Suffer the Children

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.

April 15, 2014
The premise of this chilling horror novel by the author of "The Killing Floor" is a parent's worst nightmare: one day, every child who has not gone through puberty simply dies. One moment a child might be playing, and the next--gone. The world is grieving beyond measure, and the press calls the phenomenon Herod's Syndrome. But then, days later, the children return to life, merely climbing out of their mass graves. The joy of the parents rapidly turns to confusion when the children become sluggish and unresponsive, and then to horror when they realize that the only thing that brings their kids fully to life is for them to ingest human blood. VERDICT The ghoulish premise is given nuance by focusing on the reaction of ordinary parents both immediately pre-Herod's Syndrome and after the children return changed. This vampire variation of recent resurrection fiction (Jason Mott's "The Returned") will be especially terrifying for any guardian, as they ponder what lengths they might go to for their children's sake.

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