The Vengeance of the Crows by Kyle Alexander Romines
Horror/Young Adult
231 Pages
Published by Hellbender Books (7th October 2023)
Purchase from | Amazon AU | Amazon US | Amazon UK |
My rating: ⭐ ⭐ ⭐
High school is almost over, and the expectation of losing touch with his friends has Josh organising a Halloween getaway. Only a couple of people could make it, but that’s okay, it’ll still be an amazing night and one last hurrah before adulthood calls. Josh’s fun weekend soon turns to one of terror. He wasn’t aware of the graves in the forest, or the bloody handprint on the cabin door. He most definitely didn’t know about the dark entity that is stirring in the caves below, or that it won’t rest until Josh and his friends are dead, their blood quenching the evil thing’s thirst just before it bursts free from its cage…
I am a sucker for a horror story that is set across one or two nights. Throw in some ancient evil, a cult, the Appalachia and camping and I am so freaking sold. I’ve been trying really hard to catch up on my Netgalley reads, so I’ve been doing my best to work through the backlog of amazing books I have on that list, this being one of them. This was my first read from this author, but it won’t be my last.
Romines did a fantastic job at really making me feel that I was in the middle of the forest with Josh and his friends. His descriptions of the forest were fantastic, and I thoroughly enjoyed the setting. I’ve recently, in the last twelve odd months, become absolutely fascinated by the Appalachian Forest and its surroundings. I’m absolutely OBSESSED with the different myths, legends and rules that I’ve learnt about from people who live in the area, and I feel like Romines really gave me that vibe of strange occurrences that are reported to happen. I mean, where else would you find a psychopath, a strange ancient evil, a cult and a gigantic flock of crows that are not behaving like crows? I was able to suspend disbelief with this story because of its setting, and I loved it.
The story itself was a super easy read and it did have me wanting to keep reading late into the night to see what was going to happen next. One thing that I found was a little bit of a letdown for me, was that there was more telling than showing. There was some showing in the narrative, but it was more telling which I find always makes me feel like I’m reading a story rather than living it. I also found that there were some continuity issues that pulled me out of the story a fair few times. I found myself having to quickly go back and skim over where a character had been left because it felt like they had sort of skipped ahead or moved from where they just were. I found that there were a lot of instances where I could have sworn a character was somewhere, but in the next paragraph suddenly they were over the other side of where I originally thought that they were. This is possibly just a me issue, but I did find that the narrative jumped around a little bit in environment and placement.
The characters were endearing enough, and I did care about what happened to them. I liked that Romines wrote the story that he wanted to write and didn’t necessarily conform to horror formulas. I also enjoyed that each of the characters had some back story and something difficult that they’d been through in their lives which helped to build their personalities, their morales and also influenced decisions that they made throughout the ordeal. I enjoyed Nick’s character a lot and I thought it was really awesome that we got an insight into what helped him change as a person and make better choices. I do wish that his support and driving force was more to do with the person than his newfound faith, but I did like that religion wasn’t a super heavy aspect of the story and just mentioned as a part of the character’s build. I find religion can be quite a story killer for me as I myself am not religious, so I find it hard to be able to throw all faith and outcomes to a higher power. But to be able to have Nick’s friend be the support was good, I just wish that it was more because of her, not so much “God has a plan for you”.
There was a lot going on in this story, and sometimes that can mean that the story is trying to take on too much at once, which can cause confusion and a feeling of overwhelm for me, that didn’t happen with this one. I liked that each separate thing that was going on was also linked in some way. Even though the narration was not what I was after entirely, I still found this a page turner and a fantastic idea.
All in all, I found this one to be intriguing and a fantastic idea that possibly wasn’t executed to its fullest potential. Romines has shown that he can write a creepy, atmospheric horror with sound characters that have you rooting for them from the minute the first axe is thrown, but I can also see that there is room for him to grow as an author and really step into the potential that I saw in this book. I’m looking forward to following this author and getting to watch him evolve into something absolutely amazing. I’ll be checking out his other works and keeping an eye out for future releases. If you’re after a fun, horror read that has all the trappings of an enjoyable horror movie, give it a go, just don’t take it super seriously and you’ll have an amazing time.
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