‘Haters’ spark humanity’s showdown

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 02/02/2019 (2763 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

David Moody, author of the wonderful and terrifying Hater trilogy, recently returned to that uniquely apocalyptic world with 2017’s One of Us Will be Dead by Morning, taking us back to the beginning of the saga, when half of humanity suddenly became filled with a murderous rage and began killing the other half. With new characters and a chilling new angle on the apocalypse, it was a brilliant reimagining of the Hater world.

Its sequel, All Roads End Here (St. Martin’s Griffin, 352 pages, $24), is even better.

Matthew Dunne, who narrowly escaped death in One of Us…, has spent weeks getting home, only to find that everything is different. His city has become a refugee camp, a final refuge for the survivors of the brutal war to band together.

Only the war isn’t over yet; the Haters have one final surprise in store for the Unchanged, and Matthew’s only hope to make it through the war’s final days is to put himself right in the line of fire.

Brutal and tragic but with an undercurrent of hope, this is a shining example of horror at its very best. Coming Tuesday, Feb. 12.

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Have you heard of Welcome to Night Vale? It started as a podcast created by Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Cranor, who soon spun it off into a novel.

Now there’s a new novel, called It Devours! (Harper Perennial, 368 pages, $21).

The book is set in Night Vale (well, duh), a place where the fiercely oppressive city council controls pretty much every aspect of life. It’s a kind of “step out of line if you’re brave enough” place.

Nilanjana, a scientist’s assistant, is curious about some weird stuff that’s been going on out in the desert outside town, but here’s the thing: as she digs for the truth, she could be getting too close to some of Night Vale’s buried secrets.

A thrilling mixture of horror, science fiction, and mystery, It Devours! is a fast-paced and wildly imaginative adventure.

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Imagine, if you will, that you’re 26 years old. An FBI agent shows up on your doorstep; he tells you that your father, the man you’ve loved and respected for as long as you can remember, has been arrested for the murders of 10 people — that he is a serial killer.

That is what happened to Kerri Rawson. In her memoir A Serial Killer’s Daughter (Thomas Nelson, 326 pages, $23), she takes us through her early years growing up as the daughter of devoted family man Dennis Rader, and through her later years — after she learned her father was the killer known as BTK (for bind, torture, kill).

It’s as much a story about Rawson’s gradual acceptance that her childhood was filled with lies as it is about the terrible things her father did. A haunting memoir, dark and frightening, but punctuated with moments of beauty.

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In Ted Bell’s latest Alex Hawke adventure, Overkill (Morrow, 672 pages, $11), the British superspy is determined to stop at nothing to rescue his son from kidnappers. Meanwhile, Russian president Vladimir Putin is desperate to escape from powerful men who want him dead, and to regain control of Russia.

When the two storylines collide, it is a violent and spectacular collision.

Bell is an energetic writer; despite its page count, Overkill feels lean (there is nary an extraneous word), and the story moves at a pace that is just shy of breakneck.

It would be ridiculous to call this the best book in the Hawke series, since they’re all excellent, so how about this: Ted Bell a better writer than most of his competitors, and Overkill is a splendid thriller.

Halifax writer David Pitt’s paperbacks column runs the first Saturday of every month. Follow him on Twitter at @bookfella.