October

by Michael Rowe

"Michael Rowe is one of those writers who can swing from the eloquent prose of a Peter Straub to the brutality of a Richard Laymon."
—Monster Librarian

The time: the waning years of the 1990s at the dawn of the millennium.

The place: an isolated rural town called Auburn, which could be anywhere at all—a town where everyone knows everyone else—where dark secrets run through its veins like blood.

Everyone knows that sixteen-year old Mikey Childress is “different.” A target for bullies since he was a small boy, everything Mikey does attracts abuse: the way he walks, the way he talks, the way he looks. Everyone knows he’s not like the other boys in Auburn—the boys who play hockey, who fight, the boys who pursue girls. Only his friend Wroxy, a girl almost as isolated as he is, can even guess at the edges of his pain, or the depths of his yearning for love.

But even the people who hate Mikey couldn’t dream of how many secrets he has, or how badly he could hurt them if he wanted to.

Until the night Mikey is pushed beyond endurance by his abusers. The night he makes a pact with dark forces older than time to visit a terrible vengeance on his enemies. The night he inadvertently opens a doorway that should never, ever have been opened, and unleashes something into the world that should have remained damned.

• ISBN10: 1771485299
• ISBN13: 9781771485296
• Publish Date: 31 October 2019 (first published 31 October 2017)
• Publish Status: Transferred
• Publish Country: CA
• Imprint: ChiZine Publications
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 192
• Language: English

Reviews

[brokentune]

2.5*

Mikey climbed into the Honda and turned the key in the ignition. He revved the engine, tossing mud up into the air as the car peeled out of the clearing and onto the road back to Auburn. He glanced down at the dashboard clock. It was one o’clock in the morning on the last day of September—or rather, the first day of October—and he had just bashed out the brains of an innocent, defenseless animal in order to cast a spell he’d found on the Internet to make the bullies in town suffer for having hurt him. Mikey felt he would vomit. He pulled the car to the side of the road and leaned out of the driver’s side door just as his stomach began to heave. All of this for nothing, he thought sickly, retching into the mud. I killed a living thing for nothing. Yeah, I’m a real sorcerer, aren’t I? I am Mikey Childress. Fear me. Christ almighty, what have I turned into? On the ride home it occurred to him that the best thing to do would be to drive off one of the cliffs and crash his mother’s car into a ravine. It would solve a lot of problems. At the same time, he suspected, he probably didn’t even have the courage for that.

This quote to me very represents the very best part of the book: the almost tangible despair and inner turmoil in the main character, whose life has been shaped by bullies of all kinds.

With respect to the portrayal of bullying and the impact it can have on a person, October was great.

What didn't work for me was the execution. The story felt rushed, most of the characters were a bit two dimensional, the plot and characters choices felt at many time ludicrous, and there were some other writing choices that made me either groan, roll my eyes, or want to heave.

Sure, this was a novella and had limitations of length to contend with, but to me the story just felt rushed and trying to do too much.

Not for me.