Gilbert M Stack, $0.99
Horror, 2019
Gilbert M Stack really knows how to reel me into his story, I tell you. In the first chapter of The Devil’s Caverns, Deputy Joanna Donovan walks into Theodore Roosevelt Middle School, located in what Joanna would call the backwater of all backwaters, Hadrian’s Well. When she sees some students skipping biology teacher Evan Drake’s class, she assumes that these kids—being kids in a backwater hole, after all—are probably skipping the sex ed class because, you know, these are these people.
Oops, it turns out that many of these kids and their parents have no qualms about sex ed classes at all. They are skipping the class on preternatural biology.
Oh! It dawns on me, this is a horror kind of urban fantasy instead of, you know, horror horror.
It’s a nice bait and switch, and I like it, because for a while, the author has me thinking that the story is going somewhere, and then he skillfully leads me to somewhere else in a way that amuses me as much as it makes me want to salute the author for having got me good.
Unfortunately, the rest of the story is on the rocky side. I’m fine with it, and I’m certainly intrigued by the basic premise of a preternatural monster expert and a by-the-book cynical cop going on monster hunts together—no, no, don’t say… oh alright, there is something Mulder-and-Scully-esque about the whole thing that gets to me and makes me want to read more. But that’s perhaps a conversation for the future, should I read more entries in this series and get a better idea of the dynamics between Evan and Joanna.
Here, these two meet for the first time when there is a dead body out there and a possible hungry nosferatu on the loose. He’s knowledgeable and stubborn enough to think that he can basically break away from the team to do whatever he thinks is right—coughMuldercough—while she is constantly disapproving of all these maverick rules-breaking ways of his because she’d rather play by the rules—coughScullycough.
The plot is a basic, simple one, and I have no problems with this at all. However, I feel that the author overplays his hand when it comes to Joanna basically disapproving of every freaking thing in this story and, worse, constantly being proven wrong or getting upstaged in the process. This makes Joanna come off like a shrewish twit, and that’s not exactly a nice way to introduce me to the female protagonist in a planned series. Evan Drake is supposed to this charismatic, charming guy who is willing to take matters in his own hands, but even then, he comes off as a chaotic stupid nimrod at times, running off from the others in a potentially dangerous situation just because he can. Both he and Joanna are terrible in communication. She gives orders and expects people to follow them without explaining why they should care about what a newcomer city girl thinks and wants, and surprise, basically nobody listens to her. Evan is a loose cannon and a terrible team player, and it’s a good thing that he has plot armor or he’d be killed soon enough. He’d likely get others killed, more like.
Despite the two of them basically gritting their teeth at one another all the time, the author wants me to believe that these two will go on a date after this story. Oh come on, really? Maybe a shag in a room somewhere, I can believe; it’s way too early to sell me some romantic undercurrents between these two, when I can barely see any hint of attraction in this story. Let nature takes its course, and let it be done naturally and organically, please.
The rest of the story is okay, although I wish the author hadn’t been so obvious about the designated damsel in distress so early in the story. I am tempted to give The Devil’s Caverns three oogies, if only to break the two-oogie pattern of the last few book reviews. I don’t want to be so predictable, after all! Still, while I do enjoy parts of the story, and I am intrigued by the premise enough to purchase the next title in the Preternatural series, this one is tad too flawed to stand on its own two feet like a champ.
Oh, and given the current climate on the Web, which dictates that nobody is allowed to like anything that doesn’t agree with them even a little, I should point out that this story doesn’t have a so-called progressive bent at all. In fact, there is one not-at-all subtle jab at a current political position held by the left side of US folks. Such folks that cannot tolerate any dissension from their personal points of view may want to skip this one.
For everyone else that likes Mulder-and-Scully type of stories, this one may be worth checking out, especially since it’s going for cheap. Just keep in mind that the story may be better off viewed as an introduction to something potentially amazing in the future, rather than an awesome standalone tale in its own right.
