Suffer the Children

Despite what you may read elsewhere, Suffer the Children is not a novel about vampires. In a strict sense, there is little in the way of monsters. Compared to Craig DiLouie's earlier work, there are significantly fewer zombies and bullets, less blood mist and cordite in the air. The action is subdued. Your ears will not ring from explosive charges. But there's a lot of heart. You can all but feel it thump as you turn the page (or press the e-reader button).Where Suffer the Children distinguishes itself is not in attempting to recreate or contrive a monster myth, which is something many authors are trying to do these days because the prevailing thought is that doing so is the key to success. In fact, Suffer the Children succeeds in innovating a classic monster myth. And it surely is interesting, but what makes it truly intriguing is that Suffer the Children is about the *people* first. This is something that makes Craig DiLouie somewhat of an exception in the horror genre. His books aren't about zombies. They aren't about vampires. If there are monsters in his novels, they are the monsters *within* the people that are expertly and lovingly conceived. He makes you sympathize with and fall in love with his characters. Many of them have humanizing and redeeming qualities. And when he's finished showing you these people and what makes them as intriguing and sympathetic as a friend or even a sibling, when he's dug his author pen into your chest, piercing your still-beating heart, that's when he twists it.Some people call it "character development." I just call it good storytelling. You can't build a house without a solid foundation. The characters are a story's foundation, and Craig DiLouie's characters are strong. Suffer the Children is a continuing display of Craig DiLouie's understanding of this principle and exceptional skill for executing.The front cover claims Suffer the Children is a novel of terror. I not only think that's off, but also I think that's a bit of an underselling. It suggests Suffer the Children will frighten you with cheap scare tactics. It suggests the novel will make you look behind you when you're walking down the street. It suggests it will give you nightmares.Suffer the Children will do all of those things, but it is so much more than that. This novel's horror roots go so deep that they tap into a well spring of the disturbing and the macabre that most horror novelists don't even know is there. It is powerful on a level that will haunt you not for days or weeks but years. Suffer the Children will bury into your mind as you contemplate what the characters' actions mean. It will latch onto your bones as you consider their fates and what this novel says about us, humanity. And some readers may think Craig DiLouie is taking a somewhat cheap shot by using our children as a device for understanding, but I think he's exposing a weak point in our collective psyche. To protect our children is to protect our future. It is an instinct buried deep within our will to survive.It is love. Craig DiLouie's Suffer the Children is a love story. It is racked with misfortune and tragedy. But this is horror. This is horror at its foundations. And what's more, Craig DiLouie shows us what these things -- survival instincts, maternal and paternal instincts, love -- can lead to in the face of tragedy. He shows us what we are capable of when our most precious connections are threatened. And it is both believable and more than we could imagine on our own.Amid that tragedy, Suffer the Children strikes an obvious chord with parents. Specifically, this novel is about the ties that are created when we bring a life into this world and what you would do to hold on. Suffer the Children obviously will hit parents with a bit more power, but you don't have to be a parent to feel it. Whether you have children or not, you're human, so those instincts are built into you, and you will feel this novel's power.If you're a fan of the disturbing and macabre, if you enjoy staring into the darkness to find what it reveals about yourself and humanity, Suffer the Children is for you. It is full of unsettling ambiance and thrills and chills, but more than plucking the fear string in your brain, it challenges your intellect and emotions. Suffer the Children is a horror novel with the complete package, and like all the great horror novels, when you put it down, you will find it has affected (infected?) you.

Absolutely loved this book. Bleak, heartbreaking, and exciting all in one package. The author does an excellent job and truly gives a master class experience in horror.

I took a risk picking up this book. The cover has me torn- part of me loves it and the rest of me finds it too eerily disturbing to even look at. That's the thing with Suffer the Children- you will devour it in one sitting, but only if you refuse to look at everything head-on. You have to view it and its events from a detached, unique kind of angle. And I guess that's the mark of good horror- when you simply can't think too much about exactly what you're reading, but feel its weight of dread wrapping around you anyway. Like a too-heavy blanket you never asked for.The synopsis is terrifying: Children everywhere, millions and eventually billions of them, succumb to death within a single hour called Herod's Event. The grief is terrible, but the natural order of things is still being observed- until they wake up again, their little rotting selves trotting in the direction of home and their fearful but delighted parents. This in of itself is something too nasty to imagine. I became strangely attached to the kids in this novel- as they were before they died and even after. The parents soon discover that the "Resurrection," as it was called, is temporary, and their children return to sitting wax dolls, only their eyes making frozen movements as the Herod's parasite in them demands blood, blood, and more blood.Think of every time a little kid has whined to you about being hungry. Always at the most inconvenient times, always for the crappiest junk foods their sugar hyped systems can tolerate. It's frustrating, predictable, neverending. Now imagine it's not your kid speaking, but just their mouth moving, erratic shrieks in the middle of the night for BLOOD, BLOOD, BLOOD, or looming over as you wake up with a start, dead eyes staring and lips mumbling "blood-bluh-bluhd-bluhd-bluhd-bluhd..."Just give them what they ask for, and your dazzling son or daughter will be back. Warm and alive and laughing just like they used to be, for an hour or two. Only an hour or two.Honestly, that's the parents in Suffer the Children faced, and their behavior as well as MY REACTION to it was bizarre beyond belief. I think I learned a little about myself here. I don't have a child, and the logic of such a situation....well, part of me was screaming "KILL IT WITH FIRE!!!" but I was astonished at the larger part of me that sympathized so strongly with the parents doing anything, ANYTHING to bring their children back, no matter what the cost. Yes, of course! Bring them back. Is there anything you want more? Is there anything at all? FEED ON MY NEIGHBOR'S BLOOD! AS LONG AS YOU COME BACK TO ME!!Watching these parents evolved from normal people to anemic, withered creatures hanging on to the edge of sanity while their children only get stronger was bizarre. Suffer the Children manages to combine science, tension, that creepy-crawly feeling and pure heartache in a way that's nothing short of stellar. The parents' interactions and dialogue are so organic and real, by the time they respectively reach the end of their ropes, you're silently pleading with them not to do this. Not to do what they're being driven to do.I'm not a horror fan. The Walking Dead isn't horror- it's a soap opera, and I only every read this because the only other horror I've read (Bird Box, and it is just amazing) turned out to be so much more tightly written and oddly, making so much more sense than the copycat YA dystopias loaded with teen angst and injustice- I thought Suffer the Children would be similar, and I was right.Read this book.And take your kids out to the park after.

Call me hard to please, but I like a character I can root for, even in a blood-soaked, apocalyptic horror-fest. And humor! Sometimes its nice to share a funny or poignant moment amidst the strife and terror...the contrast then amps up the fright when it does happen.Sadly, none if that is present here. Only unrelenting sadness, despair and degradation. Not one hope of redemption or salvation is given - its just the chronicle of sad or bad people dragging themselves through hell to their destruction.If unrelenting depression and sadness is what you are looking for in a book, if you despise likeable characters and hate humor or poignancy...then good news!! This is your book.

I hated everyone in this book, so i guess that made it real. These people made decisions that were exasperating and said stuff that made me grind my teeth. I really liked this book because it put emphasis on a parents love and the behavior of people guided by love rather than reason.

It’s not often that a book actually haunts me. I have been engaged with books so much that I haven’t put them down, cover to cover. I’ve recoiled from text, winced in sympathetic pain with the character(s), and wept in sadness at a favoured characters’ demise.What I rarely experience from a novel, is the need to put it down. To walk away from the story and clear my mind of images which are bluntly traumatic, and written with such excellence that every sentence slices away a little more of my sanity.In Suffer the Children, Dilouie has crafted a story of not insignificant excellence. It is not at all surprising that the book has made the preliminary ballot for the 2014 Bram Stoker Awards. From the outset, it is evident that this book is all about character. As is seen so much in horror fiction, the real monsters are (eventually) the humans themselves. Where this book can claim some mastery over others in the genre, is in how it goes about showing us, just how fragile, and just how very human, the characters in this story are.Dilouie shows us real families with real troubles and triumphs. From the outset, I put my lot in with them, not realising that, as the pages wore on, I had been lured into a false sense of security. Characters that had been protagonists slowly became antagonists – not quickly, you understand me. Over a process of weeks, they become steadily deranged as the havoc wreaked by the Herod syndrome roots itself deep in society. I suppose the most unnerving thing about this story was that, if something like ‘Herod’ were to occur, I could realistically see the scenes in this book playing out across the world.I loved the way the book set around building you up, just to tear your hopes down; this, perhaps, was the only way for you to understand the desperation and the sheer inhumanity with which some of the characters ended up acting. If Peter Pan had been a vampire, he’d have chosen this as his story.There were some deliciously sickly scenes, some of which were reminiscent of the human desperation and isolation in Let the Right One In by John Adjvide Lindqvist.The ending, too, was just right for the tone of the novel. This book is searching, and for some may take a brave and concerted effort to finish; but damn, it is worth the effort.

Great!

Dark and disturbing, but brilliant

I'm sure this book gets better but it was a complete failure to launch for me. It starts very mundane with little to hook me and it just took way too long to pick up speed in any meaningful way. I stopped caring.

The book's just not really my thing. Started out great but became a bit too fatalistic. However, people into new twists on an old story (vampires etc.) might be really into this.