Some genuinely frightening and rifting imagery. The ending tore my heart out. 

not my favorite nick cutter book, but still a wild ride. my favorite line was delivered by the token corrupted priest during a pivotal drink-the-koolaid moment: 

“i’ve never lied to you,” he lied. “i never have lied to you.”

there’s something about the blunt delivery that made me chuckle at the absurdity. i find myself quoting it when i watch things on the news.

I have previously read 2 other books by Nick Cutter; The Troop and The Deep, and I love how different and unique they both felt from one another and this one is no different. Telling 2 stories that take place in separate timelines, one in the 60's and another in the 80's, we follow a trio of hit men, first hired to kill one another, later working together to infiltrate a religious Cult in the scrubland to find a child. Getting into the Cult is easy enough but once inside there's something in the wild abducting children and it won't let them leave. The 2 storylines style is always gamble but it worked well enough here, giving us insight into each of the characters and getting to know them so well that when we flashback to the present timeline, we already know them. Another thing I loved, and I don't know if this is the case, but this gives me a Cormac Mccarthy feel to it, as if Cutter was trying to emulate his style and its not 1:1 but I didn't need it to be. The way he describes the setting, as someone who's never been to the American southwest, I can still picture and feel.it perfectly in my mind, might also be a big contribution to the McCarthy feel as well, but also in the character work. Speaking of characters, despite following hired killers who've all done deplorable things and have no problem with taking a life, they feel sympathetic enough to never be dislikeable and I think that's because he gave us an even more deplorable villain in the preacher Amos Flescher, who leads the cult. My only complaint is while the human menace is easy enough to understand, the supernatural one is still a little bit of a mystery to me by the end. What is it? Where did it come from? Why can it do the things that it can do? How is it able to? Why does it? It's a very cool monster but I never felt like I got a good idea why it did the things it did. I would say this is the weakest of the 3 for me but in no way a bad book, and I would recommend it if you're curious in the slightest.

Amazing book but a little long. Some chapters can get a little boring but the plot is going to make you keep reading.

The unjustifiable depiction of rape is what finally made me put the book down after trawling through racism, homophobia, and misogyny