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A review by the_coycaterpillar_reads
The Exeter Incident by David Watkins
4.0
The Exeter Incident felt fresh and exciting. It was otherworldly and gripping. Watkins genius is his ability to strip away the veil, unleashing the horror contained within.
The Exeter Incident was a fantastic foray into creature feature/cosmic horror. Have you ever questioned why life is so boring? Why nothing interesting ever happens? Well, The Exeter Incident might just make you thankful for your nice dull life. You can’t buy excitement from Amazon, but you can buy The Exeter Incident and it equates to the same thing.
At the heart of this novel is hope. If humanity does nothing else right, it’s their blind faith that everything will turn out well that does give them their one redeeming feature. Watkins examines what happens when all seems lost, and when hope is all that, they have left. When everything is stripped back what are they left with?
David Watkins had the claws sunk right in. I was hooked. Told in multiple POV’s we see the psyche of characters put under a microscope. We see the true character of someone when they are on the edge looking into a dark pit. It stirred a sense of humanity in me – I felt sad, I ached for some to survive and conquer the depth of evil that reside under Exeter’s ground. I freaking love indie horror and this is up there with some of the best I’ve read, tension, pacing, character work, it had it all. If you don’t feel like you’re living through the pages, then pick that book down, and pick this one up.
One thing that hit me with this story was how much I kept likening the events to a city locked down in terror. Murders are discovered in a disused warehouse. The investigating Detectives are hit with the idea that the killers aren’t human, and they aren’t acting alone. The descriptors were brilliant and the war scenes…man this is exactly why I read for escapism.
I was on Kingston’s side from the very beginning. Maybe he isn’t the obvious choice, but he was just a teenager. Haven’t we all made stupid mistakes when we were that age. Peer pressure and hormones are a deadly mix, and they end up doing something they really shouldn’t. His internal turmoil regarding his sexuality was another layer of his character and brought a sense of realness to him.
The Exeter Incident was a fantastic foray into creature feature/cosmic horror. Have you ever questioned why life is so boring? Why nothing interesting ever happens? Well, The Exeter Incident might just make you thankful for your nice dull life. You can’t buy excitement from Amazon, but you can buy The Exeter Incident and it equates to the same thing.
At the heart of this novel is hope. If humanity does nothing else right, it’s their blind faith that everything will turn out well that does give them their one redeeming feature. Watkins examines what happens when all seems lost, and when hope is all that, they have left. When everything is stripped back what are they left with?
David Watkins had the claws sunk right in. I was hooked. Told in multiple POV’s we see the psyche of characters put under a microscope. We see the true character of someone when they are on the edge looking into a dark pit. It stirred a sense of humanity in me – I felt sad, I ached for some to survive and conquer the depth of evil that reside under Exeter’s ground. I freaking love indie horror and this is up there with some of the best I’ve read, tension, pacing, character work, it had it all. If you don’t feel like you’re living through the pages, then pick that book down, and pick this one up.
One thing that hit me with this story was how much I kept likening the events to a city locked down in terror. Murders are discovered in a disused warehouse. The investigating Detectives are hit with the idea that the killers aren’t human, and they aren’t acting alone. The descriptors were brilliant and the war scenes…man this is exactly why I read for escapism.
I was on Kingston’s side from the very beginning. Maybe he isn’t the obvious choice, but he was just a teenager. Haven’t we all made stupid mistakes when we were that age. Peer pressure and hormones are a deadly mix, and they end up doing something they really shouldn’t. His internal turmoil regarding his sexuality was another layer of his character and brought a sense of realness to him.