From an acclaimed horror writer, a chilling tale of blood-hungry children who rise from the dead in this innovative spin on apocalyptic vampire fiction.
Suffer the Children presents a terrifying tale of apocalyptic fiction, as readers are introduced to Herod’s Syndrome, a devastating illness that suddenly and swiftly kills all young children across the globe. Soon, they return from the grave…and ask for blood. And with blood, they stop being dead. They continue to remain the children they once were…but only for a short time, as they need more blood to live. The average human body holds ten pints of blood, so the inevitable question for parents everywhere becomes: How far would you go to bring your child back?
Suffer the Children, as the title and cover suggests, is a pretty creepy read. Let’s face it kids can be creepy, anyone who has ever seen a horror film or read a Stephen King novel can tell you that. So that’s pretty much everyone, right? Kids coming back from the dead and craving blood…totally up there on the creep-factor, so naturally I knew I was going to enjoy this book.
I wasn’t disappointed! I absolutely loved the beginning of this book. The plot was quite slow, but it was all about the characterisation for me so it didn’t drag at all. DiLouie’s style very much reminded me of King in that way. The writing was engaging and it was a pretty quick read.
Suffer the Children follows several eclectic families from the days that lead up to ‘the event’ where every single pre-pubescent kid in the world just falls down dead. There’s a lot of grief, obviously, and horrific but necessary actions that follow, such as bin men having to collect the bodies, and dig mass graves. And from there, it just gets worse…because they come back!
One of main things I liked about this book was the underlying irony of it. You’d probably think there’d be nothing worse than burying your child, but then you find out that they’re all coming back to life and you have go and dig them up. As a doctor you’d think doing some autopsies on the deceased kids would be for the greater good, until you realize that they weren’t actually dead until you cut through the rib cages and removed their hearts.
It doesn’t take long to figure out that these families would have been better off if the children didn’t come back to life, because keeping them alive is going to destroy them and the world as they know it. But other than that, and the whole philosophical look at how far would you go to keep your children alive there wasn’t a great deal to this book.
If push came to shove, she’d let her kids eat her.”
Although it was enjoyable, unfortunately there was nothing surprising about Suffer the Children; I found it a bit predictable. I felt like the greater story to tell would be the one of what happened after the events in this book (maybe they’ll be a sequel, who knows). I also think DiLouie missed out on some great horror moments, such as hearing about one of the protagonists killing his dog to feed to his son almost as if in passing rather than finding out about it at the time. I wanted more gory details! But I’m weird like that.
If you like your horror with a message instead of gory details then I definitely recommend you give this a try!
Favourite Quote: “It struck her then, that in most of the world there wasn’t a single human being who believed in Santa Claus”
Disclosure?: I received a copy from the publisher/author in exchange for an HONEST review
Title: Suffer the Children
Author: Craig DiLouie
Details: Paperback, 352 pages
Published: May 20th 2014 by Permuted Press
My Rating: 3/5
