The Light At The End

The Light at The End is a New York Times bestseller billed by some as the "original splatterpunk novel". It's a shame how little recognition it gets considering how entertaining it is, as a fast-paced and macabre work of grisly horror.

Warning: contains graphic body horror and strong language.

A mysterious Transylvanian creature travels to New York to transform its chosen protege, Rudy, into a vampire, who then goes on a killing spree through the dark subway system where it's easy to conceal and hide.

The police and press dub the murders as the work of a crazy serial killer, while a group of friends believe otherwise and decide to act on their own.

As well as being gory and vicious, the book is smattered with dark humour and enough cynical, sarcastic dialogue to fill a crypt, unafraid to speak out loud:

“Surely he couldn’t have left out the undeniable fact that I’m a cheap, stupid, naive little farm-girl c*nt who thinks that her sh*t smells like roses!”

Or choosing whether to eat a potential victim for lunch:

“Her hair hung lifelessly down either side of her face, the color of a healthy dog’s stools.”

Or plain silly:

“He looked like somebody’d dipped his nuts in a hot bowl of soup.”

I enjoyed this book as a refreshing change to the mainstream horror pumped out these days, but also have some criticisms:

- The vampire threat and its setting in New York feel claustrophobic and limited at times (perhaps on purpose) when it should be more expansive and international.

- The jarring references to 80s technology, which didn't matter at first but got annoying, such as beepers and payphones from an era before the internet became the norm, adding to the archaicness of the plot.

- It sometimes tries too hard, with unnecessarily over-the-top references to Nazi concentration camps (for some reason). The action is hard hitting enough to not need this exaggerated imagery.

But overall I loved it.

It's refreshing, fast-paced and surprisingly entertaining, with great character development and immersive camaraderie. Full of sarcasm and graphic silliness. This is a grisly story of collective good against malevolent evil, with a balanced sense of hope, fear, victory and loss.