Look out internet, here comes another self-published ebook. What’s more, it’s a supernatural horror story with angelic wings on the cover shot. When it comes to drops in oceans, you’ll struggle to find a smaller speck in a bigger sea, category wise, than this. The spread of direct publishing and the popularity of the genre has flooded Amazon and elsewhere with so many such titles, you could probably drown in them.
Ask Luke Romyn. The Aussie born author has become renowned in the online readers’ world for his horror novels and, to a lesser extent, his dabbles in more conventional thriller writing. Whilst hardly a household name, his efforts haven’t been wasted – without, as far as we know, any outside help, he’s earned himself USA Today and Amazon bestseller status, the latter coming with a shiny gold website badge. His first novel, The Dark Path, was voted one of the top ten horror novels of 2009. His latest, Corpus Christi, has just hit the ether. So, why the hype? Is it any good?
Corpus Christi is the first entry in the proposed series The Legacy Chronicles. Lest the title sound suspicious, take a gander at the premise: the story follows a young man named Jake Hope who, unbeknownst to him in the early pages, is the reincarnation of Jesus. Yes, that one, not your Mexican friend. This is the Second Coming, and no one seems to have noticed.
As hooks go, it’s not half bad. Most views on the event – that BBC series with Christopher Ecclestone, for example – have the messiah announcing himself to an unpredictable audience. This version, for whatever reason, is initially oblivious to his fate. Moreover, before he can make a second attempt at teaching us all to be nice to each other – sorry, Jesus, but the first time didn’t work out so well – he’s got some hell-spawned demon-type business to deal with.
So, how does it look? Will you have to buy and find out? Not if you’re unimpressed. Romyn has posted the prologue and first chapter on the website as a preview read, so we gave it a look.
As before, fault can be found if you’re hoping to find it and avoided if you aren’t. Romyn’s prose is neither terrible nor brilliant. It’s a tad over-dramatic and the openings to each of these two segments, whilst completely different in terms of setting a scenario, sound a bit too similar with their thrashing of limbs, sweating and sore throats. Our unwitting messiah, as it turns out, is a US Navy SEAL and apparent action hero who’s already musing about the nature of death and violence. There’s pathos and mysticism abound that would make a poet gag, funnelled into the set-up of an intriguingly unpredictable plot that will certainly sell a few copies. Will Jake fire rockets at Satan, a la Arnie in End of Days? Will things turn into a full-on celestial war without feeble human militants? Who knows. What we do know is that there will be action scenes, metaphor and monologue-laden hardboiled scribblings and cliffhangers at the end of every chapter. If this were picked up by an agent, it’d probably be big news. It’s precisely the sort of thing they’d like to turn into a big-budget film in the current climate – something Romyn surely knows. This is solid commercial stuff and, considering what we’ve seen so far, is better than plenty of the God-awful stuff that’s floating around out there already. As with all the big genres, avoiding derivative plots and motifs is a borderline waste of time – it’s all in the execution. And don’t let the self-publishing bit and the cheap-looking, home-cooking web design and trailers fool you either – we’re far beyond the point where mainstream distribution is evidence of credibility.