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takisam's review
dark
mysterious
sad
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.25
whatmeworry's review
4.0
This review first appeared on scifiandscary.com
Britain in the 1970s was still obsessed with the Second World War. In some ways that might seem surprising, as the 70s doesn’t feel that long ago to me, but it’s worth remembering that 1978 is a fair bit closer to 1945 than it is 2019. As a kid I had teachers who fought in the war, and representations of it and its aftereffects proliferated in British popular culture. Even something as modern feeling as ‘The Rats’ is set in a London still scarred by bomb sites.
‘The Devils of D-Day’ is the first book at I’ve looked at that tackles the war head on, though. Later in the month I’ll be reviewing James Herbert’s ‘The Spear’ which adopts the ‘the Nazis used occult forces’ trope. Graham Masterton’s book takes a slightly different approach, this time it’s the Allies who are summoning demons.
The book has a contemporary setting – Normandy, with its hero, Dan McCook, an American cartographer who is there to map D-Day battlefields for a book. He discovers the abandoned wreck of an American tank, sealed up and with a metal crucifix welded to it. Through conversations with the locals he learns that it was one of 13 tanks used in the D-Day landings by the allies, each driven by a demon imprisoned inside it. The demon in this tank is, of course, still there, and it whispers to Dan from its prison, begging him to free it.
What follows is a creepy tale of the occult that is more akin to the demonic possession sub-genre that was so popular in the 1970s, than the war novel the cover promises. The demon is genuinely unsettling, and the violence is imaginatively horrific. We see characters vomit maggots, an old woman skewered by every blade in her house, and more. As in, Blatty’s ‘The Exorcist’ the language the monster uses is often as disturbing as the physical atrocities it commits. The concept of the military using demons might seem silly, but by focussing on the present day rather than the historical events, Masterton makes it work. He also weaves in some effective commentary about how normal rules sometimes go out the window in times of war. Parallels are drawn between the evil that has been unleashed and the atomic bomb, the result being a horror novel that is a little more thoughtful than many.
It’s an enjoyable book. Ingeniously nasty, gripping and satisfying. McCook is a believable hero, but the demon is the star of the show – memorably evil and decidedly chilling.
Britain in the 1970s was still obsessed with the Second World War. In some ways that might seem surprising, as the 70s doesn’t feel that long ago to me, but it’s worth remembering that 1978 is a fair bit closer to 1945 than it is 2019. As a kid I had teachers who fought in the war, and representations of it and its aftereffects proliferated in British popular culture. Even something as modern feeling as ‘The Rats’ is set in a London still scarred by bomb sites.
‘The Devils of D-Day’ is the first book at I’ve looked at that tackles the war head on, though. Later in the month I’ll be reviewing James Herbert’s ‘The Spear’ which adopts the ‘the Nazis used occult forces’ trope. Graham Masterton’s book takes a slightly different approach, this time it’s the Allies who are summoning demons.
The book has a contemporary setting – Normandy, with its hero, Dan McCook, an American cartographer who is there to map D-Day battlefields for a book. He discovers the abandoned wreck of an American tank, sealed up and with a metal crucifix welded to it. Through conversations with the locals he learns that it was one of 13 tanks used in the D-Day landings by the allies, each driven by a demon imprisoned inside it. The demon in this tank is, of course, still there, and it whispers to Dan from its prison, begging him to free it.
What follows is a creepy tale of the occult that is more akin to the demonic possession sub-genre that was so popular in the 1970s, than the war novel the cover promises. The demon is genuinely unsettling, and the violence is imaginatively horrific. We see characters vomit maggots, an old woman skewered by every blade in her house, and more. As in, Blatty’s ‘The Exorcist’ the language the monster uses is often as disturbing as the physical atrocities it commits. The concept of the military using demons might seem silly, but by focussing on the present day rather than the historical events, Masterton makes it work. He also weaves in some effective commentary about how normal rules sometimes go out the window in times of war. Parallels are drawn between the evil that has been unleashed and the atomic bomb, the result being a horror novel that is a little more thoughtful than many.
It’s an enjoyable book. Ingeniously nasty, gripping and satisfying. McCook is a believable hero, but the demon is the star of the show – memorably evil and decidedly chilling.
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