Blood Red Sky Is Coming of Age Horror
I read horror all the time and write about a lot of it, but the more I read, the more I realize that usually with horror, shorter is better. There is obviously a lot of examples of good, long horror novels—It is one of my all time favorites—but sometimes a short intense horror book can pack just as much of a punch as something longer.
Blood Red Sky by Paul Kane is exactly the kind of short but intense book that grabs the reader by the throat and drags them, unrelentingly through the story until they come out on the other side broken, battered, beaten, but happy that they were given the opportunity to take a ride with the characters as the world changed around them.
There is a lot going on in this story in spite of its length, but it’s written to perfection. This is a coming of age story and, as I mentioned above, It is one of my all time favorite novels and Blood Red Sky has a lot of parallels with the King epic. The story follows a group of kids; teenagers as well as elementary school age kids. The idea behind the story is that all of the adults are gone and have been killed by these large monsters which our group of kids call trolls.
First of all, why are there not more books that feature trolls? Second, the trolls were awesome monsters and set up some very intense scenes in the book. But the trolls are merely a backdrop for the actual story which is the journey our group of kids have and the in-fighting that occurs in their small group as they attempt to survive in a world without adults helping them along.
While the trolls are awesome monsters, the high points in this book come as Kane creates characters that we care about and shows the relationships that a group of kids would probably have if adults were no longer around to guide them through life. The dynamic between the group of kids is what really sets this book apart from other post-apocalyptic books I’ve read.
If there was a downside to any part of this book (and I wouldn’t even call it a downside because it didn’t detract from the story in anyway) it was that what I assume was supposed to be the reveal at the end of the book was pretty obvious to me from the first or second chapter, so much so, that I went back to look in earlier chapters because I thought the idea had already been covered. It turned out I was just making an inference that turned out to be the correct one. But, as I said, knowing this near the beginning did nothing to take away from the story itself because the heart of it is the interactions between the kids trying to survive.
Blood Red Sky is a fantastic and intense post-apocalyptic coming of age horror novella that gives us a new monster instead of just the usual zombie fare. Kane is able to build a realistic world and characters that the reader cares about and wants to see succeed. It is very well done and I highly recommend.
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