The Calling doesn't make you wait long before laying it on the table for you. This is not a book for the faint of heart, Robert Swartwood seems to be telling you, but more than that, this isn't necessarily the book you expect, either. This is a book that opens with a recent high school graduate awakening to find that his parents have been butchered in the room next to him while he slept, and to find a mark which certainly seems as though he'll be next. But it's also a book that follows that scene with one in which that graduate grapples with the notion of God in a universe where such things can happen, and allows him to vent his rage at any deity that could allow it to happen. That's the first sense that The Calling isn't quite what you expect; it's a brutal, nasty piece of horror fiction, one that moves like a rocket and never really lets up once it's started. But it's also something more complex, diving into theology and spiritual warfare in an interesting way, all while never turning into preaching or cheap proselytizing. (Indeed, I'm not sure if Swartwood is a believer himself, or merely using the ideas for a horror novel, but it really doesn't matter to the quality of the book.) The Calling does some fascinating things over the course of its story, most notably in a graduation sequence that finds our hero seeing things in a very different way than he might have expected. If there's a shortcoming to the book, it's that, once you realize what's going on in this world, there's little in the way of surprises from then on out; there are a couple of interesting reveals (and a particularly nasty one near the end), but by and large, The Calling sets up its story and then unfolds pretty directly from there. But that's not really a bad thing, not when you have this interesting of a story to unfold, and not when it's told with this great pace and unrelenting tension. Swartwood knows how to stage a climax or a showdown, and knows the strength of keeping things brief (this is a man, after all, who's written a lot of "hint fiction," which are stories of 25 words or less), which helps the story ever keep from slowing down, and leaves you constantly asking questions. It's a gripping piece of horror, and if it doesn't quite become the book I expected from that brutal beginning, it's to the book's credit that the direction it does go is so interesting and unusual that I didn't mind at all.
- Josh Mauthe
- Josh Mauthe