Title: Worship Me | Author: Craig Stewart | Publisher: Hellbound Books Publishing LLC | Pub. Date: 08/01/2017 | ISBN 13: 9780999177617 | Pages: 349 | Genre: Horror | Language: English | Triggers: None | Rating: 1 out of 5 | Source: Received from the author for an honest review
Worship Me
Something is listening to the prayers of St. Paul’s United Church, but it’s not the god they asked for; it’s something much, much older.
A quiet Sunday service turns into a living hell when this ancient entity descends upon the house of worship and claims the congregation for its own. The terrified churchgoers must now prove their loyalty to their new god by giving it one of their children or in two days time it will return and destroy them all.
As fear rips the congregation apart, it becomes clear that if they’re to survive this untold horror, the faithful must become the faithless and enter into a battle against God itself. But as time runs out, they discover that true monsters come not from heaven or hell…
…they come from within.
Worship Me Review
I really like the cover for Worship Me. The imagery is great and the title can be clearly seen. I really, really wanted to like the rest of the book as well. Unfortunately, that was not the case.
I will say that after I read the bio and learned that the author is also a screenwriter, the way that Worship Me is written makes a little more sense. The sequences seem more like movie scenes. In fact, that really seemed to come into play in one particular scene that stood out to me. I won’t say much more than a chase scene in the basement of the church. It was written very vividly and it felt as though I could see it perfectly. It was my favorite part of the book. The character in that scene also behaved in a very natural way. The rest of the characterizations felt a little lacking in comparison.
Really, if this book had been written as a short story or novella I do believe it would have been much better. Part of what drags it down is the meandering plot and thesaurus-heavy descriptions. Even the simplest actions are overly described. This tendency drags the pacing down terribly. For example, the first day and night after The Behemoth’s decree about handing over a child takes up most of the book but nothing much happens. A few things happen but they’re so dispassionately described that they lack any real tension or terror.
It’s not a necessity that characters be likable to be good characters. The main character seems to be Angela, who is mostly presented as being the ‘rational’ one. Spending so much time in her head gets tedious, listening constantly to her superiority and whining. Her actions are often inexplicable and contradictory. They don’t really stand out, though, because most of the characters act in ways that are not only incomprehensible but often downright bizarre. It’s hard to go into detail without getting into spoilers One small example:
The foreshadowing is heavy so when the final few chapters get going there’s not much surprise to it. Well, there is a surprise but it has nothing to do with the story but the actions of one of the characters. The sudden change at the end and the final few chapters just do not make sense with the rest of the book. It seems thrown in for the sake of having a twist at the end.
I honestly can’t say I recommend it.