The Unblemished

My wife got this book for me on a whim...well done, dear. An incredibly well written, deeply moving...and deeply disturbing apocalyptic read. The characters are well written, as is the dialogue and the story moves at a steady pace without hurrying itself- all somewhat rare traits in horror writing. The author is all-together an exceptional writer...some passages read like poetry....very gruesome poetry. Williams has the talent to become the best in the horror writing business as I have not seen an author who can mix the bombast grotesque with subtle detail and emotion quite like this. Just beware...this book is not for the squeamish. Some chapters and passages were particularly disturbing, if not hard to read....and impossible to forget. If you like your horror wet with blood...look no further.

Ambitious, beautifully written, wearing its influences proudly on its surface but with an energy and intensity that is purely original. Barker, King, Cronenberg, Thomas Harris, Ramsey Campbell...all seem to peek out of the text at times. But it also reads like a horrific, hallucinatory take on one of John Wyndham's apocalypses, or Keith Roberts's The Furies. It's not completely successful...some parts of the basic premise never clicked, and London's relation to the global picture felt thinly sketched, but it's still the most entertaining big horror novel I've read in quite a while.

It's ridiculous no one's reviewed this yet. The Unblemished is the kind of book that doesn't much get made anymore, as the author notes in the afterward: it's a homage to the 80's horror novel. There's some old quote, 98% or 99% of what's published is terrible. In Horror, 99.9% of what's published is terrible. This is not. I do sense the book wanted to be bigger, longed for the author to show the sympathetic side of his characters, that they, the flawed heroes, the flawed monsters, wanted to show a kinder, gentler side between the unrelenting pages. Go out and buy it and read it. Just be forewarned when you end up in a bar, and everyone is just pretending to drink, and instead of natural conversation, the dialogue of your fellow drinkers seems planned out, artificial, and every time you look away, they look at you. Just hold up the book and hope they nod and wait for the next meal.