I am hesitant to be critical of an author via Cannonball unless it’s someone massive like Hemingway, because at that point criticality of the work is like an academic discussion and we need opposing takes. The Cursed Among Us though had several galling mistakes that led me to wonder if the book is self-published. I am not in any way disparaging self-publishing. I think anyone who does that has a tremendous amount of courage and conviction, putting their hard work out for people to see with a huge amount of the elbow-grease being their own. It does however mean that the amount of professional editing, a service that cannot be undervalued, could be limited. To that end The Cursed Among Us has an error so egregious that it took me completely out of the story, had me rewind my audiobook, and crank up the volume because I couldn’t believe it. Twice.
The Cursed Among Us tells the story of a Losers Club/Stranger Things gang, only set in the 90s while still mostly feeling like the 50s or 80s. While filming a horror movie in the woods they accidentally unleash a horrifying monster sealed beneath the town. Shit ensues. The specific shit in question is inconsistent in tone and gravity, starting out feeling like this will be your average slasher fare before degenerating into dead kids and brutal, almost unbelievable injuries. It reminded me of Thomas Harris, where the characters are almost made of glass they’re so prone to crippling injury and death from almost arbitrary wounds. The gore and violence also felt kind of… empty, where like a slasher movie it’s less about the characters and more about seeing the wounds on screen.
A few spoilers ahead.
That emptiness also extends to the plot, where characters give little resistance or interpersonal friction to their interactions. The children have drama that feels real between one another, and it reads well. But also there are cartoonishly bad abusive parents who we only see once and who have little payoff apart from being an albatross around one boy’s neck. A favorite teacher gets busted at a crime scene from twenty years ago, and instantly barrels into a big bucket of exposition, explaining to these fifteen year olds that he’s a witch hunter but don’t tell anyone [shush]. It’s revealed that the townsfolk are part of a big witchcraft coven, but we never find out why, never get scope for what they do and how, and at the end it all basically gets hand-waved away. Apart from the existence of the primary monster, the whole story feels about half as long as it needs to be, with little diving into or fleshing out, so that the “it’s just a slasher, we’re here to see some slashing” feeling continues to the gore-soaked end.
Again, I feel bad being critical and there are some genuinely well-written scares in this story. Overall, I would not recommend it because there isn’t enough detail or payoff, or even good reason behind why what’s happening is happening.