My Five Word TL:DR Review : Snappy, Lovecraftian Style Horror Story

Okay, I’m a maniac.  I was so enamoured by the description and the cover for Richard Kadrey’s Pale House Devil that I hadn’t noticed it was a novella – and you may know that short stories and collections don’t really work for me.  Well, on this occasion my atrocious grabby hands were on my side because I enjoyed this.  Of course I wanted more, but this has the feel of a taster almost, like Kadrey is extending feelers to see how his duo of killers for hire are received.  These two are great, and they picked up an addition along the way, a naive young woman who they automatically took to and wanted to help, which promises to give a really well rounded element to the story.  Seriously, I want more.  I hope that this is the start of a series.

Why this worked for me.

The writing is good.  And, given the length here it’s very efficient.  There’s no filler, just essentials, but the author manages with the minimum of fuss to breathe life into his characters.

Speaking of characters, I’ve described Ford and Neuland as hired killers.  My first thoughts were that they’d be difficult to like, but, they have a code of sorts and don’t fulfil contracts where they smell a rat – in fact this is the reason they find themselves in a spot of bother as the story begins and find themselves shunned from their normal community.  Now, Ford and Neuland are not your average pair.  Ford is land of the living, Neuland is undead, a Marcheur (not a dodo!)  The two find themselves moving further afield in the hope that things will calm down eventually and their little breach will blow over and this eventually takes them to the remote family mansion of Shepherd Mansfield who wants his ancestral mansion ridding of the monster currently residing there.

This particular ‘job’ is brought to them courtesy of Tilda, granddaughter to Mansfield, a young woman trapped by circumstances.

I won’t say too much more about the plot.

In other news – I really liked that the cosmic creature living in the Mansfield family mansion has its own POV.  Strangely enough, Kadrey manages to make you feel sorry for this creature.  It’s out of time and place and possibly would be a small fish in a big pond in it’s own world so landing in our strange world, where ‘soft’ humans make tasty snacks it suddenly finds itself a big fish instead – plus there’s something of a twist which makes you have sympathy for this eating machine.

Ultimately. Fast paced, darkly humorous and twisted.  Fingers crossed that this little sampler expands into a huge tentacled beast.

I received a copy through Netgalley, courtesy of the publisher, for which my thanks.  The above is my own opinion.

My rating 3.5 (rounded to 4) of 5 stars