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A review by aaronj21
8114 by Joshua Hull
2.0
I’d like to thank NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC of this title in exchange for an honest review.
This anodyne horror novel largely fails to deliver on its intriguing premise but also shows glimmers of promise and may very well be entertaining to readers other than myself.
8114 is the story of true crime podcaster Paul Early, a man of dubious morality and suspect sincerity who is drawn back to his small hometown and the cursed property he grew up on after a personal tragedy. While trying to find concrete answers for the bizarre and tragic instances that begin to pile up around him like dead leaves, he starts another podcast about the events and reconnects with the people and town he left in the rearview decades ago.
The set up was promising and I was excited to read something by the screenwriter for Glorious, a bizarre but very original film I enjoyed. However, I found reading this novel somewhat frustrating and not at all satisfying until the final pages. The podcast segments of the novel were the best parts, and should have been utilized more. The author makes overly liberal use of shockingly violent hallucinations to the point where they quickly lose their punch. The writing itself is clunky and hard to follow at times despite the simplicity of the prose and any character other than Paul may as well be a cardboard cut out. I found myself wishing time and again that this had been a short story, a novella, or an episode of a show, basically anything other than what it was trying to be, a novel.
The book is bogged down principally by being almost exclusively an internal monologue from our main character Paul, this wouldn't be such a bad thing except that Paul’s thoughts are solely of the most surface level, matter of fact variety. Thoughts the reader has as well or can easily infer, not much that gives us any new information or context. I.e. "This is terrifying", "I’m sad this person died", "I feel like I’m losing my mind", etc. etc. The overall effect is of someone repeatedly breaking a cardinal rule of tale spinning which is to show, and not just tell.
Some of the horror was genuinely frightening but here too the novel gets in its own way. There are too many elements that never really lead anywhere so that in the end it feels like a bit of an incoherent mess rather than a thematically harmonious series of supernatural scares driving to a central point or threat. In this respect the book may have benefitted from closer editing. Limiting the horror elements to either Paul’s hallucinations, OR the Circle of Light, OR the demonic forces only obliquely shown, instead of juggling all of them, may have given time to better develop each aspect and made the story more cohesive and powerful.
Some genuinely grotesque horror elements and an absolutely stunning twist towards the end of the novel couldn’t quite save it from being largely uninteresting, if inoffensively so. However, I would encourage others to see for themselves. I don’t think the book is fundamentally without merit and my reaction to it may be largely due to personal preferences and taste.
This anodyne horror novel largely fails to deliver on its intriguing premise but also shows glimmers of promise and may very well be entertaining to readers other than myself.
8114 is the story of true crime podcaster Paul Early, a man of dubious morality and suspect sincerity who is drawn back to his small hometown and the cursed property he grew up on after a personal tragedy. While trying to find concrete answers for the bizarre and tragic instances that begin to pile up around him like dead leaves, he starts another podcast about the events and reconnects with the people and town he left in the rearview decades ago.
The set up was promising and I was excited to read something by the screenwriter for Glorious, a bizarre but very original film I enjoyed. However, I found reading this novel somewhat frustrating and not at all satisfying until the final pages. The podcast segments of the novel were the best parts, and should have been utilized more. The author makes overly liberal use of shockingly violent hallucinations to the point where they quickly lose their punch. The writing itself is clunky and hard to follow at times despite the simplicity of the prose and any character other than Paul may as well be a cardboard cut out. I found myself wishing time and again that this had been a short story, a novella, or an episode of a show, basically anything other than what it was trying to be, a novel.
The book is bogged down principally by being almost exclusively an internal monologue from our main character Paul, this wouldn't be such a bad thing except that Paul’s thoughts are solely of the most surface level, matter of fact variety. Thoughts the reader has as well or can easily infer, not much that gives us any new information or context. I.e. "This is terrifying", "I’m sad this person died", "I feel like I’m losing my mind", etc. etc. The overall effect is of someone repeatedly breaking a cardinal rule of tale spinning which is to show, and not just tell.
Some of the horror was genuinely frightening but here too the novel gets in its own way. There are too many elements that never really lead anywhere so that in the end it feels like a bit of an incoherent mess rather than a thematically harmonious series of supernatural scares driving to a central point or threat. In this respect the book may have benefitted from closer editing. Limiting the horror elements to either Paul’s hallucinations, OR the Circle of Light, OR the demonic forces only obliquely shown, instead of juggling all of them, may have given time to better develop each aspect and made the story more cohesive and powerful.
Some genuinely grotesque horror elements and an absolutely stunning twist towards the end of the novel couldn’t quite save it from being largely uninteresting, if inoffensively so. However, I would encourage others to see for themselves. I don’t think the book is fundamentally without merit and my reaction to it may be largely due to personal preferences and taste.