Kill Creek

“They were human minds set into paper, and Sebastian loved every single one of them, even the ones he found disposable.”

I picked this one up by pure chance, desperate to find a horror or thriller to keep the will to live while writing on my academic paper... and I'm sure glad I did. The plot was a concept I couldn't miss, giving me flashbacks to House on Haunted Hill that I was too scared to finish watching years ago. I figured this would make up for it.

I'm slightly torn when it comes to the characters; they are both different and stereotypical in some strange way. I enjoyed them together, but never really felt attached to them one-on-one... other than Sebastian as he interested me.. possibly because his story felt like the least show more explored one. He is also gay (spoiler alert!) and I'm biased like that. But like I said, the best parts of the book were definitely ones where the main characters interacted as a group, working as a contrast to each other. But even so, the plot itself was refreshing in a way that made me feel like it was okay if the characters felt a bit bland... sure, a haunted house is far from new but... this haunted house still managed to be new. Not just in the way it interacted with the characters and the story but Thomas' descriptions of the house truly got me as well. A lot of haunted houses make you go "yeah, nope" but I kept finding myself intrigued with the house on Kill Creek. That's how they get ya, isn't it? show less

Bravo, Mr. Thomas. Bravo.

I had really high hopes for this novel right from the get-go. It was a cool premise, and seemed to be getting good reviews. So, when I started it, my initial mantra was, don't fuck it up, Thomas. Don't let it suck.

When it didn't suck, there was a point when the mantra changed to, don't just rip off The Shining.

When that came out all right, then it was just, bring it home, baby. Just land this thing.

I'll be goddamned if the author didn't pull it all off. Excellent writing. Excellent characters, especially the five main ones--the four authors, and Wainright. The author could have gone the easy route and just stolen four authors from the real world, but instead, he took some recognizable characteristics, but made show more the four authors his own.

But the star of the book, of course, is the house at Kill Creek. Thomas did a fantastic job if making it a character all its own, and a malevolent entity as well.

Yes, there were times the book was reminiscent of The Shining but, to be fair, what haunted house story worth a damn isn't going to be? It's the haunted house story that sits at the apex, and even with that, you can see how King's classic is also reminiscent of those that came before it. Jackson's Hill House. Matheson's Hell House.

Overall, this was just a blast to read, a lot of fun, and, though it's still early in the year, it's my pick for best horror novel read of 2018. I sincerely doubt anything will beat it. show less

It goes on a bit too long - the climactic bloodbath seems to last forever - and the premise ends up feeling more annoying than anything else. The edgy angry female character, Moore, starts out a bit, um, 'men writing women,' but ended up being more likable and interesting than the rest. Didn't hate it, but I upped the playback speed to motor past the chopping and hacking to get to the resolution.

4 & 1/2 STARS

Horror, like humor, is a very delicate narrative substance and even if the two find themselves at the very opposites of the writing scale, they share the need for fine balance and even finer control if one seeks to reach a believable and satisfactory result. This is indeed the case with Scott Thomas’ Kill Creek, a story that on the surface seems to share many elements with other horror novels (a haunted house, a group of people who enter it and suffer dreadful experiences, their attempts at fighting the evil, and so on), but in the end manages to defy any prediction and to offer a unique reading experience that surpasses even the highest of expectations. If the information I found on GoodReads about Mr. Thomas is correct, show more this should be his first novel, which makes it all the more extraordinary for the skill he exhibits with pace and characterization: I will certainly keep an eye on his future production, because here is a quite promising author in the genre.

A group of four horror writers, each different in personality and narrative mode, receives an invitation from Justin Wainwright, the owner of WrightWire – a site dedicated to horror in all its declinations – to spend Halloween night in the Finch House at Kill Creek, a remote Kansas location: the resulting interview with the authors will be streamed online and serve as much-needed publicity for every one of them. And the four need it because, in one way or the other, their careers are at a crossroads.

Sam McGarver, a man saddled with a dark past that has left him scarred in body and mind, is dealing with writer’s block and has accepted a teaching position to help make ends meet; T.C. Moore has become famous for her dark, no-holds-barred, sexually explicit stories, but a recent encounter with the Hollywood executives in charge of the movie from her latest novel angered and unsettled her more than she can deal with; Sebastian Cole is considered the dean of horror writers, inspiring many to follow in his footsteps, yet he feels that his career is at an end; and Daniel Slaughter made a name for himself with YA horror stories laced with a Christian message of redemption and hope, but his audience is dwindling day by day and his publisher is ready to cut him loose. Each one of them resents Wainwright’s bold-faced summons and the certainty of deception they perceive in his manner, but the opportunity is too good to be passed over, and the group travels to Kill Creek and the house whose first owner and his lover were killed shortly before the Civil War, giving origin to the tales about the mansion being haunted.

At this point, one might expect the story to proceed over a well-traveled path, with the night bringing uncounted horrors and the people in the house not reaching the next morning alive; instead the Halloween at Finch House flows in a very mundane way, with the sole exception of the mediatic slaughter perpetrated by Wainwright on his guests, as he exploits their weaknesses without mercy to spice up the podcast he so meticulously planned. Of course some strange occurrences manifest themselves during the night, but all of them can be attributed to the peculiar atmosphere of the house and the personal ghosts each person carries inside. On the next morning, the group departs to scatter again toward their former lives, and that’s one of the novel’s best angles – the choice of letting them go unscathed, against all expectations. Because the true, chilling horror starts only after they leave the house behind them – or so they think….

Kill Creek is a powerful, well-crafted story that relies more on psychological horror rather than the graphic kind, even though the latter part of the novel does turn quite bloody and horrific (so be warned about that…): yet the explicit violence manages to feel less frightening than the kind visited on the soul of the victims. A case in point is that of the character driven to kill others in a most shocking way, and yet constantly saying he’s sorry and asking for forgiveness even as he performs his bloody task, the torment of the acts he’s compelled to execute still managing to scar his mind and soul, both betrayed out of their basic gentleness by a force outside of his control. And that force is exerted by a very peculiar entity, the house itself, that here possesses a definite personality that turns it into another character, one imbued with a profound evil that appears all the more frightening because of its lack of definite origin, not in spite of it.

No reason is given for the house’s profound need of belief in its haunted, creepy nature, yet this insatiable hunger and the way the house can sink its hooks into the victims’ minds and force them to do its bidding is a chilling, unexpected development. The old mansion appears like a skilled manipulator, one that knows people’s most buried secrets and fears and uses them to maneuver the victims like puppets on strings: the four writers’ back-stories are beautifully interlaced with the narrative and transformed from old ghosts into present terrors that take on shape and substance, breaking the barrier between the real and the imagined, the merely feared and the concrete danger that can hurt, maim and kill.

The experience the characters undergo at the “hands” of the Kill Creek house is one that strips them of their outer defenses and forces them to confront their inner selves, and to change: one might say that they come out of it (those who do, that is…) as very different people – how different, only time will tell, because there is no real resolution to the story, as the last few paragraphs show with a quite unexpected revelation. Even though, on hindsight, it should not have been so unexpected in consideration of the total lack of predictability that is the leitmotif of this novel.

Highly recommended.


Originally posted at SPACE and SORCERY BLOG show less

The Finch House has a strange and tragic past dating back to its creation. It's stayed empty for years, owned by the city and becoming increasing overgrown. Wainwright, creator of a site that specializes in unconventional livesteamed experiences that go viral, convinces four famous horror authors to stay in the house for two days and conduct a multi-part interview for online viewers. Nothing weird happens except for some nightmares and they all return to their respective homes. Months later, all four have withdrawn from their lives, furiously writing novels that greatly resemble each other and awful visions appear if they dare to stop writing. When they hit a wall in inspiration, they band together once again to find out what's show more happening.

Kill Creek is a book that subverted many of my expectations. The characters represented a wider swath of horror than I thought. The four authors have their own distinct styles and audiences. Sebastian Cole writes more subtle horror for a wide audience. He's the most well known and oldest of the authors. Daniel Slaughter writes horror with a moral and religious bent targeted at teens, but his religious base seems to think his writing is getting too extreme. Sam McGarver teaches as a second career and has writers block after one hugely successful book followed by a few less spectacular releases. I would love to take one of his classes based on the insightful lecture portrayed. T.C. Moore writes gruesome, hardcore horror with sexual depravity. She's my favorite of the authors because she exposes the boys' club sexism she's subject to and doesn't acquiese to anyone. Her bluntness and honesty are refreshing. All four represent different facets of horror and clash at times due to their differences in philosophy.

I expected a haunted house book where the bulk of the story would be scares within the house during the interview and that wasn't it at all. The scares are more insidious and subtle than that. The force within the house haunted them well after they went home, infiltrating their dreams and essentially torturing each of them to write their own version of its story. Scott Thomas writes excerpts of their writing convincingly in their respective styles. This is especially impressive to capture so many other literary voices in addition to one's own. The real mystery begins when they reunite completely changed from months before and return to the house to fight whatever it is. The force is never truly defined, which I prefer, but it's definitely malicious and has a defined plan for how to endure. Its origin is particularly thought provoking and unique. The portrayal is a fresh take on a haunting that isn't as simple as a dead person or a few tragic events.

Kill Creek has everything I wanted: an unknowable evil, four extremely different main characters with secrets to hide, and an eccentric mogul to bring them all together. The history of the house of was just as chilling as present day events and contributed to the eerie mood of the novel. I would love to see more from Scott Thomas. His descriptions and insights into the characters felt so vivid and truly sucked me into the story. Highly recommended if you want a book that gets under your skin. show less

Simply said, KILL CREEK was AWESOME! I've long been suspecting that a really good haunted house book was a thing of the past. I'm happy as hell to be proven wrong on that.

At first, I'm not going to lie, the standard trope of four people staying overnight in the oh-so scary house, did not impress me. But between the characters themselves, the background of the house, and how everyone came together, slowly this story began to win me over. In this case, we actually had 6 people staying overnight, on Halloween, to boot. Four famous horror authors, Wainwright, the man who orchestrated this affair, (being the founder of a website dedicated to all things horror), and his girlfriend Kate who is there to photograph any happenings. Then, (and show more get this surprising twist), not all that much happens and everyone goes home! So where's the scary stuff? What occurs that makes so many people rave about this book? Don't look at me, I'm not going to spoil it. You'll have to read it for yourself.

These characters burrowed down deep into my psyche, and I felt like I knew them all intimately. Every single one of them changed throughout, and be they good changes or bad, they were all different people by the denouement. I love that. I love unpredictability in both my books and my characters-who wants to read about boring flat Stanley?

The writing had a vivid feel to it and the author is terrific in his descriptive passages as well as with his dialogue. It all rang very true to me. I have to admit that I am impressed-even more so when I take into account that this is a debut novel. For many years, my favorite book was GHOST STORY by Peter Straub, and in my mind, I can't help but compare the two and KILL CREEK holds up to that comparison. That's the highest praise I can give.

Lastly, the narrator: Bernard Setaro Clark? You rock, man! You nailed it! What else is there to say?

I'm sure this audio will be in my top ten at the end of the year and as such it gets my highest recommendation. You should read it. Right now!

*I bought this e-book and the audio with my hard-earned cash and this opinion is my own.* show less

Although the character of Sam McGarver is the protagonist of this novel, all four fictional authors (McGarver, Cole, Slaughter, and the unforgettable Moore), are in a sense all main characters of this trip into horror. And like the work they produce, they represent various facets of the genre, which makes this (in some small way) a book that questions the meaning of horror as much as it’s a part of the category itself. Undoubtedly a slow burn, this book will naturally invoke mixed reviews, but it instantly drew me in and I happily went along for the ride. The horror comes in snippets until it reaches an ultimate pay-off. I throughly enjoyed this, though it’s not for those who want an in your face terror fest, or those who don’t show more have longer than average attention spans. My only negative is I have to wonder if people could carry on moving while suffering such severe injuries even though they’d be running on adrenaline, but this is fiction, would make an excellent film, and we’ve seen people suffer through worse in the make-believe world of the cinema. show less