Title: Death Spell

Author: David Sodergren

Release date: May 1st, 2025

*Thanks to David for sending me a digital ARC of this one!*

Over the years of his writing career, we’ve watched Sodergren go from strength to strength while blurring genre lines. His most recent release, late 2024’s ‘Summer of the Monsters’ was perhaps his most tame book yet, more a YA/dramatic/suspense/monster novel than anything resembling gore/terror/horror. It was a magical turn, one demonstrating how widely he can cast his net and took it a step more ‘mainstream’ than even his hit release ‘The Haar.’

Since then, he’s publicly revealed that Carl John Lee was his pseudonym and with that, outside of ‘Satan’s Burnouts Must Die!’ this is the most Carl John Lee book of all of David’s novels. In fact, I’m certain that Uncle Carl influenced this book more than Boris did and for that we’re all the better for it.

What I liked: The book throws us headfirst into the fire with the prologue. We meet Ron, who has resorted to a grotesque act in order to ascend the company ladder. It will blow readers away with the repulsiveness we get so early on, but it does two things – sets the tone of how Sodergren has written this and sets the extreme level at ULTRA-EXTREME. You know quickly that this one’s not for the faint of heart.

We then fast forward in time, Ron is a successful business man, father and will do anything for his daughter. Which is the crux of the entire book. She’s scorned by her former lover, a movie star, so Ron takes her and his head of security to the darkest reaches of a jungle to find the black magic shaman who helped Ron become successful.

Sodergren does a great job of infusing this book with tons of random pop culture quips and jokes – a particular Meatloaf gag that extends throughout had me chuckling each time – and as the deal is made and the reality of what that means starts to take hold, this goes from a ‘romance-splatter’ novel to a straight up 70’s extreme movie novelization. Time and time again, just when you think Sodergren can’t go further, he does, and to great effect.

The final quarter of the novel is a smorgasbord of trying to undo what’s undoable and seeing if anyone can even survive. It is cinematic, vivid and visceral and has some really great moments of moral questioning for our main characters. It pushes the envelope right to the brink of toppling over the edge, but manages to keep the story from falling to the wayside.

What I didn’t like: At the beginning, our martial arts movie star, Nick, seemed destined to have a larger, more prominent role and his character seemed fully formed. Sadly, he becomes an afterthought not too far in and I thought that was a disappointing turn, as he could’ve had a fantastic character arc.

Why you should buy this: I mean, if you love David’s books, you’ll be buying this, but if you’ve not read anything from him, I think this is an excellent place to dive in and discover why so many people rave about his books. From start to finish this is unrelenting and ultimately filled with so much ultra-violence that you’ll wish you’d kept a body count. Or, if this was film, they’d be measuring how much fake blood was used to execute these scenes in all their pulpy glory.

Another fantastic book from one of the best writers out there, this was gloriously macabre!