Author: Simon Holt
Publisher: Little, Brown
Publishing Date: September 2008
Format: Hardcover
The Devouring is an interesting little horror tale that I believe is geared toward the YA market. Horror is not usually to my taste, so I don’t have a lot of reference points as to whether this is a YA novel or not. I suspect it is, mainly because the protagonists are teenagers. This lack of knowledge on my part about the horror genre also keeps me from truly appreciating the references (though the names dropped were recognizable, they didn’t truly mean anything to me) but for those horror enthusiasts, I believe that they may make the story more enjoyable.
The story is that of Regina and her brother Henry. They are coping with the fact that their mother has left them and their father is not only having a tough time dealing with her loss but also in being the only caretaker of the kids. Regina is a big horror fan, she reads Lovecraft and Poe and her best friend is fanatic about slasher flicks. Regina also works part time in a bookstore that specializes in the horror genre. Through this avenue, Regina finds a handwritten journal telling its own horror story. The journal tells the story of the Vours who can enter your mind through your fears and thus take over your body, leaving you wandering through a horror filled inner landscape, populated with your worst fears.
When Regina and her best friend Aaron stage some stunts to attempt to inoculate themselves from their worst fears, Regina’s brother Henry begins to act a little out of character. While the basic plot was entertaining and flowed at a nice pace, I felt that something was missing.
The story seemed a bit mechanical. Here are the characters and here is what they are doing. I felt no atmosphere at all. With most books the reader can get a good sense for what everything around the characters looks and feels like. But with this book, I had no sense of time or place; it all seemed kind of generic. Other than the main character’s hair, we have no idea what anyone looks like until the very end, where we find out more – that Reggie’s brother Henry is blonde. However, the inner landscape Regina and Henry travel are marvelously descriptive. They hit just the right note of imagined horror.
As it is though, this is still a good story which will entertain young horror fans. There is quite a bit of graphic description – maimed people and animals, deformed and evil children, giant spiders, clowns (which strike many with horror even without the evil grin and hatchet arms) and other miscellaneous images that are meant to strike the chords of horror or disgust or fear in the average reader. I must admit that I was more inclined to lose my lunch rather than run screaming but I’ve always been squeamish and I’m not a very good ruler to measure this by.
