Hole-y mole-y

‘Chasm’ – Stephen Laws

In the ordinary town of Edmonville a tremor hits, followed by a second devastating tremor, then darkness. The next morning, the survivors discover that most of the town has disappeared into an enormous crevasse.
As they struggle to survive, one by one people start to disappear without trace.

Not one to read horror fiction very often, I picked up this book after reading it for the first time a verrry long time ago. I have not since read any further books by Laws but did enjoy this horrific-dystopian adventure where the end of the world is very much experienced by a handful of survivors.

The novel follows a group of people who survive a strange sort of earthquake. It’s strange because earthquakes don’t happen in the middle of America. Secondly, the earthquake kills most of Edmonville and has left behind a very broken world – literally. The land has fallen away into columns of earth; in between these islands, a yawning black chasm descends into nothingness. And if that wasn’t enough, it soon becomes clear that what lurks in the depths is evil itself… evil that is willing for more recruits.

The characters in this book that make up the group of survivors all are rather different. I like that Laws has created such unique personalities as this made them easier to track and to remember their back story. Despite this, the main protagonist is Jay because about half of the chapters are narrated from his perspective, as if he is writing a diary. The remainder are third person, so readers do get a rather balanced story that shows what the other characters are up to. In all honesty, there were no survivors who I really liked and none that I despised; they were all fairly “average” and I was instead more keen to see how this stranded nightmare would end.

Plot developments kept me guessing throughout and I liked the suspense that Laws creates. Gradually it becomes clear that there are people beyond the survivors and, as I have come to expect from similar works of fiction, have descended into levels of depravity and animalistic behaviour. Some of the scenes described were particularly gruesome but they all work within the genre of this narrative. In some cases, I think there are several crime/thriller books have more toe-curling details!

Whilst this was not a mind-blowing story, I did enjoy reading something a little bit different. I particularly liked the plot twist at the very end as it was completely unexpected. I’m glad that I do not read too many horror books as I think it would lessen my enjoyment; as it stands, this isolated narrative was fully appreciated and one where I was hoping for the good characters to survive and find their way out of this disturbing wasteland.

Would I read more books by this writer? Undoubtedly my interest in Laws’ writing has been piqued. I’m certainly interested in continuing to look through his catalogue but, if they remain in the horror genre, they certainly need to be spread out between other books! This novel felt well-written and I liked the developed story-line. It had some really rich descriptions that made the horror all the more vivid and the fear that the characters experienced felt palpable. In conclusion, I think it would only be right to try and explore more works by Laws in the future.

Book Bingo 2021 category completed: Released in the previous century.