“They told me to talk. They were finally coming. ...They want us to take the last step. Only then will we go to their castle ... The converts brought iron spikes to their heads. ... I will wait for them to take you one by one and then I will be the last to come ... [...] ... do what my eyes say ... make up for lost time ... [...] Simon LeRoy was the first to push the iron spike into his head. Then the other converts did the same. [...] I took a step back. I stumbled over a lifeless body. I fell with my head in blood. I got my face dirty. I wiped it with my hands. I licked them. I licked blood.”
A few words are enough, sometimes a glance at Peter Jackson is enough for anyone he meets on his path to prove willing to follow him to the most extreme consequences. It is THEY who have given him this power, who have made a man in search of answers the prophet of a cosmic plan of salvation, a salvation that seems to have to be bathed in blood in order to be achieved. They speak to him, observe him and guide Peter along his wanderings across the United States, constantly hunted by the police, in search of the lost souls he must convert so that they may cross the threshold of a new world.
But who are THEY? Where does the path that Peter follows with absolute dedication lead? Are the voices he hears in his head and the salvation they speak of reality or just the result of a madman's delusion? These are the questions that will keep you riveted to Malara's novel, leaving you unable to stop reading before you have answers.
Compelling, stylistically direct and extremely incisive, built on paratactic links between searing periods, sometimes reduced to the single nominal sentence, “Them” brings the reader to experience firsthand the incredible story of the protagonist, to enter into symbiosis with Peter Jackson and to share with him every emotional implication of his bewildering mission. Deftly juggling horror and science fiction, Malara draws his audience into a world of terrible dreams and unsettling realities, a scene loaded with questions that should be answered by new and even more disturbing certainties. All this, and more, makes “Them” an excellent calling card for a young Italian author we will surely hear more about very soon.
Published by Delos Books - Coll. The Dolphins - Pages 185 - Price 12.50 Euro
Reviewed by Marco Zolin
