A couple of weeks ago, I met author Brian Moreland at Dallas Comic-Con. As an avid reader and aspiring writer myself, I was happy to spend a few minutes chatting with him and fellow author Paul Black about movies, television shows, and, of course, books. Normally when I look for new books to read, I tend to go for those with established reputations, novels that already have fanbases and analysis written about them so my enjoyment of the book extends far past the time spent reading it. And hell, if I can’t find enough interesting things to say about a particular book, then I’ll do my own analysis. Still, I figured that it’d be good to take a chance on newer books lately, because if nobody bothered to read anything not already from an established author, then what’s the point of writing in the first place?

Of the novels Brian had laid out on his table in the vendor’s room, The Devil’s Woods stood out to me the most. It was probably the cover; something about the image of horned skulls nailed to the trees of a dead forest piqued my curiosity. I’ve always been a fan of horror, though it’s an itch that’s difficult to scratch. Even Pet Sematary, well-known for being one of the scariest novels of all time, couldn’t manage to do more than give me a few weird dreams. Not nightmares, mind you – just weird dreams. I mean, I know many people find work to be a nightmare, but counting the dead animals in the cemetery like I was tracking inventory was more bizarre than scary to me. Still, what fascinates me about horror is just how willing people are to experience it. I mean, on the most basic level, being scared is, by definition, not something people want. Yet, the reason I seek out horror is because it’s fear in a safe environment. When people are scared of getting behind at work or scared of losing their children in an accident, or worse, that’s not “fun”. Watching Alien, slowly getting more and more scared because you don’t know when or where the monster will show up? That’s terrifying, too, but you know when it will be over. I think it’s important that people are able to experience these emotions in a safe environment so that they will be able to handle it better.

Getting back to the novel, now that I’ve read The Devil’s Woods in its entirety, I can safely say it’s a decent book. It was easy to read and set up a decent atmosphere. But even among its own genre, I’d recommend a ton of books ahead of it. It suffers from a lot of storytelling cliches, several of which made me roll my eyes right from the first chapter. The main character is Kyle Elkheart (hah, I just got the joke, nice one, Brian), an author struggling to work on his next novel. Kyle has published numerous books and has even had a film made out of them. We’re only a few pages into the novel, and already the story has entered Twilight-levels of wish-fulfillment. Main characters who are writers are commonplace in novels (just ask Stephen King), but the fact that he’s hugely successful at a relatively young age just strikes me as just fantasy projection.

Okay, okay, I’ll admit, it’s not THAT bad, because Kyle at least has some issues to work through. Two years prior to the story’s start, his wife was killed in a car accident. Kyle is so distraught that he still refuses to take off his wedding ring, and has made very little progress on his next novel. Additionally, he’s refused to enter the room in his apartment where his wife used to paint, as it’s still haunted by her ghost. Yes, haunted. See, it also turns out that Kyle has some supernatural abilities that sometimes allow him to see undead spirits. He doesn’t always have control over it, but at times he can put his hand on an object and focus on it to see what the spirits have to say about it. It’s an ability that Kyle has struggled with his whole life, but at least he’s managed to make the most of it, using the visions he experiences as fodder for his stories.

It’s clear that this scene was meant to be foreshadowing, and naturally, Kyle uses this ability later on in the story. I’m not opposed to the protagonist having supernatural powers, but using it as fodder for his stories kind of makes Kyle less sympathetic, doesn’t it? Many writers struggle and struggle to come up with stories, but here he is, pulling stories out of air because he has communication with the dead. Not to mention, someone with this kind of power would be better suited for solving crimes, but there are way too many paranormal mystery shows out there as is, so I’ll let it slide.

Now that we’ve established who Kyle is and what he’s about, next up is to meet his brother Eric! Apparently, Kyle and Eric haven’t been on very good terms, but what brings his brother here today is that their father, an archeologist, has gone missing on his latest expedition, located near where they grew up as kids. Eric suggests that they go back to their old home and look for him, treating it as a miniature vacation along the way. Aside from the two of them, their punk/goth sister Shawna will be coming, as well as her boyfriend, Zack, and Eric’s girlfriend, Jessica. Apparently, the problem Kyle has with Eric is that he’s a notorious cheater; throughout his life he’s constantly cheated on every girlfriend he’s ever had, and Jessica is no exception. However, Kyle hopes that maybe Jessica might be able to turn Eric around, despite the fact that he and Jessica apparently had an instant connection.

It’s around this point that I noticed the giant target painted on Eric’s back. See, here’s the problem when it comes to horror stories, which is more noticeable in slasher movies like Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street. The people who are the biggest scumbags are the most likely to die. And really, Eric has absolutely no redeeming qualities. Again, he’s cheated on every girl he’s ever dated, he got on the good side of their stepfather, who was apparently a stereotypical middle-aged conservative Christian (and that’s about as much description as we get of him), and he is noticeably possessive of Jessica despite his lack of respect for her, judging from how he feels the need to snatch her away from Kyle, even though the two of them had done nothing wrong.

When you have a character this unlikeable, they’re destined to die. Eric’s not as bad as some of the horrible human beings we encounter later in the book, but the reader has no attachment to him. You might start to wish someone like him dies, just so he gets what’s coming to him. But here’s the thing about horror: if it’s not surprising, it’s not scary. I’m not saying you need to have jump scares scattered throughout the movie (and to be honest, Zack’s jump scare to his girlfriend got another eyeroll from me), but it’s the uncertainty that it could happen at any moment that makes it terrifying. Just like the Alien example I gave earlier, what makes the movie scary is that you don’t know who’s going to be picked off next, nor when it will happen (I’ve cited that movie twice in this review, but I’ve never actually seen the full thing. Maybe I should change that).

I’m getting into spoiler territory at this point, so here’s a SPOILER WARNING. If you’re mad that I put this after what I just said about Eric, well, I don’t really consider it a spoiler if it’s that obvious.

Now, I’m not going to go through the rest of the book chapter by chapter, because that would take forever, and I think the first few chapters say a lot about the rest of the story. But basically, the group goes to the area where the Elkhearts grew up, people are acting creepy, there’s some woods that are marked off with horned skulls as a signal not to trespass, and then a bunch of girls get kidnapped and raped.

Like, a lot of them. Every girl in the story gets kidnapped at some point, and all of them except for Shawna and Jessica actually get raped. See, most of the inhabitants of this small town in the woods are actually shapeshifting demons, but they can’t breed with each other… for some reason… so they have to kidnap girls and impregnate them in order to continue the species. And the women demons can are basically succubi; they can change their form in order to more easily seduce men (and wouldn’t you know it, Eric completely falls for it, because of course he does). Strangely, there’s no scene were Kyle is approached by one of these women. You’d think it would be natural to tempt the hero, especially considering his sexually frustrated state, and to provide an easy “out” so he doesn’t fall for Jessica, but no such thing happens.

The problem I have with this whole set up is that it’s so over-the-top that it borders on cartoonish. In real life, rape is a horrendous crime, one of the worst acts that can possibly be committed. And hell, there have been plenty of horror movies where the killer in question has his way with women. But when it’s an entire town that’s in on it, and an entire species depends on it to survive, the monsters become the horror equivalent of a zombie hoard. A single zombie that takes you off guard is scary. A bunch of zombies are just cannon fodder.

It’s about this point that I started to notice just how much sex is in this novel. Kyle’s sexually frustrated because he hasn’t had sex since his wife died, Eric is all about the sex, their father is revealed to have a relationship with one of his students, Shawna and Zack have sex while high on shrooms, plus, you know, the whole “village full of rapists” thing. What’s especially weird is that despite how present sex is in the novel, the author really doesn’t have much to say about it. Yes, Eric’s cheating doesn’t go unpunished, but Kyle and Jessica wind up in bed together despite all these mixed feelings, and it seems like they’re better off for it. The only thing that caught me off guard was an offhand comment Jessica makes early on, about how Kyle must be some kind of monk to go two years without sex (and Kyle feels inclined to agree). Which, to be honest, I find kind of ridiculous; there are plenty of people who just don’t see much value in sex or relationships, and go just fine without it. To imply that there’s something off about people who aren’t looking for sex just feels insulting. But now I’m getting off track.

The part where The Devil’s Woods really starts to fall apart for me is that it pulls a multitude of bad cliches out for the final chapters. For one thing, apparently Kyle & crew come to this village just a few days before a 10-year anniversary where the demon in charge arises and has his way with the unlucky women of the week. Come on, what are the odds of that? The demon village wasn’t enough of a climax, so the novel has to go and come up with an even greater threat for them to face? Secondly, apparently Kyle’s coming was foretold or something, and was destined to screw things up for the demons. So now we have to throw the “chosen one” cliché in there too, the plot device that The Lego Movie though was so dumb they dedicated an entire movie to making fun of it. And finally, when all hope is lost and Jessica is about to have her day ruined by a demon overlord, Kyle pulls some superpowers out and starts destroying the demon nest. Yeah, this one’s not quite as bad, considering his powers were thoroughly explored throughout the course of the novel, but it’s kind of lame for the underdog hero to overcome the bad guys not through outsmarting them, but by overpowering them with abilities he didn’t know he had. What, is he gonna join The Avengers after he escapes?

Also, why didn’t the villagers kill the crew after they kidnapped Jessica? They were kinda just like “Yep, we got the girl. There’s no way these guys will come try to save her or anything.” Some pretty stupid demons, to be honest. And I’m surprised the cast was able to hold them off for so long, considering it was established earlier than demons are strong enough to flip trailers over.

So they save Jessica and Kyle’s dad makes a heroic sacrifice to destroy as much of the town as he could, and thus Kyle, Jessica, and Shawna are the only survivors of this whole mess. Kyle and Jessica get to have a nice romantic life together, not to mention he now has plenty to work with for his next book, while Shawna gets to explain to her band why her boyfriend is dead. It’s not the happiest of endings, but considering Kyle wasn’t even in contact with his brother and father in the first place, he’s arguably better off now that he has Jessica. Horror stories tend to be cautionary tales – Pet Sematary is all about what happens if you fail to embrace death, House of Leaves shows us the effects of obsession, the Marble Hornets web series about how to deal with the unknown. But instead, I don’t know what, if anything, Kyle actually learned from the experience. I mean, he did eventually let goes of the loss of his wife, but that seems rather unconnected to the plot at large; even if there was no demon village at all and it was just a story about a family going on vacation, Kyle still would have ended up with Jessica.

So, ultimately, The Devil’s Woods just wasn’t that good. Sure, it was an easy read, and I’d say the atmosphere was well done; I could easily imagine walking around the forest town and hiking down the various trails. But it runs off of too many cliches, and tries too hard to be shocking that it just nulls the effect. Kyle has no flaws other than his inability to get over his wife, but even then you’d think setting up an online dating profile would be all that’s necessary to get over that plot thread. Eric was undeniably a scumbag, Jessica and Shawna were more plot devices than characters, and the bad guys were too ridiculous for me to find them scary.

What makes all this worse is that I spoke to Brian face to face. He seemed rather friendly and it was fun to chat with him. But when it comes down to it, if I didn’t like it, I didn’t like it, and there’s no point avoiding that fact. Then again, I know when I first started writing I wrote some real crap, and The Devil’s Woods is far from that level of awfulness. Just… watch out for the cliches next time, okay?