultimately squandered to get the book on the shelf as fast as possible. Ultimately it reads like a Contractual Obligation Novel.

At it’s heart, GHOUL is a window-into-the-past coming of age novel in the vein of Stephen King’s IT or THE BODY, Robert McCammon’s THIS BOY’S LIFE or the superb SUMMER OF NIGHT by Dan Simmons. But where the all of these aforementioned books take place in the 1950’s or early ‘60’s, GHOUL is from a time much more familiar to the new generation of horror fans for whom Keene is the ring leader; the 1980s. The narrative follows a group of friends through the horrific summer of 1984, starting with a classic horror trope from horror novels of the time period of an opening “gotcha!” chapter in which a more or less unseen beastie kills a couple of naughty teenagers that it catches humping in the cemetery. The main characters, however, are three twelve-year-old boys only peripherally connected to the now-deceased teens in the opening chapter. The main character is Timmy Graco, dealing with the death of his beloved grandfather at the beginning of what was supposed to be a great summer. His two best friends have their own problems; Barry’s father is an abusive drunk who “works” as the caretaker at the Golgotha Church cemetery, though it is usually Barry who does all the work, as his dad is drunk or hung over more often than not. Their buddy Doug has it even worse, as his father ran off with a waitress, leaving Doug with his drunken mother, who has decided that this means Doug is now the “man” of the house in ways that don’t bear thinking about. The three friends avoid their troubles by riding their bikes around town, reading comics, and hanging out in their underground clubhouse, which they built on the edge of the cemetery unbeknownst to anyone. Their entire world consists of the cemetery, the woods surrounding it, and all the dirt roads and lanes between where they ride their bikes.

Besides the sudden death of Timmy’s grandfather, other events conspire to ruin the boys’ summer, and eventually threaten their lives. Barry’s father is becoming ever more evil and abusive, and seems to have some unseen form of shady income; Timmy begins to notice that the whole family has luxuries that they shouldn’t be able to afford, such as jewelry, watches, and even a new dirt bike. The cemetery itself seems to be sinking in on itself, as if there was a great cavern or network of tunnels beneath it, and only Timmy and his friends seem to notice. Darkness and sadism begin seeping into their games as all the bad things that the boys are dealing with begin to creep into their daily lives, taking their innocence with it. And people begin disappearing, first one at a time and then in twos and threes, and for their safety, Timmy’s parents try to limit their wanderings. Bit by bit the darkness is consuming the brightness of their last magical summer vacation.

There are a few major themes at work in GHOUL, though none of them are fully realized. The first is the loss of innocence, as the boys are on the cusp of becoming full-blown teenagers; their clubhouse holds not only comic books, but also pornography stolen from Barry’s father. Timmy is beginning to become interested in girls, in particular the preacher’s daughter, and his burgeoning romance is chipping away at the edges of his relationship with his boyhood friends. Barry and Doug’s less-than-familial family relationships are robbing them of their innocence in a number of ways. And all around them the darkness at work in the world, both natural and supernatural, is chipping away at the illusion of safety in their childhood kingdom. Another, more explicitly explored theme is what REAL monsters are. Timmy, ironically, is beginning to believe that there are no such things as the monsters that he has read about in his comics, like werewolves, vampires, and zombies, but that the real monsters are adults, and their victims are children. Like a virus, Timmy watches the evil being perpetrated on his friends infecting their daily lives, robbing them of childhood. If there is one overarching theme for the whole novel, this is it.

The problem is, everything feels a bit forced and rushed. Rather than have a slow realization of the evil at work, early on we are given a chapter from the monster’s point of view, in which everything is revealed, robbing the story of the sort of slow burn horror mystery that you would get from similarly themed books such as SUMMER OF NIGHT by Dan Simmons or SALEM’S LOT by Stephen King. While the kids are still in the dark about what is going on, and you still get the little clues from Timmy’s point of view, we, as readers already know what those clues mean and are waiting for Timmy to put it together. Then, when he does, it is in the cheesiest way imaginable; he picks up a comic to read and it says not only exactly what the monster is, but also how to defeat it. This is not like in the movie THE LOST BOYS, in which the monster is an iconic, incredibly commonly known monster like a vampire; instead it is (as you may have guessed from the title) a ghoul, which one is far less likely to find out everything about from picking up a random comic. In a single night he figures out what the monster is and how to kill it from a combination of comics and “Dungeons and Dragons” books. There is no sense of him slowly coming to the realization of what he is dealing with, merely him picking up something to read and saying “Oh, so that’s what’s going on. Better go kill it”.

Furthermore, there is never a real sense of the town beyond the cemetery where the kids hang out. Though it gives a quick synopsis of the town and it’s surrounding environs at the book’s outset, it never really becomes a real place in the narrative, nor do any of the characters not directly involved in the central story. It describes a dying, working class mill town, but we never experience it. Even the woods, which the book says is one of the boys’ favorite playgrounds, is never explored or described. Even the houses that they live in are barely given more than a cursory description. Only the cemetery is given the sort of evocative descriptions that it deserves, which makes it feel like the boys’ whole world is the cemetery floating in a half-realized cardboard cut out of a town.

Even worse, the novel never really evokes the feeling of a time gone by the way that it obviously wants to. Part of the problem is that 1984 just isn’t bygone enough, making it difficult to create that retro “boys coming of age” feeling that you get from similar books that take place in the ‘50s or ‘60s. Another part of the problem is that it never feels like Keene is doing more than listing the cartoons, games, and especially music that was so obviously so much a part of his young life. It’s less like recreating the past and more like “I Love the ‘80s” on VH1. Again, most of this problem is due to the fact that 1984 just wasn’t that different from today, other than that the music largely sucked. Oh wait, that’s not different either. One nice thing is that while he mentions iconic (and crappy) ‘80s music like DURAN DURAN and “Come on Eileen”, he also mentions the music that wasn’t on any “Top 40” music stations, like METALICA, IRON MAIDEN, and MOTOR HEAD. Now that is the sort of stuff more likely to be remembered fondly by fans of the genre.

In the end GHOUL isn’t a bad novel, just a rushed one. In THE RUTTING SEASON, the main character is a writer who once worked in a foundry until his first novel was published. After finding out that the paperback of his popular first novel was being sold for an awful lot of money, the main character quit his day job, only to find out that he doesn’t get any of that money until the paperback is actually published, in a little over a year’s time. In order to make ends meet until then, he has to write four books for two different publishers, all within a few months of one another. Something tells me this was a tad autobiographical. THE RISING, Keene’s breakout novel, was published in March of 2003: since then he has published ten books in a little less than four years. Most of them didn’t feel as rushed as GHOUL, however. If the town and it’s characters had been allowed to evolve a little more organically (or at all for that matter), if the monster and it’s plan hadn’t been handed to us early in the book, or if Timmy had been able to discover the ghoul and how to destroy it on his own, rather than being handed everything at the last minute in a bloody comic book, this book could have been something exceptional. The horror, when it is there, is viscerally satisfying. The ghoul itself had the capacity to be a really cool and unique monster-movie bad guy, had it been given more of a chance to be frightening and, well, monstrous. But since it didn’t have time to develop its horror at a slow burn, things are revealed long before they should have been, details are glossed over that should have been explored, and there is no closure to speak of, other than a bleak, tacked on epilogue that comes out of left field and just makes you feel like crap. And, in all honesty, Keene’s “the world is a black hole of filth and pain into which love and innocence falls” worldview is a little grating after a while. Keene’s brand of horror is the darkest of the dark, with little hope of anything turning out right at the end, and no chance of anything resembling hope for a brighter world. But if there is no chance of goodness winning out in the end, why bother to write books about good fighting evil at all?

GHOUL is a solid, if not great, supernatural horror novel that is worth checking out. While it doesn’t achieve the greatness of his phenomenal THE RISING or most of his other novels, it is still better than most horror novels on the market. What makes it disappointing is that Keene has proved in the past that he is a better writer than he is exhibiting here. Maybe it isn’t fair, but he has already proved he is great, and so now we expect greatness from him. That having been said, even the proven masters of the genre have missed with a book or two (Stephen King’s DREAMCATCHER anyone?), and even this mediocre novel is worth the day or two that it will take to read it. However, if this is your first Keene novel, don’t give up on him yet; go read THE RISING, TERMINAL, or THE CONQUERER WORMS to see what he is really capable of. But if you have read Brian Keene in the past, GHOUL will at least keep you entertained for a few days while you wait for his next book comes out.