THEY HUNGER
Scott Nicholson
Scott Nicholson requested me as a friend on Myspace after being impressed with a person my age (21) reading Ira Levin and Richard Matheson. Being that the guy was cool enough to actually read my blogs, I felt I owed it to him to support his new book, THEY HUNGER, so when I saw a lone copy on the shelf at my Barnes and Noble, I instantly snatched it up and opened to page 1.
THEY HUNGER tells the story of a group of people in the wilderness of the Appalachian Mountains. One couple is a Bible-quoting arsonist who is running from the law after having bombed several abortion clinics along with his girlfriend. When a struggle between the FBI agents pursuing him and the suspect results in a bomb blowing a hole in the mountain, several flying monsters are unleashed from an abyss where they have lurked for centuries. Also in the area is a group of corporate assholes on a white water rafting trip who are caught up in the mix.
When reading the back of the book, I was instantly intrigued and couldn’t wait for a monsterous good time. What I got was more of an agents vs. arsonist through the woods story with a group of unlikeable corporate assholes thrown in the mix. Now, I’m a student of the Stephen King style of horror, so I certainly don’t mind lots of character background and realistic story to surround the horrific happenings, but one must balance it, and here the frame is far from leveled. The monsters show up relatively early on in the book, but they then disappear for a good ninety pages before finally resurfacing. Also, I found myself much more interested in the agent vs. arsonist plot than the corporate rafters who did nothing but bicker the whole time and took up a very large portion of the book). Nicholson seems to use the typical slasher framework for the rafters. You have your main "leader" with the dark past, your one girl in the group who’s into the main guy , the one-dimensional asshole prick who thinks of fucking the one girl and how much he hates every other character even when he’s in life-threatening situations, and we even get the stereotypical Native American tour guide to spurt lines about the creatures being from his people’s old beliefs. Halfway through the book, we even get a cartoony married couple introduced for several chapters that have I’M GONNA DIE SOON signs on their backs. In my opinion, Nicholson could’ve axed a shitload of pages and annoyance by editing the corporate characters out of the story completely, and made it a straight agent vs. suspect plot with a horror mix, as this was really the book’s strong point.
I found myself mostly interested in the arsonist and his girlfriend. I wanted to know why the girl would be with such a guy. Why would she help him? She was in fact the most interesting character in the book, particularly her backstory and growth at the end, which I think Nicholson handled very well. I also liked the character of the main agent who is on a mission to capture the arsonist after his partner is killed by the creatures while trying to apprehend him early on. I found myself contradicting myself. I was rooting for the cop, while still being very intrigued by his enemies. However, I could’ve gone without the conversations in the agent’s head with his dead partner (or is he dead?, which brings me to my next point).
When I read the back of the book, I was hoping for some THE DESCENT style fun of freaks of nature hidden from the world discovered at last. I loved these monsters. They were a blend of THE DESCENT with the wings of the Creeper in JEEPERS CREEPERS. They were very creepy in their description (especially when characters were seeing them flying recklessly above the tree line off in the distance! Brrrrr!), but they were downplayed throughout most of the story. And when it is finally revealed that they’re vampires, I was let down. I was much more hip to an undiscovered species vibe.
All in all, THEY HUNGER was an uneven read, with some great ideas, but miscalculations in where to put the story’s main focus. However, a genuine love for the genre and some good strong ideas and talent cannot be denied nor ignored. While I didn’t fully boogie to this one, I’m definitely willing to give Scott a second chance and check out some of his other work. I’m thinking THE FARM. You gotta love a farmland setting in horror! 2/4
