Last Days

Well, holy sh*t.

A night, and a day, and a night gone, lost in a book so atmospherically terrifying that I could NOT wrench my brain away from this slobbery, sickeningly crunchy feast of a tale.

Mr. Nevill, you are a twisted man. I'm so glad I don't live inside your skull, and I feel kinda sorry that you do.

Oh, what a wonderfully creepy book. I finished it over a week ago and it's still with me. I keep thinking of the creatures appearing in their bony half-life, trying to cross into this world. Oddly, while I was reading this, my husband had a dream about me turning into a demon because of a picture painted over our door. I never even told him what the book was about. Care to explain that, Mr. Nevill?

Briefly, the book is about a filmmaker hired to do a documentary about the history of a cult that ended in murder. We learn about the filmmaker's earlier movies, which this book actually made me want to see. The cult started off with the hippy kind of thing in London but quickly turned darker because of the evil but charismatic leader (as so show more many cults do). Eventually we learn why. And I have to say the reasons why were so well told, I was checking out history books/websites because I thought the medieval cult was real. Seriously. I studied medieval history in college and there were a LOT of weird cults back then. This one didn't sound any weirder than any of those. Again, kudos, Mr. Nevill. You got me again.

The descriptions of the creatures, though, while creepy, reminded me of an even darker version of fairies for much of the book. I'm expecting some of you to laugh at this, but those of you who know folklore know that fairies were originally very far from the winged cherubic things we're familiar with today. They were amoral, sometimes even evil creatures who had motives mere humans could never hope to understand. I know that the amount of reading I've done on this topic colored how I viewed the creatures, so I was extremely curious to find out exactly what they were. And I was fascinated by what they indeed were. I was fascinated by the whole book.

If you like creepy, read it.

And thank you, Early Reviewers! I now have to go out and get the author's earlier books. You've introduced me to yet another author I will count among favorites. show less

Struggling, destitute filmmaker, Kyle, gets the opportunity to make the best documentary he's ever made, the one that will put him on the map and at the same time wipe out his crushing financial debt. The only thing is, he might not survive the shoot.

Even when things take a turn during filming and start to get weird, and then outright terrifying, I understood why Kyle doesn't call it a wrap. You know those moments in horror movies when the characters do foolish things that are completely unmotivated and cause you to shake your fist and yell at the TV, "What are you doing? Don't go outside! Or into the basement! Or into the woods!" Well, Adam Nevill manages to write horror that scares you without employing those kinds of "foolish show more decision-making" moments, the kinds mistakes we all believe we would never make if we were put into the same situation.

The only problem I had with the book that lost it a star was that the explanations were way too long. show less

Plot summary.
Documentary. Cult. Hauntings. Abandoned places.

This book is a replica of how I write university essays. I start off really well, the paragraphs are slowly and carefully written. I get to the middle and I'm almost getting over it but I'm still trying really hard to write something distinction worthy. Then I get to two thirds in and that deadline is coming up and I just say fuck it, rush the ending as much as possible and submit it without caring.

So I loved the first two thirds of this book as you can probably tell.. Some aspects were actually a little scary and I love the horror trope of catching paranormal things on tape.
Unfortunately I didn't particularly like the ending.
It ended up going into a completely different show more direction than I was expecting and the last chapter was incredibly abrupt and was not frightening in the least. Overall it was an enjoyable slow burn that kind of fizzled out. show less

Kyle Freeman is a down-on-his-luck freelance documentarian with no prospects or rent payment for the foreseeable future. So when Max Solomon offers him the opportunity to make a documentary about the infamous Temple of the Last Days cult of the 1970s, Kyle jumps at the chance. It's not just the boatload of money that's being offered or the real possibility of actual future respect in his craft although these are certainly a big part of his motivation for taking the job; it is also curiosity about what happened to cause things to go so bad all those years ago. Sometimes, however, as Kyle is about to learn the hard way, it is much, much better and safer to let sleeping dogs lie. Otherwise, they might just rear up to bite you.

Last Days is show more more atmosphere than gore, more itchy chills down the spine than jump out of your seat frights. The story starts slowly, drawing the audience in, building tension and anticipation. And author Adam Nevill really knows how to ramp up the creep factor when it finally arrives.

it would be almost impossible to review this book without mentioning the ending. My first response was an annoyed 'wha...'. But, after a bit of thought, and this ending will definitely make you think, I realized that Last Days ends exactly where it should. Sometimes, like Kyle, the reader has to know when to respect those sleeping dogs. show less

Here's another compulsively-readable horror novel (my last such was _Incidents Around the House_). I finished it in 2.x days, and it's a bit over 500 pages. Ow!

Nevill, I have found, is _really_ dependable if you are looking for a well-wrought scare. This one is no exception to that, but I have some reservations:

1. I think it's overlong, and this is coming from a long book fan. There are some episodes of serious info-dump, reminiscent of the ones in Oz Perkins' films, and they detract. The final one, where a character spends a lot of time trying to get away from the story being told, feels like part of an episode of _Columbo_. It comes off as faintly comic, and I don't think that's intentional.

2. The scares get ... how do I say it? show more over-specific. I would have preferred more things to have been left ambiguous, unsaid, shadowy. But the picture gets almost obsessively filled in. I don't think it's a spoiler to say that the episode where the main character goes to Belgium to look at a peculiarly-horrible painting didn't really need to be in the book at all ... and that's just one example. We see so much of the main frights that I felt the same as when the movie _Alien_ jumped into the movie _Aliens_.

3. A few of the characters (one major) come off as cardboard cutouts, amounting to little more than a heap of familiar tics and habits. Charles Dickens could pull this off -- I guess -- but it grates here.

All that said, I kept reading. And kept reading. show less

Adam Nevill's books have a way of growing on you - like wine or perfume maturing over time. They read well, the atmosphere is very much in the spirit of H.P. Lovecraft (the tense atmosphere and grey terror) and detailed storytelling can hold anyone's attention. There seems to be a trend with me - I always tend to feel the book "fizzle out" before the end and almost have to force myself to finish reading it. However, when revisiting the reviews and ratings, I usually have to correct myself and affix a higher rating. Some books linger in memory for longer, some are simply finished and one moves on from them. Neville's books are of the former category.