Reviews

I would say 3.5 stars for me. It’s not a bad book, and it even has an interesting and a unique storyline, but there were parts that I questioned and was kinda just meh about it by the end.

simsetry's review against another edition

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Absolutely wrecked me. The addiction and themes of loss were too damn real.

Content Warnings

ionsquareatkreuzberg's review against another edition

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5.0

Clay McLeod Chapman’s name is one I’ve heard mentioned often in discussions about up-and-coming horror authors that seem to bounce around social media and horror-based websites, yet I'd never read anything by him prior to this novel. Accordingly, I wanted to get my hands on a copy of this to see what the buzz around him was and is all about. I was not disappointed at all—Ghost Eaters is a haunting examination of addiction, blind loyalty, abusive relationships, and dealing with historical trauma in the context of present-day America, and it's all bundled neatly into a distinctly twenty-first century ghost story.

The story is simple on the surface—we follow a group of college-aged friends who are dysfunctional in every sense of the term (sleeping with one another and then regretting it; constantly doing drugs together; trespassing in cemeteries for the thrill of it; manipulating others to go against their best interest for selfish needs, etc.), and readers learn the place of each individual friend very quickly. There’s Silas, the undisputed leader of the group and master manipulator, and the three others, who are essentially his blind followers, bending to his every whim.

We focus on one of the three followers, Erin, throughout the novel, and we soon transition into post-college adulthood with the friend group after an enthralling prologue, one that’s set in a cemetery and features breaking into a crypt, tombstone-set sex, and heavy drug use (in other words, the perfect kind of horror mixture). Over the course of the first third of the novel, we learn where the four friends end up during the first few years out of college, and it reads like a typical millennial set-up—none of them seem happy with their jobs, some of them are still being supported by their their parents, and one of them is spiraling in a world saturated with hard drugs and alcohol. We see that Silas seems to have gone even further down the addiction pathway than when he was in college, including to the point where he’s homeless in the present day of the novel, and we watch as he seduces Erin into giving him a place to stay after he's evicted from his apartment due to drug-related issues. Soon enough, Silas succumbs to his addictions, and he passes from our world to the next--and, that’s when the novel really gets going.

From there, it’s a deeper dive into Erin’s personal world, and we watch as she starts to succumb to the same issues that plagued Silas in the last days and weeks of his life. The novel becomes extremely dark, both literally and metaphorically, very quickly, and we watch as Erin’s life crumbles to pieces, her sense of reality unclear at times and fogged with the haze of madness that comes from consuming a new drug that Silas had found prior to his death. But that’s the catcher—it’s not just any kind of drug, one that gives you a high and then leaves you out to dry. No, this drug is something else entirely—it allows you to see ghosts, and not just the ones that you want to see, but every ghost lurking nearby. Erin soon learns that Richmond, Virginia, the primary setting for the novel, is full of many angry, vengeful spirits, and she starts to slowly lose her mind as she battles both the spirit of Silas and her inner demons, struggling to right the ship of her life and stop the downward slide her path has set her on.

The plot of the book is highly entertaining, and it kept me engaged the entire time. The story was clear, easy to follow, and packed full of moments and imagery that were genuinely creepy and unnerving. I’m one of those people who gobble up horror fiction but who also aren’t that scared by most of it, but there were scenes in this that gave me genuine goosebumps, which I attribute solely to Chapman’s stellar prose and descriptive abilities.

That leads me to the real highlight of the novel—Chapman’s characterizations of the four main friends seem so real and fully-formed that, even if I found every single one of them despicable for varying reasons, I still wanted to read on and know what ended up happening to them. Erin is the stereotypical white millennial twentysomething, living off her parents’ money and only getting a well-paying job because of Daddy’s connections, and Silas is the typical burnout. The other two friends fall into rather cliched roles (one of them ‘just wants to get out and make something of herself’ in New York City, and the other one is blindly devoted to Silas even after his death while working a menial full-time job to pay the rent and nothing else), but Chapman somehow makes us feel connected to them in such ways that we care about what their trials and tribulations. Even if I thought Erin was a selfish, repulsive character throughout most of the novel, she still had depth to her and a well-roundedness that so many other horror anti-heroes seem to miss, and I never once was bored following her journey. We see her struggle with the fact that she knows she needs to flush Silas and his influence out of her system, and the very fact that she can’t do so makes her all the more real.

Chapman’s exploration of Richmond and its historical roots, both pre- and post-Civil War, add even more depth to this story that I think a lot of novels in the Southern Gothic subgenre miss entirely, and it helps elevate it to an entirely different level. Instead of just bombarding us with information about Richmond and all of its historical atrocities (Chapman touches on Native American displacement and genocide at the hands of White Europeans, slavery, corrupt business owners, etc.), he finds way to weave the stories and individual histories into the action of the story itself. For example, in one scene, we see Erin arrive for her first day of work at her new job. Unbeknownst to her, the building sits on the site of a factory that burned down with many blue-collar workers stuck inside it, and their spirits now roam the building seeking some kind of vengeance, a form that’s virtually impossible because of their invisibleness to the material world. Silas’ drug gives Erin the ability to see them, even if it’s the last thing she wants, and we learn about the tragedy accordingly as they haunt and assault her. A version of ‘show not tell,’ Chapman includes these kinds of historical examinations throughout the entire story that adds a richness to it to such a degree that Richmond itself seems to become a character.

One last thing—Ghost Eaters fits neatly into the fungal-horror subgenre, and it explores tropes of the subgenre much better than even a heavy hitter like Mexican Gothic does. I won’t say anymore at risk of spoiling some of the plot, but if you’re into this subgenre, know that you’re in for a treat with this one.

Overall, Ghost Eaters is a tremendous novel, and I tore through it in two sittings over the course of two days. The plotting is perfectly paced, the characters are three-dimensional, and the explorations of addiction and how individuals struggle to wash their systems of toxicity, both emotionally- and physically-based versions, is next to none. Chapman has created one of the best horror novels of the last few years with Ghost Eaters, and he’s now become an automatic-buy author for me whenever his next book comes out.

Thanks to NetGalley, Quirk Books, and Clay McLeod Chapman for the digital ARC of Ghost Eaters in exchange for an honest review.

greywolfheir's review against another edition

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dark mysterious sad fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

literarylifter89's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

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