Monthly Archives: June 2007

I picked up Jack Ketchum’s Off Season several months back, while perusing the shelves for something fun and perhaps a bit frightening.

In the last, I was in no way disappointed. This was the first horror novel I’d read in a long time that actually instilled a certain amount of fear in the reader. I tend to read in the park over lunchtime, and I’d find myself sitting with my back against a tree, continually looking over my shoulder as I read. The emotional tension of the book is just that contagious. This is not a book you want to read before bedtime, or you’ll never manage to get to sleep.

The premise seems realistic and incredibly plausible, especially to myself, living as I do in an extremely rural area. There is a family of cannibals living in the woods, existing as if they are animals (yet with all of a human’s cruelty and malice) and with a taste for human flesh resulting from a spiritual belief that with the consumption of another human, they gain that human’s strength.

Even the peripheral characters are decently developed, and none of them feel “disposable,” so that when, inevitably, some of them die, you feel genuine sorrow for their death – and the often gruesome nature of it.

This is easily one of the best horror stories I have ever read, kept me on the edge of my seat the entire time and kept surprising me – particularly with the strength Ketchum imparts in the women at the center of the story who refuse to be victimized, even by such monsters as these cannibals.

It is impossible to stop turning the pages, right up until the panic-ridden ending.

Offspring, the sequel, I picked up in the hopes of the same thrilling, horrific ride. The cop from the first book has returned, now retired and alcoholic, suffering from the memory of what he witnessed. This time, the sole canniballistic survivor of the original group has returned to the area, having rebuilt her little tribe through kidnapping and breeding. This time, their specific target seems to be children, and a child becomes one of the heroes.

The story is good, and the character development even stronger, but the sense of horror is lessened. Whereas in the first novel, you couldn’t be certain who would make it out alive, if anyone . . . in the second, it was quite clear even early-on who would survive the horror.

The heroes and the villains in the sequel were much, much more clearly defined from the start – you didn’t have to guess who was who.

The sequel was still an enjoyable read, but lacking in the intensity and sense of panic that made the first one such a wrenching on-the-edge-of-your-seat ride. The conclusion was much happier, with much more of a sense of closure. Closure, I think, was perhaps the purpose of this sequel for Mr. Ketchum as well.