The Reddening by Adam L.G. Nevill is classified as "A folk-horror thriller…" on the cover of the paperback. I found it to be a slow-burning descent into barbarism, butchery, and panic, with cults filling their coffers on the blood and bones of others. With a rich cast of broken people set against a cult-like organization with no aversion to brutality, The Reddening will keep you up… turning pages.
I found the reading to be ponderously slow. The rich cliffs and woods were really brought to life, just as much as the ancient caves and paintings. You could not only see, but feel the festival at Redhill. Nevill is great with environment, and his discussion of outdoor sport. Paragliding, hiking, and swimming are all well written activities that his characters involve themselves in, because he himself enjoys to be out and in nature.
The characters were full and round, with motives and backstories steeped in trauma and pain. At moments I wondered how these people could make it in the modern world, but then I realized that that was the point. No one can, I think. Their development came in bursts, like anyone's, and the final one, on the last couple pages left me smiling.
Adam Nevill is a master of eye catching turns of phrase. Part of this is his Britishness, which is beautifully foreign to one such as me. His dream sequences are particularly powerful, with changes in both POV and tense to disorient the reader, which, well, a dream should do.
The slow build serves to make the exposition of the waiting horrors fiercer. In horror reading, I find that the pacing is most easily noticed in my breath. So, with this sort of horror, it feels like slow, dragging breaths that are struggled over, or won at cost and length. Other stories have me breathing raggedly fast, my eyes flitting across the material. Both work in their own way, and I think that the subject matter of The Reddening benefitted from the long, well-worn sort of breath that it doled out. It fit the epoch-spanning material, leastways.
I have to admit that I saw every single betrayal (but not twist) coming… and I was still pissed off when the betrayers showed their hands. I write as well, and aspire to those two things. Unforeseen twists, and barbaric betrayals. The barbarism is not as important as audience engagement, I feel. I refuse to delve into the specifics, because I think that spoiling things is shitty, and you never know if you're speaking with a future reader of the material you are speaking upon. That being said, I respect the emotional response that Mr. Nevill dredged out of the deep places of me.
The Reddening is a slow burning, fascinating delve into the deepest parts of human nature, and that its deviance from animal nature can never be full or complete, as we will always be animals also. The book came well recommended to me, and I pass that recommendation along as well.
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I will definitely be checking this one out- I’d never heard of the author but this sounds very good. I love slow burns!