Talk us through it
Five ordinary people are dragged into a maelstrom of giant monsters and all out horror as Wellington descends into Dante's fifth circle as a result of an aquatic horror beyond description. If this is sounding slightly too Lovecraft for comfort then don't worry there's a decidedly kiwi aesthetic being brought to bare, with of cause H.P overtones. If giant monsters rampaging across the Wellington cityscape aren't enough to present difficulties for our protagonists, then there's also the menace of what can only be described as zombies ready to grab the unwary and give them up to ravenous humanoid/monster hybrid thingies. Did I mention there's also an outbreak of some sort of epidemic amongst the surviving population? Ready to head into Hurricanes' territory and see how a kiwi writing collective managed to cram about four books into one?
Review"I think we should get out of here." - Robin The Event presents something fairly unique thus far in the ScaryMind's library. Besides being the first look we have taken at our friends across the ditch in terms of literature, it's also our first exposure to a collaborative novel from younger relatively unknown writers. I should note there's a heavy kiwi presence at ScaryMinds, pass the mint sauce bro, and we have covered one collective novel before. So how did I find The Event and should Robert Hood be getting excited over a Down Under Daikaiju (Giant Monster) novel?
The five writers involved haven't changed their individual style of prose to form a free flowing narrative style as was accomplished in say Edwina Grey's
Prismatic (Lothian Books 2006). There's very much an individual approach being taken by each Writer that presents The Event as a series of
almost disjointed sections with the style of writing ranging from relatively poetic to the standard hard grinding horror novel, (if such a style of writing
can be claimed to exist). Surprisingly this actual works within the confines of the novel as the plot is presented from five separate viewpoints in an
almost journalistic approach. You are not going to come out of The Event with the unhappy feeling that all the characters had been conceived by the
one author from various mix and match horror tropes. The characters within The Event is constructed from the viewpoint of the five main characters and doesn't follow the standard novel approach of pre-defined plot points driving the story along to a conclusion and resolution. Things clearly do happen, but they are fragmented and the reader almost has to pull the story together for themself from a series of disjointed memories and the situation the various characters find themselves. It's almost as if each Writer wrote a piece and then waited for their fellow collaborators to add their own pieces before continuing with the next piece. It's pretty free flowing stuff but remains fresh from first page to last page. The only slight issue I had with this approach was with some of the developments simply being confusing till explained after the fact. For example it appears we had a sort of mythical Maori God rising up to defend the City from the aquatic menace, but how exactly this came about isn't fully explained or explored. Of course it could be argued that events are on too massive a scale for individuals to take full scope of what is going down. A comparison could of course be made to Cormac McCarthy's The Road (2006) in what caused the current situation and the ongoing effects of that causation are of less importance than how the characters react and grow as people within the confines of the situation. I'm going to jettison myself out of this paragraph as we are running the risk of getting slight too much into "criticism" territory and away from "review" country. The actual mixture of horror elements is unique with the odd gross out scene thrown in for the individual reader to enjoy or not depending on horro view. We have two Daikaiju, one barely described amphibian, the other humanoid like, sort of H. P. Lovecraft coming into full body contact with Mataku. What I'm going to describe as zombies, though that description could well lead to heated debate amongst diehard undead fans, of both the blind and sighted variety, (read the book to get the difference). Rounding out we sort of have human/monster aquatic hybrids with a desire for human flesh that puts Alexander Pearce to shame. The horror elements are well conceived and build upon each other keeping the reader on their toes as each new development occurs. I haven't been to Wellington in more years than I care to mention so some of the landmarks mentioned don't mean anything to me. But the rest definitely put the action in New Zealand's capital with fairly regular place names etc helping to ground the novel in a sort of alternative reality. Especially liked the Beehive going up in flames, I'm sure to the applause of Maori activists and anyone else without happy feelings towards Parliament and the corridors of power. Fingers crossed the leadership of the Young Nationals was caught up in the blaze. Sorry got off the beaten track there, in short the novel goes down in the everyday without exotic locations and dreamt up landscapes. Like the characters the setting of The Event is ordinary and recognisable to anyone who has ever visited the windswept City. Please note you don't need to have ever visited Wellington or be a supporter of the Hurricanes in order to get full enjoyment from the novel. I had a pretty good time with The Event and although confused as to what was going down at stages followed the overall story fairly easily. Yes Mr Hood I would recommend this one to ya. From a technical viewpoint a good Editor may have been worthwhile getting onboard as there are a few grammatical errors in the novel. Not as many as one of those pulp zombie books the Yanks are publishing faster than you can say "ring every penny out of the trend" but it is noticeable in places. I wasn't taken out of the story by this and most readers won't notice. In terms of packaging you get a very decent final product. The prose is well laid out with an easy to read font, sorry not that up on fonts so don't know which one is in use. Besides the cover images courtesy of Jes Fraser there are a number of additional shots thrown in throughout the book, which were appreciated and are of a pretty exacting quality. Jeremy Blandford from Wellington Daily Photo and Jenni Dowsett supplied the interiors. The Event is available either as a free pdf download or in paperback form at an affordable price of $8.22 (USD) Click Through. For those interested in following a book's progress there's also a blog site the Author's maintained during writing, right here. Full coverage kids full coverage.
ScaryMinds Rates this read as ... I'm rating this one a real hard seven. It's a bit ruggard around the edges in places but remains entertaining and
compulsive reading.
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