This week’s Horror Book Pick is CHURCH BENEATH THE ROOTS by Felix Blackwell.
If you enjoyed STOLEN TONGUES by the same author, then you will be thrilled to learn that Church Beneath The Roots is a prequel.
Published in March 2024, the book has already received high praise for being a terrifying and gripping read. The book is already on the best sellers list for U.S. Horror Fiction and Horror Suspense.
A lot of fans of the author’s previous book, Stolen Tongues, were thrilled to get a prequel to the story and found it to be another nightmare-inducing tale.
There were however some negatives regarding the story going into too much detail and taking time to build the tension.
Quick Review of CHURCH BENEATH THE ROOTS
In true Felix Blackwell style, the prologue sets up an intensely creepy scene that will make you want to turn page after page to find out what is happening next.
The year is 1968 and the scene takes place inside a cockpit as Captain Hank and First Officer Ted is introduced.
Hank is concerned about Ted who is suffering some gastic distress but focused more on a stone his son gave him rather than the flight instruments.
Eventually Hank finds himself getting mesmerized too. Things go out of control when both become entranced and Hank ends up slicing Ted’s abdomen, and an air hostess ends up witnessing this.
Every one on the plane is immediately under the stone’s spell and go mad, not realizing that no one is controlling the plane anymore.
We then meet Onwé Lopez who is plagued by nightmares after his childhood friend Akántha disappears. He still cannot understand why his friend had said the words ‘father’ right before he went away.
The next few chapters deal with Onwé witnessing the plane crash and reporting it to the officers.
The subsequent chapters after the prologue are a bit slow-paced and you may find yourself scanning quickly through to get to the good parts again.
The plot of the book does suggest haunting whispers, and ghastly figures but the build up is a little slow. After the adrenaline pumping in the prologue, it appears that the author wanted to give his readers a break and introduces scenes of taking walks on hills with dogs.
The book could have used another intriguing incident to keep the readers glued to the story because until the fifth chapter, when the sample ends, there is pretty much nothing going on horror-wise.
However, the writing is solid and the story does flow well even if it is missing a few scares. Hopefully, the scares come in at full-speed later in the book.
The book does seem interesting, and the cover definitely lights up curiosity, yet it isn’t one of those stories that I would drop everything for and continue reading. It is one of those books that I would put on my list and read some time in the future.
You can check out the book for yourself here:
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