BONES OF OUR STARS, BLOOD OF OUR WORLD

A serial killer—or maybe something else—stalks the denizens of an isolated community on an island off North Carolina.

Bunn is one of the most prolific comics writers around, but while he’s only dabbled in fiction, he’s no stranger to horrible things. Drawing on pulpy imagery and influences ranging from H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos to Stranger Things, his first adult novel drives a touristy town in the American South to the brink of madness. There’s a formula at work here but readers who have spent time in towns like Castle Rock or Derry will be plenty comfortable with it. Wilson Island is a prototypically wholesome, touristy town populated by good hardworking folks (read: a whole bunch of victims) and a few bad apples. Among the sizable cast, we meet knocked-up teenager Willa Hanson, who’s hiding her pickle from her father, Wade, a small-town gangster. There’s also hard-nosed Sheriff Bartholomew Buckner; plucky reporter Rachel Lang; Madhouse Quinn, the local nutcase; and Denny Danvers, a sword-wielding Dungeons & Dragons legend and weed dealer with a heart of gold. More importantly, Bunn follows along as a serial killer begins butchering the townsfolk at the behest of his mother, all while wearing some kind of bone-based mask and babbling about his “harvest.” The first half reads closer to psychological horror before the killer is, to our surprise, revealed completely. Only then does the book take a giant left turn into a much bigger, weirder, and hard-to-explain story. The threat veers toward the vague, nameless “dark forces” common to this flavor of horror, but what follows is vicious, graphic, and largely nonsensical—closer to John Carpenter’s The Thing than any procedural investigation. By the end, the gory set pieces and lurid imagery are carrying more weight than the plot, but readers of Grady Hendrix, Paul Tremblay, or Stephen Graham Jones will find themselves right at home.

A grotesque apocalyptic fantasy that can’t quite shoulder its own cosmic weight.