Reed Literary Horror Review of 'Beneath the Unspoiled Wilderness' (2022)

On the surface this is just your basic slasher novel. Some young adults go camping and something picks them off one by one. But as that plot progresses you realize there is still a ton of book left. So, after the final girl does her thing, what's left? And that enters the next phase of the book. You see, there are three distinct parts to this novel. It's not just some slasher, it's everything that would go along with it. What happens to the final girl after the nightmare is over is what this story is really about and it is indeed gripping. Gripping and quite tragic, I should say, without going into the spoilers.

So part one is a slasher novella, part two is a novella about survivors' guilt and trauma, then part three is a novella about revenge. It's all the same book, just three distinct parts. My one problem with this is that the second part is a bit of a slog. Don't get me wrong, it's really heart wrenching at first. I can describe the first part of it as powerful, but then it just keeps going. At some point, it all seems to be a bit too long, like the author said everything he needed to but there's still more. It's a small problem and yes my ADHD did struggle with it, but I kept reading. That means this book still gets the ADHD Seal of Approval. Every time I put the book down, I wanted to pick it back up. I NEEDED to finish this read, much as it was difficult for me to keep going, especially through a mid-book lull.

I'd like to talk about the imagery in this book. Nikolas Robinson does an amazing job of giving you just enough description without bogging the read down with too much. The trick being to give the reader just enough to let the description excite their imagination but then let them fill in the blank parts themselves. I talked about this in Blood of the Sun (2020). Too much description bogs down the read. Something I've always complained about in the works of Stephen King. We don't need to know every nook and cranny, we just need enough for us to picture the scene and let our minds do the rest. That makes the read more cerebral, more immersive, more personal, and it's seriously fucking hard to pull off.

The characters are also great. They're believable, even when they're totally badass. They're also relatable, considering they're just normal people in extraordinary circumstances. The character tropes are used properly to assist in immersion but not overly obnoxious. You definitely should be able to empathize with them so that their deaths are more real, more meaningful. Relating to the characters is everything in good horror. We don't want to end up rooting for the bad guy if we really want the deaths of each individual to actually affect us. Over all they were believable and good.

So, should you buy Nik Robenson's Beneath the Unspoiled Wilderness? Yes, absolutely. It's 100% worth the cover price and I'm sure you will not be sorry. Click the link below and get yourself a copy.

Beneath the Unspoiled Wilderness

SPOILERS!!!

As I mentioned, the second part of this book is really about the survivor and how she manages being the Final Girl. That's something we don't talk a lot about in the Slasher genre, what it's like to be a survivor. It sorta gets hinted at in franchises like Scream and Halloween, but we never get into the meat and taters of it. We all know why Laurie Strode is so fucking weird in the rest of the Halloween franchise, but we never really talk about it. What makes the second part of this novel so powerful is going into the gritty details of the guilt and trauma. The survivor, Mel, went through an unreal supernatural event, and of course, no one believes her. Everyone just assumes she made the monsters up in her head because she couldn't cope with the idea that normal humans could do something so awful. But that's the thing, there are monsters in the woods, they aren't human. So Mel is left to wonder, was it even real? That's kind of brilliant if you think about it. How does one process something so insane and otherworldly? It might have been too long but it was absolutely essential to the story even f it was a bit too long.

So yeah, I do recommend this novel. Go get yourself a copy.