I've followed Brian Keene's career with enthusiasm for quite some time. From his early short stories that showed promises of great things to come, to his balls-out debut novel about zombies, right up through Terminal and now The Rutting Season. Having just finished reading The Rutting Season, I am very pleased to report that it's his best, most assured work to date.
The thing I liked, loved, about The Rutting Season is its emphasis of character. The lead character of this first-person narrative bears more than a small amount of similarity to the author. Adam Senft is a mid-level mystery writer living in semi-rural Pennsylvania. It is to Brian's credit that he spends more time in The Rutting Season getting the reader to know the character and his hopes, fears and heartbreak than he spends with the horrors in the novel. Of which there are many. We gradually get to know a lot about the neighborhood Adam lives in, and the people that live there. What Brian has learned and learned to do well, is the same thing that makes Stephen King so successful. When the reader cares about the people in the story, he or she cares a lot more when the shit hits the fan.
I also love the deliberate pacing that Brian uses here. He's in no particular hurry to get the the so-called good parts. He uses clever foreshadowing to hint at the horrors ahead, even while Senft accidentally witnesses a bizarre tryst in the woods. It's like with Ketchum's The Lost. Many readers said that this novel bored them with the time that is spent establishing character and mood. That's the very reason I like it so much. The Rutting Season is like The Lost in that respect. Brian pounded his readers over the head from practically the first page of The Rising and City of the Dead, and most of us loved it. The Rutting Season is a story told in a much more mature, thoughtful fashion. Yet, as any of his readers expect, when it is time to play rough, Keene pulls no punches.
The plot of the Rutting Season is perhaps not the most original ever written, yet it is much more so than the majority of horror fiction I read these days. It deals with a satyr and its influences on the inhabitants of a small Pennsylvania town. Particularly the females. The mythic beast is attempting to procreate with any and all the women it can find. Including Adam Senft's beloved wife. The story really gets into gear about 3/4 of the way in, when Senft plays Van Helsing to a ragtag group of neighborhood monster hunters. Brian plays with this concept, alternating between dark humor, graphic bloodshed and searing emotion. Not to mention some genuine chills as the group investigate an old abandoned house in the woods.
Many writers seem to have trouble in delivering satisfying finales to novels. A lot of novels (by damned good writers) end their novels in ways that feel rushed or in ways that defy my credibility. Not so with The Rutting Season. Just when you think you know exactly where Keene is going with it, he pulls a surprise in the final page that threw me for a loop. It crept up on me and really startled me, even while I instantly realized that it was absolutely perfect..
Brian Keene, in his rather brief career, has shown range and skill in creating both normal and supernatural horrors. Me, I'd love to see him tackle a novel that is devoid of both horror or even overt violence. He has proven that he can deal with emotion and genuine human situations to be able to carry one without genre trappings.
The thing I liked, loved, about The Rutting Season is its emphasis of character. The lead character of this first-person narrative bears more than a small amount of similarity to the author. Adam Senft is a mid-level mystery writer living in semi-rural Pennsylvania. It is to Brian's credit that he spends more time in The Rutting Season getting the reader to know the character and his hopes, fears and heartbreak than he spends with the horrors in the novel. Of which there are many. We gradually get to know a lot about the neighborhood Adam lives in, and the people that live there. What Brian has learned and learned to do well, is the same thing that makes Stephen King so successful. When the reader cares about the people in the story, he or she cares a lot more when the shit hits the fan.
I also love the deliberate pacing that Brian uses here. He's in no particular hurry to get the the so-called good parts. He uses clever foreshadowing to hint at the horrors ahead, even while Senft accidentally witnesses a bizarre tryst in the woods. It's like with Ketchum's The Lost. Many readers said that this novel bored them with the time that is spent establishing character and mood. That's the very reason I like it so much. The Rutting Season is like The Lost in that respect. Brian pounded his readers over the head from practically the first page of The Rising and City of the Dead, and most of us loved it. The Rutting Season is a story told in a much more mature, thoughtful fashion. Yet, as any of his readers expect, when it is time to play rough, Keene pulls no punches.
The plot of the Rutting Season is perhaps not the most original ever written, yet it is much more so than the majority of horror fiction I read these days. It deals with a satyr and its influences on the inhabitants of a small Pennsylvania town. Particularly the females. The mythic beast is attempting to procreate with any and all the women it can find. Including Adam Senft's beloved wife. The story really gets into gear about 3/4 of the way in, when Senft plays Van Helsing to a ragtag group of neighborhood monster hunters. Brian plays with this concept, alternating between dark humor, graphic bloodshed and searing emotion. Not to mention some genuine chills as the group investigate an old abandoned house in the woods.
Many writers seem to have trouble in delivering satisfying finales to novels. A lot of novels (by damned good writers) end their novels in ways that feel rushed or in ways that defy my credibility. Not so with The Rutting Season. Just when you think you know exactly where Keene is going with it, he pulls a surprise in the final page that threw me for a loop. It crept up on me and really startled me, even while I instantly realized that it was absolutely perfect..
Brian Keene, in his rather brief career, has shown range and skill in creating both normal and supernatural horrors. Me, I'd love to see him tackle a novel that is devoid of both horror or even overt violence. He has proven that he can deal with emotion and genuine human situations to be able to carry one without genre trappings.
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