Jeremy Bates

I really, really enjoyed this author's different take on the urban legend type mystique of the Catacombs. It’s not a horror story…but it is. It had all the elements to make it so but it also had the felling that you were reading about a true documentary. The camera footage kept running through my mind the whole time I was reading. I had to keep reminding myself that it’s only fiction…but what if??? And it was the “what if” that produced actual goose-bumps. I was fascinated, show more intrigued and hooked from the beginning. Anyone wanting to undertake this book will need to bear in mind that it’s not the content of horror or the actual wording but the IDEA of what just might be. I’ll be finding more by this author. show less

DNF at ~20%.

I stopped reading because the novel never demonstrated an understanding of the ethical, cultural, or narrative weight of its setting. Aokigahara is treated as a generic “spooky forest” that could be relocated almost anywhere without changing the story. Japanese characters and institutions are largely absent or flattened, functioning as background rather than shaping events.

From a craft perspective, characterization is superficial and ornamental. Personal details are show more shoehorned in (a girlfriend who drinks too much, a friend who is a ladies’ man but tender with his sister) without affecting behavior, choices, or conflict. These traits don’t develop the characters; they exist primarily to make the protagonist, Ethan, appear more patient, competent, or morally centered by comparison.

The novel relies on corridor-style walking, heavy exposition, and repeated backstory about death without transformation or pressure. What finally broke my trust were moments of casual disrespect toward the dead, including sexualized commentary about a presumed deceased woman, paired with a complete lack of internal challenge or consequence.

By 20%, it was clear this wasn’t a slow burn but a refusal to engage meaningfully with the material it chose. I didn’t want to continue. show less

This one failed my "Life's Too Short" test fairly early.

The start is a little disturbing but in all the wrong ways.

I know I should be being gripped by how the small, self-protective lies a woman tells escalate and place her in danger.

I should be feeling sorry for her and recognising that this kind of thing could happen to anyone. Or I should be shouting at her to wake up, deal with the confrontation and save herself. I'm not doing either of these things because neither she nor the angry, show more drunk, narcissistic young man threatening her seem real to me. They come across purely as plot devices and the plot isn't attractive. It's shaping up to be another thriller where the "thrill" comes from watching a vulnerable woman being put at risk.

The speed of my decision is mainly down to the writing. When Bates describes places and situations the prose is leaden and as engaging as reading a police report. When Bates takes me inside the head of either the lying young woman or the drunk young man, I don't get to live there, I just get a laboured explanation of what is driving their behaviour that reads more like notes to an actor who will play the characters.

So, I have an unattractive plot, delivered with limping prose and dialogue from characters I don't believe in. Life's too short. show less

I read another Bates book quite a while ago that was enough to keep him on my radar and make me interested in more, but as soon as I saw this one, I couldn't wait to read it, and I'm so glad I went ahead and picked it up. Think House of Leaves + Escape Room in an all-out horror novel that's well-driven by both character and plot, and which flirts with romance but stays pretty firmly in horror territory. It was such an incredibly fun and compelling read, I was only sorry to see it show more end!

Absolutely recommended to horror readers. show less