The Hoard by Alan Ryker
My rating: 4/5 cats
this was great stuff, seriously. i liked Burden Kansas a scootch more because—come on—vampire western, but this one is great and manages to shudder the reader with the horrors of “the hoarding lifestyle,” compound it with an additional layer of grotesquerie in the form of supernatural parasites, and have it all wrapped up in this short and tightly-packed novel.
loved. it.
because i worry that i am a hoarder, i do. after i read Stuff: Compulsive Hoarding and the Meaning of Things, i had a couple of sleepless nights and some sobering self-examination sessions. to borrow a quote i used in my review for stuff, i have:
piles on sofas and beds that make the furniture useless, homes that have to be navigated by narrow “goat trails,” stacks of paper that are “churned” but never discarded…
but it is mostly books, for me. and that’s okay, right?? because when i read a book like the hoard, i realize just how much worse it can get, in terms of hoarding. garbage and newspapers and cats and their feces everywhere, plumbing unusable, floors rotted through…i am nowhere near this level. and yet at the same time, i understand this character: raised up poor, learning never to waste anything, finding clever uses for objects other people would see as “junk” because she has had to become creative in her poverty. and it is easy to get out of hand. and ryker manages to make the situation horrifying, but the character sympathetic. and that is tricky business.
like all the best works of horror, this one takes an already-scary situation that we can understand, like hoarding, and adds something to it that makes it even more chilling and awesome—in this case a creepy parasite that’ll get in ya and transform you into a violent host for your new blood-based organisms, and make you wanna burrow down in a warm dark smelly place until you pop and set all your “babies” free.
and he makes it work. i wholeheartedly recommend this author to you if you are looking for something good in the modern horror genre. because i have spent all october reading “spooky” books, and this one is one of the best. i will read anything this guy writes, forever.
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woo-hoo!! baby’s first netgalley approval!!! now i just have to figure out how to put the magic book onto the reader-thingie. will i be able to master technology?? wait and see!
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