In 2000, Christopher Rice's debut novel, A Density of Souls, turned me into an instant and lifelong fan. I was 16, and although I had a pride flag on my bedroom door, wore a rainbow necklace, and used enough spiking glue in my hair to impale someone through the heart, I was already tired of what we, with a sigh, call "gay fiction". Most of you reading this will be familiar with the tropes I mean -- a thin and sensitive boy is picked on at school, until he has that one defining moment in the locker room where the captain of the football team looks at him and the two begin a passionate but doomed romance. A Density of Souls was a turning point for me as a young writer and as young gay man -- in fact, it was probably the first time I realized that I could be both things. It was possible to write a book with gay characters that did other things besides talk about being gay, and that was a glorious thing.
In the years since, Rice has been fairly prolific, and it's been a delight to track his growth as a writer and his exploration of genre. His most recent novel, The Heavens Rise, is probably his best yet. It's an odd and occasionally awkward melding of several different stylistic influences, but even with its few flaws was the most exciting book I read last year. Rice's first foray into the horror genre seems to be paying off -- The Heavens Rise has just made its way onto the preliminary ballot for the prestigious Bram Stoker award (for those of you unfamiliar, the Bram Stoker award is to those of us that write about monsters and serial killers what the Pulitzer is for those who write about generational gaps in family dramas or growing up in war torn cities). The finalists will be announced next month, so I thought this would be a great time to revisit this novel.
Horror is very often derivative of itself much moreso than books in other genres, somewhat by necessity. There are an infinite number of ways to write, for example, a coming of age story about growing up in small town America. If you decide that during this coming of age story, there will be an alien invasion and the boy will have to defend his farm against hordes of tentacled invaders, well, right away you get people that will be comparing you to Lovecraft -- unfavorably. We're an incestuous bunch of people, but luckily we're not necessarily disturbed by this. We have fun and roll with it.
The most striking thing about The Heavens Rise is the clear and distinctly unique voice that Rice uses throughout. Stylistically it almost seems as if Stephen King and Patricia Cornwell got really drunk one night and somehow spawned a demon child -- one which grew to possess some of the strengths and weaknesses of both of its parents. But as it grows and wreaks its havoc on the world, it morphs into something very different than the influences that might have originally spawned it.
Horror is at its best when it creates characters that we care about, and allows us to become emotionally invested in their fates. The Heavens Rise is as much a story of friendship as it is a story of a terrifying mind control parasite, and much like King, Rice is equally at ease with a foot in each world. The story unfolds in a post-Katrina New Orleans, and Rice has done exceptionally well here in bringing this city to life and using it to effectively frame his story. It's a setting he uses to great effect and one that I'd love to see him use again -- grounding the reader in a clear and well defined place is an often overlooked necessity in crafting a great horror novel.
The little real-life details of the city, the lives of its riverboat pilots, and the ways people dealt with the aftermath of one of the worst tragedies to ever hit American soil all help us to suspend disbelief and cope with some of the insanity Rice starts to throw at us.
As I got deeper into the book, I found that Rice actually develops a problem that is the opposite of the one most authors create. Usually, the main character of the story is less interesting than the supporting cast. Here, however, he does such a great job at fleshing out Ben Broyard and getting him to charm me that the rest of the book becomes secondary. I was never as concerned about the missing Niquette and the effects of her disappearance on Ben's also-charming friend Anthem than I was about Ben himself, and the best part of the book for me was actually his friendship with his boss, Marissa. From the moment she meets him as an angry young person and decides to take a chance and offer him a job at the local newspaper, I feel that their scenes -- and their friendship -- are the best things about this book, and give a surprisingly tender heart to what might have otherwise been a cold and forgettable page turner.
Don't misunderstand -- I use that phrase lovingly. This book has been marketed as a "supernatural thriller", and that is a perfect description. But it is not a sub-genre one often associates with a lot of warmth and heart, and often in similar novels the plot and the monsters take precedence over the people involved, and Ben and Marissa's friendship gave me something to anchor me and something that I'm going to remember and take with me long after I would have forgotten this story in the hands of another author.
Having grown attached to Ben and becoming emotionally invested in his success and well being is crucial as a reader in the last third of the book, where I feel that things become a bit sloppy in its climactic moments (I never quite buy Nikki's motivations or care too much about her, even when I know that I'm supposed to). But even when things are in danger of coming unhinged (and, really, what would a thrilling horror novel be without a bit of insanity in its final moments?) the work Rice put into making Ben into a real person forces things to stay believable and on track.
Despite this being Rice's first supernatural book, it never feels that way. Having followed his career from the beginning, and despite having some great books to his name, he seems wonderfully at home in this genre. In a lot of ways this feels like a true breakthrough novel. Like I said in my review of Joe Hill's N0S4A2 (http://geeksout.org/blogs/ranerdin/book-review-n0s4a2) , this is novel where an author took a lot of risks, and it is a wonderful thing for us as readers and fans to watch these risks pay off and be met with both critical and commercial success. I'm excited to see where his further explorations of this genre lead -- he's been hinting something about killer plants, and this excites me as a huge fan of John Wyndham and his Triffids. With a great cast of memorable characters, strong setting, and a villain that manages to actually be somewhat scary, The Heavens Rise is an excellent addition to any horror fan's bookshelf. Christopher Rice succeeds in the thing that all horror writers struggle with the most: he keeps us entertained, but also convinces us to actually give a shit. Rating: B+
@robrussin
