Unseen Gods by Justin Holley

I would like to thank Flame Tree Books and Random Things Tours for an advance copy of this novel in exchange for a fair and honest review

Publisher - Flame Tree Press

Published - Out Now

Price - £20 hardback £4.95 ebook

Careful what you search for, you may just find it. With grotesque glimpses of the disappeared, the past is alive and well.

After winning an old casefile at auction outlining the disappearance of a hunting party back in the nineties, Kory and his pregnant wife invite their friend and mentor, Professor Frank Colista, and others, for a casual long weekend of exploring the mystery onsite with very little hope of finding anyone or anything. When one of their factions disappears without a trace, Kory and Colista fear the past may repeat itself. Then the deaths start. As a savage, unexpected snowstorm sets in, the disappearances and ungodly sightings of the deceased ramp up, and an old woman rambles about end-of-days and sacrifice.

The power of the occult has a long attraction for humans from Doctor Faustus to Alastair Crowley. In novels the occult investigator is a figure able to guide the innocent against the power of darkness and explain the various weirdness thrown at the unwary. In Justin Holley’s horror novel Unseen Gods we have a seemingly small mystery that becomes a battle of good versus evil that unfortunately don’t really grab me.

Kory and his pregnant wife Sally are beguiled by the purchase of an old set of papers telling of the disappearance of hunters in the countryside. The kind of mystery they love to investigate so the duo some old but feuding college friends and Kory’s old tutor (and chaos magician ) Colisto plus apprentice Jenifer go to investigate and find a much more powerful force is against them than they could ever imagine.

In many ways this is a fairly standard occult mystery but one I found hard to really click with. Holley sets things up with a strange very religious old woman being talked to by a god and her self flagellating so we know this will be a little gory. The mystery deepens as our cast investigate and the horror rises and the cast as we might expect hit a lot of danger and this story has a demonic strange vibe with a personal battle ahead for Colisto. The manic side works with a creepiness but does take a little while before things get very strange. There is a neat build up and it doesn’t quite end up where I expected.

But there is a general opaqueness to the characters that for a short read really didn’t help me relax into the book. Colisto is from another of Holley’s books (which I’ve not read)but there is not much backstory or sense of character he pretty much arrives and does his stuff even his apprentice feels quite functional. I’d had liked to better understand early on why. Our wider cast fall into those in peril or to be doomed and it’s not again made me really care about any of them too much

I’d recommend this if you’re after a pacy horror story that has the feel of those cabin in the woods as you may have seen from the 80s!