Spoilers (and you should read the first book first, if you haven’t already!).
You can’t put baby in a corner, and you can’t put the devil in a test tube. Or at least, a devil. Keith Rosson is back with his highly anticipated sequel to 2023’s Fever House, The Devil by Name, which is just as much of a rip-roaring, barn-burner of a book as its predecessor.
The events of the Rosson’s sequel shoot us forward five years after the Message was unleashed as a helluva cliffhanger in Fever House — Matthew Coffin’s devilish message is broadcast, seemingly accidentally, but we come to find out deliberately, around the world, causing the fevered, zombie-like drifts (Rosson’s name for the hordes) to be unleashed, crumbling militaries, governments, and societies — where the United States, through propaganda (a woman named Jane on all the items resembling civilization, including food and fuel, along with cellular phones, although I’m shocked anyone would answer a phone after the Message!) and a partnership with the largest defense contractor in the world, Terradyne, headed by Jack Bonner, the one who unleashed the Message, and Theo Marsden, are trying to rebuild the world through the, perhaps ironically named, Providence Initiative. There is an American President, albeit he seems figurehead at best compared to Theo’s power. Jack’s nephew, John Bonner, is now working security for Terradyne and has the devil’s “hand” in his possession, one of three remnants that when formed together could unleash hell on earth (the other remnants are the Message and the eye). But isn’t a zombie-like apocalyptic scenario hell-on-earth enough? As Rosson reminds us, it can always get worse. Indeed, it does. Katherine, Matthew’s wife, who has their fevered son, Nick, locked up in a shed at her house in Massachusetts, is besotted with grief. Grief over what happened to Nick, losing Matthew and her marriage, and ultimately, grief at the seemingly obvious absence of God. The devil — a devil — is running roughshod over the earth and God’s silence is agonizing in a response, a void of grief unto itself.
Rosson also introduces us to two new characters who become pivotal. The first is Naomi, a 16-year-old girl in France, with an American father, which intelligence reports suggests she has the power to heal the fevered — to turn them back. Naturally, when Theo gets wind of this, he sends troops to kidnaps the girl and brings her back to America (she happens to have a baby with her, her most recently turned fevered). The second is Dean, a ragman, who collects items to barter with, trailing his own grief behind him (his grief started pre-Message). Even racism survives the apocalypse in Kentucky and Indiana, though, and upon escaping that situation, Dean finds himself in league with Katherine. All of which is setting up a fated encounter with John Bonner, the devilish monster, and Naomi at the end of the book. I always love when a book brings disparate characters together in one climatic end.
Oh, not to bury the lede (pun intended), but Matthew is still around, held in a coffin-like box below the Terradyne headquarters. Theo and the president think they will be kings on earth if they can wield the darkness of Matthew and the light of Naomi. Like Matthew before him who embraced a devil to gain fortune (at least in Matthew’s case, he wanted his wife and son back) and everything literally went to hell, Theo also embraces Matthew because he wants to be the king of a ruined earth (and probably fashion himself its savior, as he’s already been doing with Terradyne and Jane). In fact, we learn, as I alluded to, that it was Theo who sabotaged Jack’s intent with the Message sending it to the whole world instead of China, Russia, and Saudi Arabia. Which even then, still would have killed millions of people, but at least not billions. Indeed, on a much smaller scale, there are those in our present political moment who think destroying the current system means it can be rebuilt in their image and for certain, that they will be festooned with the thanks of the people they “saved.” But I digress.
For what it’s worth, Jack Bonner is interested in a vaccine to at least try to save some of the fevered, whereas Theo and the president seem to be inching closer to total eradication. That discussion with the rest of the Terradyne committee composed of former Congressmen is where one of them uses the line that I started this review with, “You’re trying to fit the damn devil in a test tube, Jack, when a bullet is what you need.” To be fair to that point-of-view, how do you inoculate against something outside the bounds of research, study, and science itself?
That’s where Naomi comes into play. Her father was stationed in the Arctic when he came across Saint Michael, the angel-like creature from the first book who was used by the government to foil terror plots and such. They would cut off his wings to make him do their bidding. He is the one who foretold a devil’s attempt to make a fever house on earth to reign over. To do so, it needs Katherine as a bride, the baby as a son, and to destroy Naomi, the light. Saint Matthew transposed his light, as it were, to the father, who then, when he had Naomi, transposed it to her. She can see things in advance, too, but again, she can also heal and turn back the fevered. So, yes, she is the light, the juxtaposition to “the devil by name” (because we lack an adequate word for what such a creature is and seeks) who eventually possesses Theo to ultimately bring about hell on earth.
Thanks to the heroic efforts of Dean, John, and even Katherine, although she wilts a bit at the end understandably in fact of a devil, and most pivotally, Naomi, who heals and turns many of the fevered, they are able to vanquish this devil and stop him from bringing about his hellish dream it has long been “patient for,” cycling through hundreds of souls over the years to achieve.
Bloody, unrelenting, with shocking violence at every turn (shocking both in surprising me at who is being harmed and at the degree of violence), and real characters developed with Katherine, Dean, John, and even our bad human, Theo, Rosson’s sequel is every bit as exciting, enthralling, and hellish as Fever House. That’s not an easy feat. To put it another way, Rosson delivers more than 800 pages across two books of balls-to-the-wall action and fun. Even those character ruminations feel like only a flitting of reprieves from the madness while still managing to feel substantive (clever as hell to pull that off). But as I thought with Fever House, Rosson also has a deft hand when writing grief, both intimate and interpersonal, and grandiose and global.
To be sure, Rosson also writes horror with such unique words and sentence configurations that it feels like a breath of fresh air for the genre, while still having the echoes of graveyards past (The Stand is referenced in the book, for example). From a horror standpoint, I think two images will stick in my head the most. The first is of John Bonner being tortured by his Terradyne peers to ascertain Katherine’s location. They torture him by putting him in a body bag, which is terrifying enough, and then they lower the body bag with John inside it a few feet dangling over thousands of fevered Terradyne corralled. Secondly, is the description of this devil Theo is “chatting” with before full possession and transformation occurs; Theo wants to know what Matthew (the devil by name) is truly, to which it responds, “I break time’s back upon my knee. I skirt between the walls.” Those walls are darkness and lightness. But that image of breaking time across its back is a horrifying. Eat your heart out, Bane.
I don’t know if there will be a third book — this one didn’t necessarily end with cliffhangers like Fever House did, but we do know Naomi and Katherine intend to turn back Nick — but I’d love to come back to this world, to learn more about the lightness and perhaps if there is anything more sinister that lurks in the darkness. Regardless, I’ll be watching for whatever Rosson does next, in this universe or not. His is a delightfully macabre pen to devour.
Milam's Musings 