Goblins
David Bernstein
Samhain Publishing
August 4, 2015
Reviewed by Tim Potter
David Bernstein’s Goblins is high action horror that bounces back and forth nicely between the fantastic and the all too real. A little league game on Roanoke Island quickly descends into horror as the star pitcher goes missing and his parents are savagely butchered. There is green slime at the murder and abduction sites and a drunken local man with what he says are the answers to the terrible happenings. It’s a terror that dates back to the mysterious 1590 disappearance of the island’s first European inhabitants and it’s the work of goblins.
Bernstein has the knack for setting a scene that drips with normality and almost Norman Rockwell-esque Americana and then yanking it out from beneath the reader. Before I knew what was happening, I was invested emotionally in the outcome of the Little League baseball championship. And then reality shifted and goblins were eating people. The way to make horror more violent and gut-wrenching is to inflict it upon the average everyday and the author does that here with great success.
The novel is set in the quiet Roanoke Island, a tourism centered small community where most people know one another. The first missing child and his murdered parents are just the beginning of a pattern of repeated missing children and violent attacks on their parents a short time later. The story is also set, in short passages, in the realm of the goblin king. It’s a place only accessible through a magical portal located in the caves that snake under the surface of the island. While the narrative is in the realm of the goblins the history and lives of the monsters are explained and their motivations are revealed. Though little of the novel takes place there, it’s established well and is an entertaining piece of world building.
It takes the combined efforts of an open-minded local police chief and the town drunk with an unbelievable story to confront the threat facing the island. Chief Hale relocated to Roanoke Island from Chicago, hoping to leave a violent, if righteous, past behind him in the relatively crime-free community. As the goblins kill more people and create a climate of fear Hale realizes that he will have to meet the terror with lethal force. The fascinating thing about Hale is that he’s a good cop who was forced by circumstance to use lethal force, which resulted in the death of an innocent child. No one blame him for the death but it bothers him deeply nonetheless. It emotionally complex and very authentic. Hale must bring the power of his police force to bear upon the goblin threat which culminates in an epic battle of good versus evil.
One of the real highlights of the novel is the supporting characters who have small roles but are well developed. Jed Brewster is the town drunk, a man with a tragic past whose deep family roots on the island have left him as the final living repository of goblin lore and knowledge. The return of the goblins force him to pull himself together to help save the town and possibly redeem himself. Officer Jane Levy is another character with a small part in the novel, but she is so interesting the reader will be left wishing she had been introduced earlier. When violence erupts and the police force must fight for their lives Levy reveals herself to be a true warrior. Her focus and will to fight for herself and her colleagues is so strong it falls just on the good side of the divide between gutsiness and madness.
Goblins is a smart and entertaining horror novel that skillfully juggles the horrors of the real world and the fantastic and supernatural without missing a beat. The reader’s ability to relate to, and form an emotional attachment to, the characters is what takes the book to the next level and results in a page-turner that begs to be read straight through.
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