Book Review : Craig DiLouie - Suffer the Children (2014)

Order SUFFER THE CHILDREN here

Ramona lay in the back of Ross' car with her arms wrapped tight around Josh's body. He stank like the grave. Holding him was like hugging a large, thawing, rotten steak.

She'd never been happier.

Whoever claims to want to understand the ways of men need to understand something crucial about us: we love to bullshit ourselves about our own toughness. Take the apocalypse, for example. I do not know a single man who doesn't have his own survival plan to outlast a potential zombie apocalypse. This kind of weirdo fantasy we like to nurse is, to a certain extent, the reason why apocalyptic fiction exists. Once in a while though, comes a novel that challenges the boundaries of male bullshit and weeds out the weak elements. I don't know what it says about me, but I've actually finished SUFFER THE CHILDREN, by Craig DiLouie and I suspect several readers didn't. It's both an incredible and emotionally crippling novel that doesn't take no for an answer.

The children start dying without explanation, systematically as if a tidal wave of darkness engulfed the planet. A phenomenon scientists refer to as "the Herod event" suddenly claimed the life of every single child. What could be worse that that? The kids start coming back, three days later, only they're not the same. They're pale, expressionless, and they're not freakin' breathing. They're also asking their parents for blood. SUFFER THE CHILDREN follows three families going through the ordeal of "the Herod event" and witnessing the world and themselves both change, and it's not pretty. That might be an understatement, actually.

SUFFER THE CHILDREN answers the following seminal question: what would be the worst possible way for humanity to go extinct. Children dying and turning into vampire zombies upon resurrection is bad enough, but I'm sure you've been confronted to that self-righteous dad or that overbearing mom freakin' out over their child's security and enjoyment, right? Well, imagine these people having to feed their children blood in order to enjoy time with them? So yeah, not only SUFFER THE CHILDREN exposes a terrifying apocalypse scenario, it also displays its grisly aftermath and explores the depths of the parent/children bond in a worst case scenario.

"He's sleeping?"

She yanked her hair. "He's had a bit of a relapse."

Ross blanched at this news. "You mean he's dead? Jesus, God. How? What the hell is going on?"

"His condition has returned. The nurse is coming with more medicine."

What makes SUFFER THE CHILDREN so damned effective is that it worst on both a macro and a micro scale. It deals with a plague affecting humanity's survival as a whole, yet it's oddly intimate and it is what makes the novel such an emotional beating. Craig DiLouie engineers the horror scenes from the despair of his characters and draws a clear portrait of how a loving parents can turn into a monster for all the wrong reasons. SUFFER THE CHILDREN offers plenty of gore and spectacular horror scenes, but its the psychological accuracy of such a disaster scenario that makes it such a terrifying novel.

I gotta give credit where credit is due. SUFFER THE CHILDREN is absolutely harrowing, so emotionally demanding that it becomes physically exhausting,  it's convincing as all hell. I don't think it's a novel that's meant to be enjoyed in the traditional sense of the term. It's meant to challenge you, test your empathy against difficult fictional scenarios and open up your perspective about the end of the world. If you thought that THE STAND was some kind of ultimate apocalyptic horror scenario, you've haven't experienced the real deal yet. To me, SUFFER THE CHILDREN will go down as some freaky, absolute Bushido apocalyptic experience. If you think you're a real reader of apocalyptic fiction, you need to get on this, but you might need a break afterwards.