The Remedy
Asher Ellis
Full Fathom Five Digital
April 8, 2015
Reviewed by Tim Potter
With The Remedy, author Asher Ellis achieves something very impressive, the consummate hard-core horror novel. There’s nature as a beast, brutal body horror, backwoods cannibalism, small town horror conspiracy and more. It’s with nothing but respect that I write that there’s very little new or groundbreaking here, but what there is is everything that any story could possibly need. And you’re not going to find a book that executes those needs any better. If you want to read a new horror novel that harkens back to the early days of splatterpunk, that is never slow or misses a beat, pick this one up.
The characters are similar to the plot. They fit the modern horror paradigm, the popular girl, the por smoking bad boy, the loner who may or may not be what he seems, the matriarch of a hillbilly clan and even a masked killer. The characters are uniformly solid, a few are great to the point they the reader will find themselves rooting for them and the masked killer is a personal favorite.
The plot is deftly handled and transcends the typical car-breaks-down-on-the-backroad trope. There are twists when one might expect, but they’re never the twist expected. There are points where no reader is going to see a twist coming, but it pops-up regardless.
The most unique points of the novel build as the story moves along. The “loner” character follows a great character arc. There’s a sex scene that’s is truly impressive, one could argue important even, in that it takes traditional gender roles and destroys them. The general theme of the novel also evolves into one of, for me but I’m sure others will differ, guilt. How does one deal with guilt. It brings up a serious philosophical issue that you probably wouldn’t expect from a novel with the lines: “It’s not your fault. How were you supposed to know your friend was related to a family of cannibals.”
