Title: All the Fiends of Hell

Author: Adam Nevill

Release date: April 2nd, 2024

*Huge thank you to Adam for sending me a digital ARC!*

We’ve been living in a saline world, filled with blues and yellows and a hint of orange. Life goes on. Prices trend upwards, viruses spread and bombs drop on the innocent while all in the name freedom or oil. As we tread water, some of us scream to our reflection each morning in the mirror that ‘things will get better,’ while others look skyward and ask for their savior to return and smite the sinners, praise the followers.

And then…

In the distance…

A redness. Carried on the shoulders of pure, unadulterated dread.

Two years since the seeping terror that was ‘The Vessel’ was unleashed, England’s master of shudder-inducing horror, Adam Nevill appears over the horizon. Bathed in brine and doused in the redness of the bay, he too looks skyward. And what he sees is something none of us will want to have come into focus.

When I first heard about this book – in Adam’s always phenomenal newsletter – I was instantly hooked. An Alien Invasion horror novel from the mind that brought us the blackest books released over the last few decades. Stack his novels ‘Last Days,’ ‘The Ritual,’ ‘Lost Girl,’ ‘Under a Watchful Eye,’ ‘Cunning Folk,’ ‘No One Gets Out Alive,’ ‘Apartment 16,’ and ‘The Reddening,’ and not only do you have close to 4000 pages of fiction, but you also have an encyclopedia of how to literally scare a reader to death. Add in ‘The Vessel,’ and his short fiction, as well as ‘The House of Small Shadows’ and you’re looking at 7500 pages of bone-bleaching blackness. I haven’t yet read ‘Banquet of the Damned,’ (fixing that shortly), but I’ll assume it is no less bleak.

Nevill has found his path, carving it out of the hillside that runs along the ocean’s shore. He walks the line between the old guard – those who were dialogue driven and used that more to guide a story than plot (see Ramsey Campbell, Peter Straub) – and the new guard, where each chapter ends with cliff hangers and we see a psychological torment infused throughout (see Paul Tremblay, Andrew Pyper).

Knowing Nevill would be crafting a story that would be equal parts exhilarating and traumatic (as plucked from a response he gave to someone, I think it was on FB?), I went in knowing I’d purposefully be taking my time. I wanted to savor this. Let each sentence and paragraph ferment in the back of my throat like I was some fancy connoisseur of expensive cheese. Nevill doesn’t just write. He paints. He creates. He unleashes bloody fucking hell on the characters and he doesn’t care if the reader makes it to the end alive. His novels suggest he prefers they don’t.

What I liked:  The story begins in the middle. Karl, sick with the flu and heartbroken over his failings and his divorce, is stuck in bed, mentally deciding on whether it would be better for him to kick this bug and get better or to just go to sleep and never wake up. He’s done with life. Then, during the night, he hears bells and, looking outside, sees his neighbors walk out into the streets, under the glowing redness of something from above, and they all ‘fall in reverse, skyward.’ This opening salvo, this five or so page introduction to this world was harsh enough that I paused here while reading. I put it down and went to another book. It unnerved me more than anything I’d read in some time. Actually, since I read ‘Under a Watchful Eye.’ Nevill’s writing is as close to uncomfortable as The Devil’s Note is on the piano. That tritone that creates such vestibular dissonance that you wish it stop immediately.

But he doesn’t stop there. Karl awakens the next day, not believing the events were real. It was a illness-induced dream, he tells himself. But everyone else is gone. All, except the few stragglers he finds who were also sick when the bells sounded. His neighbor with a disease. A couple kids who also had the flu. A senior’s home with elderly ill patients.

Nevill delivers a few lines that are so real, so uncomfortable that I understood just how perfectly he chooses his phrases. One such moment is when Karl finds all of the neighbors doors are open. Unsettling, yes. But, he wants to check on his sick neighbor. Going to her door, he calls out. No reply. Then he pauses at the front door. He can’t bring himself to go inside. It’s an invasion of someone else’s personal space. Much like a vampire needs to be invited in, Karl feels the same. When he sees the husband at the top of the stairs he forces himself to step over the threshold.

A similar moment happens not long after. Karl takes his car and drives. He comes to an intersection and the light is red. Still, he sits and waits until it turns green. Even with no other cars around and the reality that he is one of the few remaining survivors in the world, he follows those norms of society that are now ingrained in each of us, not wanting to ‘break the law,’ even though no laws will ever exist ever again.

From here, Nevill transforms the book from a straight forward ’28 Days Later’ style narrative – something is breaking glass, flickering in the light of the day, but forming more fully when redness comes across them (but not zombies!) – into something very similar to his masterpiece, ‘Lost Girl.’ Karl, who had his marriage dissolve over the ‘are we having kids’ argument, finds two kids, brother and sister, Jake and Hayley, and takes them under his wing. They immediately all seem to need each other and he wants to protect them.

This is throw on its head when a stranger shows up. The reader will immediately hate this character, and rightfully so. Nevill splits the terror here. 50% devoted to the red sky approaching and 50% devoted to Karl and Jake working together for a common goal. Survival. Retrieval. Vengeance. It’s a trifecta of perfection that Nevill delivers and he delivers it with glee. And each time we hear the haunting squeal of avianish harbingers, we clench our teeth and pray for survival. The horrors, as they’re come to be known as, were done so very well. Nevill uses a ‘less is more’ approach with them, giving us spurts of description but backing off before any of the edges are fully formed, any of the details fully filled in.

The final quarter of this novel is a straight sprint. Even if – like I was – you want to savor it, you won’t be able to slow your pace. It’s as though you’re on a train track and the brakes have failed. We get the sea, we get the horrors growing and approaching and we get Karl and Jake doing whatever needs to be done to keep Hayley safe, and then Karl going above and beyond to get them all to survive.

They very common saying of ‘red sky at night, sailors’ delight, red sky at morn, sailors take warning’ will no longer apply to anyone after reading this novel and having to digest all of the nightmares that’ll come along with it.

Nevill, in the afterword, discusses how H.G. Wells ‘The War of the Worlds,’ was an inspiration to writing this, but I’d also say that there’s a lot of the movie ‘Signs,’ here and not in a bad way. I personally love that movie, and if you’re of a certain age, the scene were Joaquin Phoenix’s characters watches the footage of the creature appearing still haunt’s you to this day. No, the similarities rest in the set piece and the characters. Within this book we have four characters that are prominent throughout, with a fifth arriving later. Much like in ‘Signs,’ were it starts with just the family at the farmhouse. Karl and the kids move along, trying to survive, while the family hunkers down in their home when the aliens arrive. But it’s all about survival and keeping the kids alive and trying desperately to find a way to make it through these horrid events that they’ve found themselves in.

What I didn’t like: From start to finish this novel is a heavy read and as the story progresses, we get more layers, like a weight being added to a bag you’re carrying. The one bit I wish we’d seen more of or learned more of were the things called ‘the left-behinds.’ I won’t go too far into it, as I’m trying to stay spoiler free, but they were so intriguing, I was hoping something would be shared about the how and why.

Why you should buy this: Well, firstly, if you’re a Nevill die-hard, you’re buying this. Secondly, if you live for ‘alien invasion horror,’ you’re buying this. BUT – if you’re not sure of either, buy this to follow one of the best characters I’ve read in some time – Karl. Karl isn’t your typical ‘hero.’ He often contemplates if it would be easier on him if he just killed himself and let whatever will happen, happen to the kids. He wonders if they’d be better off if he leaves them. He’s a real character. Someone who doesn’t believe he can possible save them, but wants to try because he does care, even if he won’t admit it to himself.

Nevill’s storytelling is always a joy to read, even if the books are filled with some of the bleakest moments you’ll ever experience. The master only gets better and with this newest march towards a total red eclipse, we all must bow down and chant skyward, that we abide, and let the redness wash us away.

5/5