Curse of the Pigman - Small Town Horror at its Best
I got married in Vermont and have a lot of family that live there. I have made many trips up and down route 89 which runs north through Vermont all the way to the Canadian border. It’s a small two lane highway that weaves in and around the mountains as you travel north. There is one point when you’re driving on 89 that you look left and up and see the top of a mountain and look right and down to see the valley below. It’s only then that you realize your’re driving along the side of a mountain. As you’re cruising along and looking down into the valley below you see a small town nestled between all the green, lush mountains. I don’t know if Asher Ellis was thinking of this same spot when he came up with the town of East Valley or not, but it’s what I pictured the entire time I read his novel Curse of the Pigman.
Small town horror is such a great sub-genre of horror and this book epitomizes this sub-genre. There is a secret that the locals know about and they do their best to keep it quiet but at the same time, someone from the outside unknowingly uncovers the secret and the town is doomed.
No matter what you like, this book has you covered. There is a secret cult, human sacrifice, cannibalism and a demon to top it all off.
The best parts of this story, without giving too much away, are the action sequences. The action starts with a hurricane moving into the area of East Valley and Jason, who has just moved into town, finds himself without power and not even unpacked yet. The hurricane sends a tree through the roof of his house and Jason is forced to leave to find help. This starts his adventure and the action doesn’t really stop from that point on. Jason interrupts a sacrifice that will keep the town safe from the demon that haunts it. I’ve never lived in Vermont, but I’ve spent enough time there to know that Eillis managed to get the feel of small town Vermont out in his story. He was able to relate what it would be like to live as an outsider.
If there is a downside to this book, it is simply that I could see the twists and turns coming before I got to them in the story. I still wanted to know what happened to the characters, but felt as though the end was pretty much what I expected it would be.
Overall this is a fun horror novel that kept me entertained and turning the pages. I would absolutely pick up another book by Asher Ellis again.
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