‘The Nest’ – Gregory A. Douglas (Valancourt Books)

I thoroughly enjoyed reading ‘Hellhound’, the other week, enough so that when it came round to last weekend, I knew that I wanted to read some more ‘when nature attacks’ horror. My ‘Guy N. Smith Shelf’ normally delivers on that front but I knew that I had a couple of other Valancourt books in that vein so went looking for whichever one I found first.

I will read Peter Tonkin’s ‘Killer’ one day but it was ‘The Nest’ that I found first and that’s what saw me through the weekend and yesterday’s commute to and from work. Bloody hell… what a read it was. Let me tell you about it…

It was just an ordinary garbage dump on peaceful Cape Cod. No one ever imagined that conditions were perfect for breeding, that it was a warm womb, fetid, moist, and with food so plentiful that everything creeping, crawling, and slithering could gorge to satiation. Then a change in poison control was made, resulting in an unforeseen mutation. Now the giant mutant cockroaches are ready to leave their nest—in search of human flesh!

‘The Nest’ is one of those horror books that is so good at what it does you speechless pretty much every chapter. Well, that’s what it did to me. Every time I thought it Douglas has taken things as far as he could, he goes and finds another way to turn your stomach with a mixture of cockroaches just being cockroaches along with just what they are capable of doing to a human body when the nest demands food. If you die in a horror novel, you can count on it being all close up and intimate. Douglas does not shy away from this approach at all when the cockroaches get going, in fact he seems to delight in it and fair play to him, he’s really good at it. Lets just say that the cockroaches are really good at finding the quickest way into the human body, and making a real mess as they go.

And fair warning, literally no-one is safe in this book. The danger is everywhere, all around, and a large number of very relatable characters (that I couldn’t help but get invested in, even the ones that I didn’t like) walk straight into that danger through no fault of their own… and don’t come back. This happens to children as well as Douglas is just as unflinching in describing their deaths as he is with the adults, just as it should be.

So, gruesome death can happen to anyone, at any time, but if that wasn’t enough for you, Douglas is constantly playing with the tension that we feel, knowing what’s coming while watching some poor sap stroll into ‘death by giant cockroach’. You have to experience it for yourself but I’ll just say that it’s masterfully done. I knew what was coming but I still had to keep reading and the payoff is worth it, every single time.

The only minor quibble that I had was Douglas using Hubbard and Wandstrom’s lectures to dump large chunks of cockroach information on us. It places the book in context, and these talks are interesting, but when you see what the rest of the book is doing, you can’t help but wish that the lectures would stop so that we can get on with the good stuff ;o) There’s a fine line between giving your reader a chance to catch their breath and stunning them with info-dumps. I’m not a hundred percent sure if Douglas manages it but to be fair, this could be as much my inability to sit through any kind of lecture without being distracted. Your mileage will inevitably vary.

Like I said though, this really is just a minor quibble. ‘The Nest’ is an excellent read and if you’re a horror fan who hasn’t read it, well… you really need to do something about that. If this is the standard of book that Valancourt are holding to, I’ll definitely be seeking out more from this line.

(And there's a movie too! I'll definitely be watching that...)