Redder Days by Sue Rainsford
I would like to thank Transworld for an advance copy of this novel in exchange for a fair and honest review
Publisher – Transworld
Published – Out Now
Price – £12.99 paperback £7.99 Kindle eBook
Twins Anna and Adam live in an abandoned commune in a volatile landscape where they prepare for the world-ending event they believe is imminent. Adam keeps watch by day, Anna by night. They meet at dawn and dusk.
Their only companion is Koan, the commune's former leader, who still exerts a malignant control over their daily rituals. But when one of the previous inhabitants returns, everything Anna and Adam thought they knew to be true is thrown into question.
Dazzling, unsettling and incredibly moving, Redder Days is a stunning exploration of the consequences of corrupted power, the emotional impact of abandonment, and the endurance of humanity in the most desperate of situations.
We tend to think of horror as sharp edge, brutal and ugly. But there is often a beauty to horror that people forget. Nightmares pull at our subconscious raise our human fears and give us a chance to discuss them. Mary Shelley examines science and death in Frankenstein. Shirley Jackson explores the shattering of minds beautifully in her work such as the Haunting of Hill House - horror I think can be troublingly beautiful. In Redder Days Sue Rainsford takes environmental collapse and an imploding cult to paint an eerie picture of secrets and survival that led to a memorable reading experience.
The earth is failing whales beach themselves en masse; jelly fish populations are dying, and a new contagion is sweeping through humanity turning parts of the body red, changing them mentally as well as physically. Two medical professionals Matthew and Koan feel the long-awaited end of the world is coming and to survive create a strange outpost on the site of an eternally burning mine. Over the years they develop rituals and await the coming of the final Storm that will take the old world away. But the numbers within the population decline and now it is an old reclusive Koan and two young teenagers named Adam and Anna who remain – keeping the faith burning and being forever wary of intruders carrying ‘the Red’ that could infect them.
This is an ambitious tale that doesn’t hold prisoners we bounce between primarily the four main characters and their memories of life before the settlement and the current time they are in. Rainsford from the off creates a world of colour, sound and sensation as the characters describe the ruined world they inhabit. We get pulled into daily rituals and familiarise ourselves with their worldview the need to cleanse with salt, the prayers to the end of the world – we walk several minds in these people’s shoes so even if we don’t sympathise with them at least we understand them. Unsurprisingly, the colour red and all its variants seeps into the narrative and is forever seen as a sign of infection and danger. We see in particular how deeply Adam and Anna now hold themselves to this faith and it is a troubling sense of belief they carry as well as a worry over what actually happened to their absent mother Eula. They are the scariest characters especially as we see them quite happy to kill potential carriers and then purge themselves of any infection in line with their faith. This is a cult and behind it all is Koan now this lost voice forever locked away from the world but his influence lives on in the two children. Very quickly the reader will get the feeling that the adults were keeping secrets from the children for their own agendas.
In a series of flashbacks, we see the callous Koan and Matthew struggle with the events that caused them to flee and see neither were particularly holy people – often instead dismissive of the wider world and struggling with their own family secrets. For them the end of the world gives them an opportunity for power and creating the world in their image. But as time passes, we see it’s not enough. In particular we see the dynamics of the settlement shifted with Matthew and his partner Tabatha and the arrival of the mercurial Eula who doesn’t take to Koan’s orders kindly. As we progress through the story, we see that these relationships and tensions were pulling the group slowly apart. Rainsford keeps these events opaque and there is a lot to be inferred though half told secrets and references that as the tale progresses the reader pieced together. The highlight of this is we get this oppressive sense of humans trapped in one place and it is being around these humans all the time that creates the divides. As well as the threat of ‘the red’ there is this feeling of infection of the mind that also carries throughout the novel via the adult’s polluted ideas and even Anna and Adam may not be safe from their family’s past catching up from them.
All of which is hugely impressive start t the tale and it makes for a fast and initially very effective read as we pick up all these sensations and impressions of what has been going on. However, I found the final scenes were letting the narrative down. It is always tricky talking about the finale of a book but for me I think despite all this set-up the final revelations and actions all felt very by the book with no surprises (and one scene of near incest that didn’t feel necessary either to the plot) At this point I felt we moved away from the poetical nightmare horror I’d been enjoying and was instead in very familiar ‘cult goes wrong’ territory - I think more of the environmental scenes could have been used at this point so it felt a bit of a missed opportunity after such a promising two thirds of the tale.
Despite that I found this a very compelling read that gave me a truly unusual reading experience and Rainsford’s use of language and imagery was both beautiful and disturbing. I was just hoping for a little bit more to land all these ideas at the end. I think fans of literary horror will still find quite a bit to enjoy and I’ll be looking out for more from Rainsford in the future.
