Suffer the Children
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4.3 • 4 Ratings
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- $19.99
Publisher Description
In the vein of Justin Cronin and Guillermo del Toro, this terrifying apocalyptic horror novel imagines a world where every child dies—then returns hungry for blood, forcing their parents to make impossible, devastating choices.
It begins on an ordinary day: children around the world are dying. All children, everywhere—a global crisis beyond any parent’s worst nightmare. Then, a miracle beyond imagining: three days later, they return. Shattered mothers and fathers see their sons and daughters happy and whole once more, playing and laughing as before—but only when they feed. They hunger for blood…and they can’t get enough upon which to feast. Without it, they die again.
How far would you go to keep someone you love alive?
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A few honest chills breathe a bit of much-needed life into this apocalyptic horror novel, which otherwise relies on one-dimensional characters. DiLouie (The Killing Floor) veers from his standard zombie fare to the more domestic question of how parents will react to children rising from the dead. This stellar premise is at first genuinely devastating as all the world's children succumb to Herod's Syndrome, and then undeniably hair-raising as they all return to life. But when their parents learn that the children must drink blood in order to stay alive, they enter a plodding cycle of needing blood, getting blood, and being horrified by their own actions. Further hamstringing the effort are DiLouie's inelegantly sketched cast. David, a sympathetic doctor, and his disturbingly fervent wife, Nadine, are tolerable, but sly gender coding contrasts stolid, God-fearing housewife Joan and her hyper-masculine husband with Ramona, a shrill single mother who is giddily intimidated and aroused by her male employee. Religious overtones and lots of gunplay will further limit the appeal of this disjointed novel.
