I have had a really good time with Christopher Buehlman’s The Blacktongue Thief and The Daughters’ War, so I was excited to dip my toes into his horror writing with Those Across the River. Instead of being set in a medieval-style fantasy world full of thieves, soldiers, wizards, corvids and goblins, this story is set in post-WWI Georgia (in the US). Protagonist Frank Nichols moves to a small town named Whitbrow with his soon-to-be-wife, Dora, after his aunt leaves behind a house there. They quickly get to know the locals, along with a scary legend about those who dwell in the woods on the other side of the river. When the townsfolk decide to stop sending a longstanding traditional sacrifice to them, the monsters across the river grow predictably unsatisfied and hungry and things only get worse from there. Even with this early work, Buehlman displays his masterful writing and clever use of imagery. However, I did not feel nearly so engaged by the characters or the plot of this book as the others. Don’t get me wrong, both Frank and Dora are interesting characters with a darkly complex backstory: Frank survived WWI as a shellshocked soldier and also being a descendant of a local brutal slave owner by the name of Savoyard. How he and Dora got together was fraught with scandal and unpleasantness as well: no rom-com-worthy meet-cute. The Whitbrow townsfolk are as colourful as the main couple, if not more so. Unfortunately, I am no big fan of quirky Southern character archetypes. I often find their personalities difficult to relate to. Plus, since I listened to the audiobook, I found some of the accents were challenging and their local patois was occasionally hard for me to follow.

The characters didn’t really hook me, and I didn’t find the horror or supernatural aspects quite so special either. The monsters fell into a fairly classic breed. There wasn’t so much of a gradual buildup surrounding the monsters as they were not a constant focus throughout the story, really. This was a more character-driven story, and the monsters were only sparks and catalysts to what happens to the characters. Creepiness and darkness is a great context in which to explore past trauma and emotional baggage. Unfortunately, I just wasn’t too keen on going there. Topping it off were a series of codas that didn’t work so well for me. One was a bit confounding, and the other seemed a bit predictable. Rather than adding to the story, I felt more like they dragged the story into different directions that didn’t make sense to me, especially after the main story was already kind of finished.

I won’t say that I didn’t enjoy this book, because Christopher Buehlman’s wordcraft is really good, and it’s a flavour that I really like. In many ways, that redeemed this book for me. I took note of some passages that really grabbed me as I read them. They all expressed a vivid beauty touched with disquieting darkness that I found captivating. Describing Frank’s mother: “She gave herself to the lens as if she knew she wouldn’t last, and so entrusted it with a disproportionate share of her being. She stares back from photographs as though trapped alive in them.” Describing the surprisingly lush landscape: “the drought that was parching half the state had not come to Whitbrow, as if the tops of the trees gouged the rain clouds and bled them out before they could save the farms over the county line.” And in one of Frank’s WWI-haunted nightmares where he and other soldiers were crawling through trenches: “The dream-trench was even more labyrinthine than the real one, unspooling itself in hairpin turns like the intestines of some cannibal giant.” So while his choice of subject matter, setting and themes for this book were not really hitting my sweet spot, I still think that Christopher Buehlman is an excellent writer. This book got top marks from many of my fellow readers in the book club, so it’s got a wider appeal. This being his very first published novel, I already know that he went on to write stories that would be more appealing to me and I am looking forward to reading more of them.

3 stars

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