Feeling Bookish: Fever House, by Keith Rosson

The end of the world is no fun for anyone.

Fever House
By Keith Rosson
Published by Random House
Buy it

When reading some horror novels, questions may arise about whether the author is trying to convey a message of some sort or whether they’re just trying to come up with disturbing ideas to freak readers out. The latter is pretty much always going to be present due to the nature of horror, but it can sometimes be hard to figure out whether the author has something to say about society, human relationships, or the larger concerns of their audience. When reading horror stories (or any stories, really), I do try to discern the meaning, but that can sometimes be difficult.

All of this is to say that while I thought Fever House was an interesting story, I wasn’t positive about what the author was trying to say, if anything. Keith Rosson works to weave a complex tapestry involving several interrelated characters as they deal with increasingly crazy circumstances, but I found myself struggling to discern a larger purpose. Part of that comes from the way Rosson regularly pauses his ongoing plot, which is a fast-developing situation that sees society falling into chaos, to delve into his characters’ backstories. Constant diversions from exciting developments seem like they should have a purpose or illustrate an overarching theme, but I had trouble finding one outside of a study of the characters. Perhaps Rosson was so enamored of his cast that he had to tell us as much about them as possible, but for me, that made the book a kind of disjointed experience, divided between contemplations of the past and an overwhelming feeling of helplessness about how everything seems to be falling apart in the present.

It would probably help to explain that plot and those characters. The book begins with Hutch and Tim, a couple of thugs working for a crime boss in Portland, Oregon as they make their rounds collecting debts. When leaning on a druggie for the money he owes, they find something bizarre: a disembodied hand that seems to exert a mental pull on everyone around it, exhorting them to commit acts of violence. When they take the guy and the hand back to another location for questioning, this kicks off an escalating series of violent acts. This possibly demonic hand seems to want to be unleashed in public, and in addition to driving people to act in increasingly violent ways, we soon learn that those who die in its presence rise again, and events soon spiral out of control as Portland experiences something akin to a zombie apocalypse.

We also follow John Bonner and Samantha Weils, a couple of government agents who are working for a black ops organization that has something to do with the hand. Apparently, the hand was a government asset that had been lost, so they’re trying to get it back with the help of a strange, possibly angelic character that offers cryptic clues about future events. They spend a lot of time chasing the hand around town and failing to get it back, seeing things continue to spiral out of control as more violence and death occur around them.

As the story proceeds, we get introduced to Nick Coffin, a young man who works for the aforementioned crime boss. His specialty is locating hard-to-find items, and he gets wrapped up in the affair almost coincidentally. His mother, Katherine Moriarty, is a former punk rock musician who had a hit song that is somehow related to another asset controlled by the black ops agency, a recording that induces a violent rage in anyone who hears it.

All of these characters bounce off each other in unexpected ways, with Nick managing to acquire the hand, the agents targeting his mother in an attempt to get it back, and others within the agency doing what they can to keep the situation under control. Their efforts are all in vain though, with things becoming increasingly chaotic and maybe even spreading beyond Portland and affecting the entire world.

This is all compelling enough, but as I mentioned, Rosson regularly deviates from the ongoing developments to detail the characters’ backstories. We learn about how Bonner and Weils came to work for the government agency and how events in their pasts made them ripe for manipulation by David Lundy, the man in charge. We see how Hutch has struggled with issues like his dad’s death due to cancer and a violent attack by a motorcycle gang. We learn about Katherine’s relationship with Nick’s father Matthew, the history of their band, and the struggles both Katherine and Nick have experienced after the couple’s marriage fell apart and Matthew committed suicide.

All of this is very well-written, but at times, I found myself wondering if so much backstory was necessary. While some details do play into the ongoing plot, others just seem to be there to flesh out these characters. There’s nothing wrong with that, and Rossom does his best to make everyone three-dimensional so that they feel like real people reacting to crazy events rather than just cardboard cutouts who are proceeding through a zombie apocalypse plot. I guess my main issue is that the balance seems off. With so much attention on backstory and character development, we get less emphasis on the horrors developing in the present. Sometimes, the developing plot almost seems like an afterthought, something to check in on and advance incrementally before getting back to what happened in the past. The book would have been more effective for me if it had been the other way around. What we do get about the ever-increasing chaos and violence is really striking, with moments that are disturbing and horrific, but I think the book as a whole would have been more effective if those elements had received greater emphasis.

I’m probably being more critical here than I should, because the book is a very good read, full of striking moments and interesting ideas. Rosson has put a great deal of care into building all of these characters and making us care about what happens to them, and he has also come up with some compelling moments of horror related to supernatural influences that are difficult to understand and impossible to control. There’s plenty to like here, even if I found certain aspects of the book to be less than fully satisfying. Rosson recently released a sequel, The Devil By Name, which I’ll probably have to check out at some point. Perhaps with a better idea of what to expect, I’ll find it to be more satisfying. Still, I’ll be hoping for more nastiness, stuff that is disturbing enough to crawl under the skin and linger in the memory. I think Rosson has the capability for that sort of horror, and I’ll be happy if I can get it.