Little Heaven

Product Information

As such, I was really not all that surprised when I came to experience the same ennui with Little Heaven. Full of downtrodden inhabitants, who appear unhealthy and emaciated, and children who are demonstrating pretty cruel behaviour, Little Heaven tells the story of a settlement that might actually be a little closer to Hell than Heaven.

When Micah Shughrue wakes up to find his daughter missing, he’s terrified that a darkness from his past has come to claim her, so he enlists his former colleagues Minerva Atwater and Ebenezer Elkins to go back to the place that nearly broke them 15 yea It’s hard to know which would be less disturbing, and to Cutter’s credit, he doesn’t give us an easy answer. I’m passively trying to read more horror that isn’t written by the typical authors I go to for it, and Nick Cutter continues to be a great new source. A place where things never stopped growing, implacably and endlessly and insidiously so, pushing up through the ground and twining around whatever was closest to them, strangling it. So many bloggers I visit regularly and trust had trouble with this one so at least I don’t feel like an oddball for not liking it.

Brotherfollows a teenager determined to break from his family’s unconventional—and deeply disturbing—traditions. I'm wondering if that would be better to satisfy the mysterious, spooky religious cult craving instead. While Little Heaven was extremely dark and disturbing (two of my favourite qualities in a horror novel), it was also very long-winded. It's a character-driven tale in which none of the characters were developed enough for me to give a solitary flying fuck about any of them. In fact, the novel does tend to borrow from Stephen King’s classic but only from a structural point of view (time periods going forward and backward).

There are a lot of good things about this book, but many other things that just did not work for me. The rest is totally Cutter, which may eventually surprise some or disenchant others, depending on your patience.

I wanted to like Little Heaven so much, not only because it sounded so intriguing but also because I am a fan of Cutter’s The Troop. The first thing that stands out in Cutter's first two books is that the plot is held together by brilliantly vicious ideas of horror. Through it and its underlings the nature of evil is touched upon as well in really interesting ways, though the plot is never overburdened by philosophical waxing. The term “old school horror” also seems to get tossed around a lot when discussing this book, which I’d say is pretty spot on.

Eb's sense of humour, Minerva's attitude and Micah's humanity were all contributing factors to this. I was actually terrified and I needed to look at something happy and full of light for a little while. I've been asked to set this up by The Powers That Be, and I'm more than happy to, although I can't really say much about myself seeing as Nick Cutter doesn't exactly exist—he's a pen name.The religious retreat seems like any other such encampment created by a bunch of Bible-thumpers led by a charismatic Reverend Jones-type huckster; mostly decent if naive and easily led folks seeking an escape from the sins of Babylon (in this case, appropriately, San Francisco, the city from which they fled). Even early on, though, Cutter shows that he’s doing something different with the story, hinting that our characters didn’t just gain nightmares and trauma from that 1960’s encounter; they’ve gained something awful, some Faustian deal that’s hurt them more than helped. Then we are treated to Micah's current life where he wakes up one morning to find his daughter Petty has been kidnapped by a Long Walker and only he and his gang of misfit bounty hunters know what must be done to save her.

Overall though, this tale's creativity and imagination beckoned to me like a bright star moving across the sky, and I willingly followed it-right down into the dark below the big, black rock. Cutter has clearly, to say the least, been influenced by the King of Horror, and Little Heaven borrows liberally from titles like IT and The Gunslinger saga. Sure, there's supernatural forces at work, and a lair in which the monster resides, but I didn't feel like the similarities were overpowering. And while this is usually a good thing in the stories I read, it almost went a little bit too far for me.If you are looking for something dark and disturbing…in the best way possible of course, Little Heaven is the book for you! but this one is characterized by an old school horror that is too old school for my tastes, edging into that lovecraft territory i just do not dig. Which all comes down to why I’m sure this is simply a case of “wrong book, wrong time” or “Sorry, Little Heaven, it’s not you, it’s me. Long back story (which is really extended), the three are hired to go to a religious camp/cult deep in the New Mexico mountains to check on a kid taken there with his father (the person hiring them is his aunt). Cutter did a pretty good job of fleshing out all three mercenaries in terms of how they interact with each other and how they would react in the situation they find themselves in.