Reviewed by pamela on
The characters were completely flat and two dimensional, and Lukavics' world building leaves a lot to be desired. Her language choices felt forced (there are only so many instances of characters referring to each other as 'sister' or 'daughter' a reader should ever have to take), and instead of building a time and place through her prose, she instead chose to use a superficially tacky form of 'Ye Olde Englishe' to let us know it was set in the past.
There was absolutely no tension, and very little build up of suspense through the plot. I can actually count a total of three horror filled supernatural occurrences in which the protagonist was involved. Each of these, rather than being scary, were so over the top and sudden as to be almost laughable. The plot didn't hang together, and without any character development it just felt like one ridiculous occurrence after another.
'Last Winter' was mentioned constantly through the novel, with very little information given as to what actually happened. When we do find out, it turns out that Lukavics seems to know very little about the spread of infection or mental health in confined spaces. She's given her novel a religious overtone, and yet not chosen to go anywhere with it other than having her characters sing hymns and reference the devil.
This whole book needed a lot more development. There was the potential for a frightening and fascinating novel in there somewhere, but there was simply not enough character exploration and world building. Lukavics certainly had the space to do it; the novel was short and the text was extra large to give it the appearance of a normal sized novel.
The entire plot can be summed up in three bullet points:
1. Characters move house
2. Overnight and for no reason, the mother turns into a demon.
3. The Prairie did it...
THE END
Reading updates
- Started reading
- 21 August, 2015: Finished reading
- 21 August, 2015: Reviewed