“What was done in there, in that dark horrible place, should have stayed buried. And no good will come of them digging up any more of what’s down there.”
Following her attendance at a lecture and opening exhibition, a journalist, Katherine (“Kat”), is on assignment for Devon Life and Style monthly to write an article on the “extraordinary finds at the Brickburgh cave,” “used thirteen thousand years ago.” It is a “British site that signifies a formal occupation, including burials across the centuries” filled with bones, both human and animal, tools, carven images, flute-like musical instruments, and other artefacts, discovered along the rocky coast of South Devon. Archeologists exploring and excavating the caverns determine “the inhabitants of the Brickburgh caves were engaged in a systematic, industrialized practice of nutritional cannibalism” with the “cranial vault of some victims… of particular importance.” Going to the site with Kat is her boyfriend, Steve.
Helene is drawn to the rocky cliffs and caves along the Devon shore to retrace the final steps of her brother, Lincoln, after receiving eerie and mostly meaningless recordings of odd noises some of which “suggested that it might possess both human and animal origins” he made by inserting a microphone through rock fissures. The last recording he made near the recently discovered caves is dated two weeks prior to his initial disappearance and apparent, unexpected, out-of-character suicide at the age of thirty by jumping “from the Severn Bridge.”
The lives of Kat, Steve, and Helene, like those of many others, will never be the same following lengthy excavations of the caves in Adam L. G. Nevill’s latest novel, THE REDDENING (2019).
One of the many unique characteristics of Adam Nevill’s writing is every novel he has written is different from the others. That said, for THE REDDENING he returns to a type of horror he championed in what is arguably his most popular novel of all, THE RITUAL (2011)—folk horror. The author of the “Folk Lore” web site writes, “Folk horror is a sub-genre of horror fiction characterised by reference to European, pagan traditions. Stories typically involve standing stone circles, earthworks, elaborate rituals or nature deities. While the genre is not overtly concerned with Christian ideology, frequently used terms such as 'demon' and 'devil' appear to associate folk horror with Christian demonology. However, while many stories will initially imply that menacing forces are Satanic, the same forces are often found to pre-date established Christianity. Folk horror is discordant with Neopaganism, in its portrayal of magical agencies as rarely (if ever) benevolent.” In an October 2019 interview Adam Nevill declares, “I wanted a legacy of isolated folklore to actually reach back sixty thousand years, and beyond, and deeply into prehistory itself… with a strong element of cosmic horror in which vast swathes of time and space are suggested by the locale and the aesthetic. So [THE REDDENING] was most certainly folk horror but with a definite cosmic horror angle too. It was to be a savage, brutal and genocidal folk legacy, one of industrial slaughter, and not something that involved flowers, maypoles, saucy rhymes, wenches, or the Green Man… There was no corn dolly, no wreath or totems on my mind; I wanted something earthier, more bestial and stranger that still might find a place in modern festivals, witch-wives and folk magic.” With THE REDDENING Nevill definitely accomplishes his goal.
The opening of THE REDDENING helps prepare readers for what they are about to encounter. The author’s writing style is comprised of carefully composed words and sentences which are not only highly descriptive, but bring to life the paradoxical “raw and wild beauty” of a locale which inspires “awe.” Before Kat, Steve, and Helene are introduced, Nevill gives readers a shocking scene of brutality above and beyond the grounds of the caves—a kind of visceral violence readers will encounter throughout the novel. The amount of effort and craft Nevill has put into the writing of the novel before the final production of THE REDDENING is evident. So is the artistry behind the story’s plot.
THE REDDENING is a tale of monumental collisions. Kat is in collision with her personal past just as Helene is in collision with the suicide of her brother. Both are looking for answers and relief. Ironically, both of their fates become quite interconnected and not always in good ways. The ancient past is in collision with the modern as it becomes apparent that much more than ancient bones and relics have been disturbed inside the Brickburgh caves. The supernatural is in collision with modern day corruption and criminal activity as the owner of the property above and beyond the network of caves, a former rock star, greedily builds an empire of his own and will stop at nothing to achieve success. The lives of those ancient people who lived in the caves and those living today along the Devon shore are in clash as rituals long believed to be dead and ludicrous are kept alive by people who still believe in the power of those rituals which they insist must be maintained. By the novel’s conclusion, all of nature: the earth below, its inhospitable surface with deadly cliffs and crags, barren ground, and decayed human structures showing even more decay than the relics and mysteries of the newly opened caves, and the unfeeling and deadly sea itself, are all in variance with each other and mankind. Because of all of the discord, evil abounds.
Nevill makes use of and proves his mastery of plot as he manages the many threads which make up the carefully woven plot of THE REDDENING. Suspense and mystery abound throughout THE REDDENING as Nevill leaves readers no choice but to follow him deeper and deeper into a labyrinth of impending doom. There are a number of movie audience-like moments when the reader is likely to gasp, “Don’t go in there! Don’t do that!” fearing the worse as characters they have come to feel are real and care about (especially the two female leads) either make perilous decisions or find themselves in hell-wrought situations with the author always in command of what will happen next and often producing surprises for the reader. All of these elements, so vividly brought to life, are bound to get under the reader’s skin, leaving them desperate for a conclusion, but one they may also be frightened to confront.
The final chapters of THE REDDENING are filled with non-stop, fast-moving action and revelations. Some portions are bloody and violent. Some are purposefully ambiguous, almost Lovecraftian at times, producing a fearsome impact. Some are heart-touching. At the end of the novel as an added bonus, Adam Nevill provides an afterword: “Story Notes: About This Horror” which gives readers some very personal insight into how THE REDDENING began to take shape in the author’s inspired imagination. All in all, THE REDDENING is horror fiction at its captivating best.
The author of the previously cited Folk Horror web site writes, “British writers of supernatural fiction such as M.R. James, Arthur Machen, L.T.C. Rolt, Robert Aikman, Alan Garner and Algernon Blackwood have produced some of the finest examples of folk horror. Each writes of huge, menacing and ultimately unknowable forces which besiege mankind.” One day, to that list of authors the name of Adam Nevill will likely be added—if it shouldn’t be already.
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Secrets Cults and Ancient Evil
So guess who is going to be reading a lot more from Adam Nevill?I want to start by talking about the actual book, because presentation means a lot to me. Of course that jacket art is amazing, but I always remove the dust jackets when I read a book, and the cover underneath is a brilliant red with a pleasant grainy feel. My copy was sent straight from the author, and he included a bookmark with the title on it, and a very cool inscription in Latin. The book is the perfect size for holding a hardcover (slightly smaller than most hardcovers) and the font is gorgeous and very pleasing to the eye. It also smells amazing. I sniff new books as well as old, and this one is very nice. Let's just say, before I even started reading I was impressed.Kat is a lifestyle journalist who lives near Brickburgh, in Devon when suddenly a cave is discovered in the Brickburgh area near the sea. Helene is a single mother who is drawn to Brickburgh to try to understand why her brother would take his own life. He spent a lot of his time recording natural sounds in caves and other areas, and his last recordings were taken near a farm that is very close to the newly found cave.Both women meet and are suddenly thrown together when their separate investigations put both of their lives in peril. The cave and the atrocities the archeologists find inside it turn out to be much more than anyone could image. There is an ancient entity in the vast network of caves in Brickburgh, and those who serve that entity will stop at nothing to keep the two women from snooping around.THE REDDENING starts out as a slow burn that soon turns into a nightmarish gorefest. And I love it. The things the characters go through are thoroughly intense and absolutely nail biting for the reader. I read so much horror that I constantly expect any author to just kill all of the characters and be done with it, so no character is too precious from my point of view. I was sincerely on the edge of my seat for a good part of this book, and I had no idea how Nevill was going to wrap the whole thing up. I enjoyed this book so much and cannot recommend it enough to all horror loving readers. Pick this one up for the gore, high tension, and superb writing.
