3 out of 4 stars
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The Demon of Decay is a horror novel by Alex C. Gates. Despite years of trying, Joey and Victoria still don’t have a child. Joey’s inability to give Victoria what she has always wanted is crushing him. Their marriage is on the verge of breaking apart.
Joey decides that they should visit his Uncle Charles and Aunt Lynn who raised him after his mother’s death. He finds them to be changed beyond recognition and living in a filthy house full of junk. Soon he starts to suspect that there’s something sinister going on with his relatives and the whole town that they’re living in. Mixed between all of that are ads for a pill that promises to solve all your problems.
I found the book to be well written and engaging. Sometimes it was hard to put it down. It’s not just a horror story, but a character-driven novel. It mostly consists of Joey’s first-person narration of the story. It has several stories that at first seem unrelated, but come together in the end.
This is not a book for those who want stories where the main characters are always good and upright citizens. In The Demon of Decay they often act in stupid ways and are downright dislikable. But they always feel like real people who make huge mistakes in troubling times. Despite its many fantasy elements, the book had a very realistic feeling to it because of its flawed characters.
One of the author’s strengths was in creating the perfect atmosphere for a horror story. The book is filled with good descriptions of grim imagery depicting urban decay and abusive homes. This is definitely a book that I would recommend to fans of horror and those who like stories with demonic entities. Any potential reader should also be warned that the book has sexual and violent content.
What I liked best about the book was that it had a very powerful and emotion-filled ending that lingered in my mind for many days. Despite all the book’s dreariness, there was still always a message of hope in its pages. This is not a particularly religious story, but it did have a strong Christian message of redemption.
The only bad thing I can say about The Demon of Decay is that there were a few grammar errors present. Mostly it was missing spaces and wrong words. Overall, the book seemed well edited. The few mistakes did not take away from my reading experience.
There were small things that I could nitpick about the plot, but no major flaws. There’s really nothing I disliked about The Demon of Decay. I would like to give it 4 stars, but because of the few errors I rate it 3 out of 4 stars.
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The Demon of Decay
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