Children to the Slaughter
Children To The Slaughter
Slaughter Series Book 1
By A.I. Nasser
The Sexton’s musings (spoilers are likely):
A good start to the series. Once again Nasser’s writing style is easy flowing. All chapters are set up in two parts (except chapter 18 and the epilogue). The current day events and a journal entry by Jeremiah Carter. The prologue starts where the journal entries stop, so we get the journey of what occurred up to the night that Copper Tibet is murdered. Kind of a cool way of structuring the story. As this is the first out of a three-book series there are still a lot of unanswered questions BUT, in the version that I got there is a bonus chapter. It’s very interesting and even though we all know that this is a vision occurring while Alan is in a coma there are some really good insights. So I highly recommend getting a version with the bonus content.
The prologue to this book is brutal. This whole thing starts out with the murder of Copper Tibet. He is dragged mostly unclothed through the freezing snow covered town to the tree that he is to be hanged from. This is one tough dude and professes his innocence all the way, hell the hanging doesn’t even work, they end up having to burn him. Jeremiah’s reaction is interesting in that he is utterly beside himself about the events unfolding…because, as we find out much later, he knows something that everyone else does not. This little tidbit is told subtly in the last couple of journal entries but in the bonus content they just come out and say it. For most, this revelation is going to be somewhat shocking. To all, it will be repugnant.
Now as for the main characters and the story that unfolds with them… if you remember Ghoulies, I mentioned that infidelity is one of my anger inducing situations. Well the most anger inducing character trait for me is hubris…in any form. My technical term for this trait is Assholishness and I have to say that the Cole takes the cake when it come to this, as is common for most politicians. I feel like Michael is worse than his father in this regard as he seems to be extremely entitled. Yet he is a worthless looser. To be quite frank it’s probably a good thing that the shit has hit the fan now…because sonny boy would have a made a real cock-up of the whole thing anyway. The shit can’t even put his clothes away. All of the Council members are weak as water. Instead of killing children why aren’t the trying to find a way to break the curse? I guarantee there is a way. It may not be easy but I’m sure it exists. I mean none of these families are making sacrifices. They are choosing other people’s children, not their own. That’s not a sacrifice, not for them. The principal of the school chooses them, the Chairman performs the ritual and gives the monster the identity of its next offering and the sheriff takes out the rest of the family. Or at least that is the impression that I got. I mean, there is no way Jamie’s parent were going to go quietly, even if they were paid to look the other way. Yeah nope not gonna be a thing. So really for me what Alan does, unknowingly, was a long time coming quite frankly. It needed to happen. Just goes to show what can happen when you judge a person on how they look and act. When you question someone, just because they are nervous or not forth coming does not mean that they are guilty. Just because someone looks foreboding does not mean they are guilty. Jeremiah made judgments without hard evidence. And when evidence was found, it turns out that it was planted by the real killer and not even true evidence. Jeremiah knows this, he knows who the real killer is, he knows that the evidence they found was false and he still allows the execution to occur. Thus starting this chain of events.
All of this to say, I am not one to agree with “the sins of the father” bullshit. You punish those that wronged you directly, not someone that exists so far past the initial wrong that the chances of them even being aware of it are slim. In this case, of course, all of the head members of the founding families know and are willing to continue kidnapping children, not even knowing what happens to them.
Let us discuss our monster. Now this man was wronged in the worse way imaginable. His life was taken from him unjustly. He was murdered by an entire town for a crime that he did not commit. Well', at least not the kidnapping and murder of Allison Carter. He may be guilty of many other things but of that he was not. While I am one for vengeance against those that have wronged us I am not so keen on this situation. This man who was probably lovely has now become so corrupted in death that he is willing to take the children of people who are not even related to the town folk that murdered him. There is no justice or retribution in that. This sadly means that this man who was innocent when he was alive has become the monster that he was believed to be in life.
This ends, of course, open ended. This is not one of those series that you can read out of order and know what is going on. They are not stand alone. Really I’ve found that many are not. Because even though the event that is happening is specific to that book the main characters are often developed further and earlier in series’. So they grow and change throughout the different books making it more effective to read them in order. So that’s been the plan since I read The Skipton Haunting series out of order. Not gonna do that again. Think of this series as a full meal, this was just the appetizer.
