The last thing Nick Morrow expected to receive was an invitation from his father to return home. When he left rural Nebraska behind, he believed he was leaving everything there, including his abusive father, Carlyle, forever. But neither Nick nor his brother Joshua, disowned for marrying Emilia, a woman of Asian descent, can ignore such summons from their father, who hopes for a deathbed reconciliation.
Pedersen maintains a sense of doom, building suspense and expectation ... Pedersen weaves eerie sentences together from archaic language, and the novel builds with a gruesome, anxious energy as the author reveals its connection to Chinese mythology ... The novel’s final pages are a wild frenzy of beauty, vengeance and viscera.
Pedersen is a great writer with a strong voice and an obvious love of language that manifests itself in the use of uncommon words like “eidolon” and “demesne" ... When it comes to trauma and atmosphere, the writing shines ... When it comes to romance, the writing turns a little melodramatic and florid ... Luckily, the tension and violence outweigh the romance, and the result establishes Pedersen as a future master of speculative fiction.
Tense, lush, and laced with beautifully engineered dread, this is a special book ... Pedersen joins the ranks of horror’s great prose stylists ... There’s a remarkable restraint in Pedersen’s story structure, yet the book never feels like it’s spinning its wheels.
