Michael Boatman’s The Revenant Road is another Drollerie Press novel, one which by rights I should stay impartial about, but that’s tough to do when the novel is just that good. This one straddles the line between horror and dark fantasy, as it has a lot of elements in it that live under the aegis of urban fantasy these days. For my money, though, it’s more properly horror.
Obadiah Grudge is a best-selling horror author, but for some time now he’s been discontent with the lack of life and depth in his work. But when his long-estranged father is killed, he discovers a huge reason for the flatness of his writing, one he’s been in denial about for most of his life: there are real monsters in the world, and it’s been his father’s job to hunt them.
Now that his father is dead, that job is to be his.
As you might expect, Obadiah fights this fate tooth and claw for a while. As you might also expect, he possesses certain powerful and highly rare abilities that mark him to be hunted by the monsters once tracked by his father. Eventually, though, he joins forces with his father’s partner to stop a string of supernatural killings in Seattle, where he must not only face his destiny, but also the thing that killed his dad.
This is all around a solid read, and I got a particular snicker out of the monsters gunning for Obadiah taking on the forms of critics who’d previously savaged his work. If you’d like to check out the book for yourself, it’s one of Drollerie’s print titles, so you can ask your local bookstore to order it today! Four stars.
