The Harrow: Review: Riverwatch

The plot to Joseph Nassise's horror novel, Riverwatch, is simple enough - a demonic, gargoyle-like creature is released from its imprisonment inside a statue and begins murdering the local townspeople of Harrington Falls, Vermont; and it is up to three friends and the local Sheriff who learn of the creature's existence to destroy the thing. The story, however, is far more interesting.

The demon, Moloch, is actually a member of a race called the Na'Karat (Nightshades). According to the novel, in the Paleolithic Age of humankind when humans were hunter-gatherers, two great civilizations shared the world -- the Na'Karat and a long-lived race that was human in appearance called the Elders. Where the Elders found in early humans an intelligent species worthy of their teachings, the Na'Karat found only prey to be regarded as little more than cattle. A great war ensued between the two races until both were nearly extinct and all but a few traces of their once great civilizations remained. The Elders teachings enabled early humans to progress into the Neolithic Age and the beginnings of civilization; the remnants of the Na'Karat and Elder civilizations formed the basis for all the human religion and mythology relating to that time period.

Fast forward now to the present. Hudson Blake, current heir to the family which founded Harrington Falls, hires one of the three friends, Jake Caruso, to refurbish the cellar of a Blake family mansion. Jake stumbles onto a passage that leads from the mansion to the Harrington Falls cemetery and a mausoleum containing the statue Moloch is imprisoned in, setting the scene for the creature's release and a series of grisly murders.

The second of the three friends, Sam Travers, is an orderly at a nursing home who befriends an imaginative old man named Gabriel -- the last surviving Elder, and the one responsible for imprisoning Moloch within the statue. Gabriel has grown weak with old age and has returned to Harrington Falls after years of travel to keep a closer eye on Moloch's incarceration. Fearing he won't be strong enough to defeat Moloch a second time, Gabriel tries to explain the history of the Elders and the Na'Karat to Sam, who dismisses the stories as the eccentricities of an old man.

The last of the three friends, Kate Riley, has been gathering information on the Blake family for a thesis she's putting together towards her Master's Degree. She discovers that an ancestor of the Blake family has a nefarious past -- something, it turns out, that Hudson Blake has picked up where his predecessor left off. Kate is also tied into the story by a ruby amulet called a Bloodstone that Jake finds in the mausoleum and gives to her, creating a mental link between her and Moloch.

The remainder of the story deals with the three friends coming to terms with the dread realization that a creature such as Moloch exists and is the cause of the murders. They convince the Sheriff, Damon Wilson -- who has been investigating the murders all along and getting nowhere in solving the crimes -- to help destroy Moloch, which is a near impossible task because the creature is capable of focusing its mind to regenerate its wounds. In the end, Jake and Sam make the ultimate sacrifice in order to vanquish Moloch, leaving Damon and Kate emotional wrecks in the aftermath, and understandably so.

It is this sacrifice for the greater good that suggests the story's theme is one of simple faith and courage -- that having faith in yourself and others strengthens your courage to get through another day or to fight the good fight, allowing you to prevail in the face of adversity, even if in doing so it means death. At first this seems the case, but it's not until reaching the end of the novel that the author presents the theme in its entirety:

"[It's] okay to be afraid . . . Fear is what makes us all human. It is fear that allows us to rise above ourselves, to reach that much further and that much higher, to strive to achieve just that little bit more . . . There is too much to be afraid of in our lives -- fear of ourselves, fear of others, fear of our emotions and our lack thereof, fear of every action we might take every day of our lives. We rise above that and we move forward, facing our fears with an inbred sense of courage that lives within us all, waiting for the chance to be let out."

Thus, the theme is not only about faith and courage alone, but about overcoming the fear and self-doubt that often stifle faith and courage. This central theme is embodied in each of the main characters of the story. For Jake, it is his fear of losing his logical, rational way of perceiving the world when he is forced to accept that Moloch is real. For Sam and Kate, it is the physical fear of confronting Moloch and the prospect of losing their lives. Damon's fear manifests itself in his inability to prevent the murders, while Gabriel's impotence nourishes his fear that he lacks the strength to defeat Moloch again. And for Moloch, yes, even Moloch, it his fear of Gabriel and the unknown capabilities of human technology that makes the creature wary in the beginning after so many centuries of imprisonment.

The characters likewise overcome their fears: Jake is eventually willing to entertain the possibility that Moloch is real, learns Moloch is indeed real, and fights the creature alone after Sam and Kate refuse to help. Sam and Kate muster the courage to help Jake, convincing Damon to help as well. Damon's hope in catching the murderer is renewed and he agrees to help. Gabriel accepts his impending death at the hands of Moloch because he knows Sam and the others will continue the fight after he is dead. Even though Jake, Sam and Gabriel are killed in the process of destroying Moloch, they overcome their fears through faith and courage. Even Damon and Kate find the faith and courage to put their lives back together afterwards in spite of their ordeal and the loss of Jake and Sam.

While the theme is sound, the manner in which Jake, Sam and Kate deal with their inner struggles and overcome their fears lacks, to a degree, believability. They seem to handle their fears too easily, and sometimes in a matter of a very short time span. Jake is a prime example of this: following Gabriel's murder, Sam goes to Jake's house with a videotape Gabriel recorded before his death. In the video, Gabriel warns Sam that the history about the Na'Karat and Elders is true. Jake, still clinging to his logic, tries to rationalize the tape, finally deciding to visit the mausoleum and confirm the statue is there. Of course, the statue is gone, and Jake's "rational" world comes crashing down around him; and this is all believable, too, up to the point when he invites Kate over and says they should kill Moloch.

From here, Jake's course of action begins to lose believability as he and Sam travel to an outcropping of rock along a river near Hudson Blake's mansion, Riverwatch, where Jake spied Moloch flying around a few days prior. After a near death experience with Moloch at the river, Jake and Sam are back at Jake's house a short time later, and Jake is still insisting they kill Moloch, his reason being to stop the creature from murdering again.

Indeed, this is a noble and just reason, but there is no plausible explanation as to why he wants to immediately continue pursuing Moloch after nearly being killed: "The shocked, vacant expression [Jake had] worn since they'd escaped the creature was gone from his face, and in its place Sam could see the first shining gleam of determination that he knew from past experience meant trouble." This is the only passage explaining Jake's change from his fear of nearly being killed to his decision to courageously dash off to do battle with Moloch alone after Sam and Kate refuse to help - a change that occurs within a matter of presumably twenty or thirty minutes because Kate is still bandaging a wound in Sam's shoulder inflicted by Moloch when Jake persists in his desire to go after the creature again. Whereas Sam and Kate's reactions are believable -- i.e. not wanting to help -- Jake's undaunted courage in the face of grave danger is dubious.

There is a good explanation for this, however, one that pertains to the author's unfortunate use of a plot machination. At this point in the novel, the story has reached an impasse of sorts, and to progress the story, Jake is employed as a catalyst to compel Sam, Kate and Damon to act -- i.e. his decision to fight Moloch alone sets into motion the events of the rest of the novel; but by failing to provide a plausible explanation for Jake's role as the catalyst, the author is cheating in a sense in order to move the story along -- a plot machination that sadly detracts from an otherwise well-crafted story.

This criticism pales in comparison to the novel as a whole and is easily overlooked. The author's depictions of night and darkness as living, sentient things is a recurring motif that adds to the ambience of terror pervading the novel; the history behind Gabriel and Moloch is both intriguing and original, demonstrating the author's flare for embellishing historical events in such a way that transcends fantasy into realism.

The murder scenes are chocked full of descriptively gory details, from bloody entrails strung across the curtains of a room, to a severed head stuffed into a toilet bowl, to references of unrecognizable chunks of human flesh too numerous to count -- and the amount of blood spillage in the book, sufficed to say, is enough to keep a small blood bank in good supply! While this type of visceral writing style may not agree with the delicate palates of some, it does an effective job in capturing Moloch's destructive nature, something necessary in setting the gravity of facing such an antagonist. This all plays nicely into the theme as well, building the fear that tries to prevent the characters from finding the courage to defeat Moloch.

Aside from the minor problems with plot and adherence to theme, the novel is a light, fun read, action-packed, and filled with suspenseful moments that keep the pages turning -- all the elements that make an entertaining horror story. The cost of the book is a little steep when considering the novel has a few rough edges, but for Joseph Nasisse's first novel, Riverwatch proves he has potential if he can smooth those edges out.