Reviews

I accidently read this series out of order, not on purpose, but more of a happy accident. I had seen the movie of “The Woman” in a much-edited edition on The Chiller Network, and was intrigued by the story. Then a couple of years ago I read, Ladies Night, also by Mr. Ketchum. I remembered The Woman and only then decided to hunt up the book. Imagine my surprise when I got it and realized it was the last book in a trilogy entitled “Dead River,” so long (and frankly pointless) story short, although Offspring is the second boo in the series, it was the last one I read. What makes it so happy, is this is by far and away the best book of the series. There the same cannibalistic gore, but with much needed character development sprinkled in. It was a pleasure to see the characters of Amy and especially Claire, grow and strengthen as characters throughout this harrowing night of terror.

At its heart Offspring is a story about what a person will do to survive. Even the Woman, is only trying to keep her family and herself alive. I as a reader may not approve or condone the actions of the inbred cannibalistic cave dwelling family, but I can surely understand the will to see ones’ family and self live and prosper as they see it. Unfortunately, they met up with Claire and Amy who also felt VERY strongly that they and their family wanted to survive. To me this foreshadows the third book, The Woman where our cannibalistic female lead actually becomes the protagonist.

I enjoyed this novel quite a bit and glad I took the time to hunt it down on interlibrary loan.

alexandrabree's review against another edition

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4.0

I think an omnibus of these books would be great. They are short reads. I like how it was 11 years later (so many sequels pick up days or minutes after the first book) loved the ending, liked the middle, a few too many repetitions for me. But still amazing

mjtucker's review against another edition

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dark mysterious tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

2.75

sofeeeee's review against another edition

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4.0

I enjoyed this book, it is set 11 years after the OG book so has a shared character or 2, full of gore and storyline but just didn't enjoy as much as the OG book and I don't really know why, it may be worth a re-read in future to see if my opinion shifts.

kayannmar's review against another edition

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5.0

A pretty damn good sequel

I still enjoyed the first book more but this was a pretty good sequel, not nearly as brutal as the first book. I think because I just read the first book I’m comparing them a little too closely. Still a 10/10 excellent book.

modernzorker's review against another edition

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4.0

More like 3.5 stars, but GoodReads doesn't do half-marks, so I'm being nice and choosing to round up.

Let's start off by saying Off Season is one of the most brutal, unrelenting, zero-fucks-given novels, never mind the horror moniker, I've ever read. Ketchum's prose churns forward in the manner of a narrator divinely cursed to relate everything happening, no matter how seemingly mundane or intimately horrifying, to the reader. The reader, because of just how perfectly Ketchum nails this narrative voice, likewise feels compelled to listen, even as the litany of atrocities perpetrated against this group of perfectly ordinary and undeserving individuals rises to levels of barbarity unseen since the Spanish Inquisition held its final auto-da-fé in the public streets. In the end, you have little choice but to be impressed with the spectacle because shit like that just ain't supposed to happen. You're also going to feel like kind of an asshole if you finish it. Even though Ketchum was the guy who thought it all up, you're still the rubbernecking gawker who leered all the way through the exhibition.

"Takes two to tango", as the saying goes, and you just willingly danced with the devil for two hundred pages.

So Off Season ends, you close the book, and you have to wonder how, if at all, Ketchum could follow up something like what you just read. Offspring answers the question people didn't realize they were asking. And while a decade has passed, more or less, since the savage incident in Dead River chronicled in Off Season, it's also elapsed between when Ketchum penned the first entry, so you might be wondering if maybe Ketchum had any trouble slipping back into the mindset which produced one of the most notorious literary offerings of the twentieth century. If this is what's worrying you, let me assuage your concerns: if you're wanting more of what you got the last time, Ketchum's happy to supply you with several hundred more pages of man's inhumanity to man (or maybe that should be Woman's inhumanity) in backwoods Maine.

Much like Off Season, Ketchum spends the first third of the book introducing the players-to-be. This time around, the focus is David and Amy Halberd, a pair of well-to-do software developers who have made their fortune programming The Woods Are Dark, an ultra-violent adventure game which, to quote Ketchum, is to the PC what Super Mario Bros. is to Nintendo. Since The Woods Are Dark has made Doom levels of cash for the pair, they've decided to work more remotely and moved to rural Maine to get away from the hustle and bustle of the city. Three months after the birth of their daughter Melissa, they're the very picture of a successful, nuclear family.

Joining David and Amy on this adventure are Amy's friend Claire, and Claire's eight year old son Luke, who have come to stay with them while Claire gets back on her feet after Steven, her abusive husband, split, leaving Claire on the hook for all the debt he's racked up over the last few years. But we know Claire can't get off that easily, and sure enough, a few dozen pages in, Steve's called to let them know he's on the way to talk to Claire, to try and patch things up between them. He'll be there that night.

But Amy and David will be having more visitors turn up unexpectedly this evening. What's about to descend upon them will make misogynistic, abusive Steven look positively normal. The Woman, the lone survivor of the clan from Off Season, has spent the intervening decade rebuilding her family from the ground up. Breeding alone hasn't been enough, so she's looking to supplement the feral brood with some new blood, and little Melissa is the target of her new forcible adoption policy.

* * * * *

Offspring spends more time developing the cannibals as characters, which isn't surprising since it has 100 more pages to play around with than the first book. Most of the ones from Off Season never even had names, and they were led by a patriarch so feral and savage that there was little for Ketchum to relate about their particular predilections. They hunted to eat, they liked to eat people, and Ketchum spent the back half of the book after the initial siege of the cabin showing where and how they lived in the cave system overlooking the coastline. I get the feeling Offspring was written partially to rectify this particular criticism, because we get to know not just The Woman, but also the half dozen or so other members of her group who all have names and specific purposes. Off Season's horror comes from the explosive assault by humans so divorced of their humanity they are essentially a force of nature, red in tooth and claw. Offspring's horror, by contrast, comes from the realization that The Woman has tamed and bent that animalistic ferocity to her will, instilling a cunning human instinct alongside that feral aspect which she can direct to terrifying ends.

This new brood plans, plots, reconnoiters, and prepares for their mission, rather than relying on simple brute strength and surprise the way they went the first time around, and the ploy is chillingly effective. They understand how to prey on their targets' instinctive humanity. And, of course, David and Amy fall for it immediately because, after all, who wouldn't?

But then, Ketchum ups the ante by introducing Steven into the mixture.

While the menaced group from the first book were all more or less likable people, Steven is, by contrast, a complete asshole. This is a guy who has just committed cold-blooded murder a couple of states away, and is now driving to Maine to try and win back his wife and son. He, like the cannibals, is preying on her instinct to want to set a good example, to not keep him out of his son's life. He, like the cannibals, is willing to exploit any opportunity to his advantage. He, like the cannibals, is willing to do anything, no matter how distasteful, to get what he wants.

Steven is the wild card here, and Ketchum knows it. This guy could wind up saving the day, or he could make the situation ten times worse, and because we know it, this ratchets up the tension all the more. It's impossible to say that what Ketchum ultimately does with Steven is all that surprising, but I will say that just when you think Ketchum's run out of ways to screw over his victims, he drags yet another psychological torture implement out of his bag in search of new flesh to carve. The Woman really wants Melissa, and she will go to unimaginable lengths to obtain the infant.

* * * * *

All that said, I have to say Offspring never quite approaches the visceral carnage that Off Season danced through like a kid playing in a blood-filled sprinkler. While it was unclear who, if anyone, would survive at the conclusion of the first book, Ketchum isn't quite so cagey this time around, and the body count, while still impressive, reaches nowhere near the magnitude or height of its predecessor. You'll have a pretty good idea who will make it through the meat grinder early on, though expect a couple of good head fakes along the way.

Offspring has teeth, don't get me wrong, but if you're hoping for the same type of "holy shit, did he really just go there?" gut punch you got from Off Season's first primary character death, I've got to admit you won't find it here. There's plenty of Ketchum's violence and gore, but it feels just a bit more restrained this time around. By the time this book came out, in 1990, Ketchum had established a name for himself in the horror field. Maybe the mental and psychological fortitude required of him to delve into the Sylvia Likens case in order to complete The Girl Next Door one year earlier drained the reservoir, and if so it's certainly understandable because, holy geezus, that book you guys . . . , but it feels like Ketchum's narrator grew something of a conscience. Awful things still happen to (mostly) decent people, but it still feels different, like the author attached a filter this time to catch anything truly heart-rendingly awful before it splattered into the pages. It would be a filter with some mighty large holes, but it still caught the biggest pieces of nastiness and held them back.

Even with such a filter, Ketchum is still Ketchum, but Offspring is not the heart-attack-inducing, gut-wrenching, drag-your-soul-through-the-sewers slog that Off Season and The Girl Next Door are. This is not a kinder, gentler Jack, but it is a Jack who gives us a happier ending than should be expected from the sequel to the book with one of the most down-beat endings ever to grace the printed page. I struggled through every chapter of Off Season, which took me the better part of a week to read my first time through. By contrast, I breezed through all 292 pages of Offspring while ensconced comfortably in my bed over the course of about three uninterrupted hours because the throat punch I was expecting never came.

The Girl Next Door proved Ketchum's ability to psychologically abuse a reader was not a one-off, lightning in a bottle deal he captured with Off Season then subsequently lost. But despite some truly vile things happening to some people, even the fairly sadistic opening sequence still feels restrained. A lot of Ketchum's work feels, to me at any rate, like something the guy didn't necessarily want to write, but nevertheless was compelled to write anyway. There are demons, both personal and otherwise, splayed out all over the pages of virtually everything else I've ever read of his. Offspring is the sole exception -- this feels like a book Ketchum not only wanted to write, but also didn't feel like he had to write. No psychological tormentor sat on his spine and forced him to pen this one. He did it because he could, and he enjoyed it, and there's nothing wrong with that. It just feels different.

Don't go in expecting Off Season II. Go in expecting Offspring. Don't read the spoilers. You'll have a great time, because this one won't stick with you. Plus, that hat-tip to Richard Laymon made me smile every time. The woods are, indeed, dark . . . but this time around, you'll see the light if you can make it through the forest.

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