It’s time to review Episode Thirteen by Craig DiLouie, but first…
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Rating: 3.5 out of 5
Genre: Horror
Reasons to read it: Unexplained endings, weird science, creepy second half.
WTF did I just read????
Have you seen the movie Sunshine? Well, I like to say that it’s the best sci-fi movie until the last fifteen minutes. I’m not saying that Episode Thirteen was the best ghost book, but I was really digging it until the last act.
That’s a small lie.
I was digging it until the first “ghost” appeared.
PSA to my writing readers… if you're going to do a scary book, it’s the small things that really amp up the scare factor. Throw in a big monster and you’ll have us rolling our eyes. Watch The Haunting of Hill House for some great examples. Because the minute the ghost appeared in Episode Thirteen, any creep factor I was feeling left the building. And let me just tell you… there were some excellent moments that had me regretting picking up the book in the morning before the sun was up.
The character development was very thick for a horror book. I give that a small applause. DiLouie didn’t give us the cookie-cutter characters either. Everyone was fully fleshed out with a great reason to support their involvement with the ghost-hunting show. On the flip side, the story would lean heavily on the character-oriented moments, losing the atmosphere and lowering the creep factor by a lot. When I wanted my hair to stand on end, the book would divert to some journal entry where the characters were ranting about this or that. Especially around people losing faith in the show. How is that remotely scary?
Now the moment in the car with Jessica was real and raw and one of the best moments in the book. It was the type of moment where DiLouie added in the character while amping up the creep factor. As a reader, seeing her lose her shit made the story come alive. I was living the freakout with her. Also a great example of showing instead of telling.
Maybe the characters weren’t the downfall of the story. Maybe it was DiLouie’s style. I can’t say that journal entries and scripts play well with the genre. It prevents the narrative from leaning into those dark descriptions that pull readers in. It felt like a cheap way to get out of actually writing a book and forced DiLouie to rely on his characters to carry the plot. Spoiler… they didn’t. What it did give was a voice to all the characters. Imagine if there was a narrative? We’d be going beyond a Stephen King book to include everything that DiLouie did in Episode Thirteen. Then the plot would have been stretched out more than it already was. You can’t say DilOuie did’t ring out every last drop from the haunted house.
Aside from the big and not-so-scary ghosts, the ending is what ruined the whole book for me. I mean why… why does every book horror store go to such extremes at the end? Why can’t the ending be steeped in reality? Or is that what the horror genre is? An extreme take on the gruesome. Maybe, I’ll just start my own subgenre then. Watch my endings be the scariest things anyone has ever read.
*side tangent* Is this why people write the crazy out there endings? So that they don’t scare themselves too much?
Or maybe that’s why Stephen King is the master.
I don’t regret reading Episode Thirteen. It was a great choice for my October Reading Challenge. I’m just not going to recommend it to anyone in my inner circle.
Happy Reading Friends.
Love,
Kait