Suffer the Children

In grim tones, narrator R.C. Bray exposes the creeping horror of DiLouie's novel. Throughout the world, Herod syndrome gradually converts children into bloodthirsty parasites, leaving their parents to source blood for them or allow them to die. Suburban Michigan serves as the epicenter of DiLouie's psychological pressure cooker. As families alter their morality to fit the new world order, Bray's fatalistic narration edges listeners toward uncomfortable revelations and unspeakable acts done in the name of parental love. His descriptions of back alley bloodletting will have listeners cringing in all the right places. Bray's voicings are weakest with children--their squawking or whining timbre fails to engender the necessary pathos. Nonetheless, DiLouie's ominous mood mounts as Bray layers conflicting motivations into a seamless whole. C.A. 2015 Audies Finalist © AudioFile 2015, Portland, Maine

March 3, 2014
A few honest chills breathe a bit of much-needed life into this apocalyptic horror novel, which otherwise relies on one-dimensional characters. DiLouie (The Killing Floor) veers from his standard zombie fare to the more domestic question of how parents will react to children rising from the dead. This stellar premise is at first genuinely devastating as all the world’s children succumb to Herod’s Syndrome, and then undeniably hair-raising as they all return to life. But when their parents learn that the children must drink blood in order to stay alive, they enter a plodding cycle of needing blood, getting blood, and being horrified by their own actions. Further hamstringing the effort are DiLouie’s inelegantly sketched cast. David, a sympathetic doctor, and his disturbingly fervent wife, Nadine, are tolerable, but sly gender coding contrasts stolid, God-fearing housewife Joan and her hyper-masculine husband with Ramona, a shrill single mother who is giddily intimidated and aroused by her male employee. Religious overtones and lots of gunplay will further limit the appeal of this disjointed novel.