Fiction Review: Seed by Ania Ahlborn

By Pamelascott

With nothing but the clothes on his back-and something horrific snapping at his heels-Jack Winter fled his rural Georgia home when he was still just a boy. Watching the world he knew vanish in a trucker's rear-view mirror, he thought he was leaving an unspeakable nightmare behind forever. But years later, the bright new future he's built suddenly turns pitch black, as something fiendishly familiar looms dead ahead.

When Jack, his wife Aimee, and their two small children survive a violent car crash, it seems like a miracle. But Jack knows what he saw on the road that night, and it wasn't divine intervention. The profound evil from his past won't let them die...at least not quickly. It's back, and it's hungry; ready to make Jack pay for running, to work its malignant magic on his angelic youngest daughter, and to whisper a chilling promise: I've always been here, and I'll never leave.

Country comfort is no match for spine-tingling Southern gothic suspense in Ania Ahlborn's tale of an ordinary man with a demon on his back. Seed plants its page-turning terror deep in your soul, and lets it grow wild.

THE SATURN'S ENGINE rattled like a penny in an old tin can.

This is my first time reading Ania Ahlborn.

Seed is crackling horror novel. I really enjoyed it. I'm impressed that there is a lack of gore in the novel. I hate it when movies and books have gore for the sake of gore when it has nothing to do with the plot. Some fairly gruesome things happen at the end of the novel but these scenes are well-written and creepy as hell. The whole book is creepy as hell, the kind of horror novel that makes your flesh crawl. Seed would make a fantastic horror movie. Seed ticks all the boxes - great setting, America's creepy deep south, well-rounded, well-written characters, unsettling plot, creepy stuff, lots and lots of creepy stuff - oh, and I was freaked out a lot reading this. I found some of Charlie's behaviour scary as hell. I'd have pissed my pants if I'd been around her and ran screaming into the woods. Seed is a fine example of a great horror novel. I thoroughly enjoyed it. I haven't read a proper horror novel in bloody ages. This novel reminds me of the movies Sinister and Sinister 2 (which are great and freaked me out a bit as well).