Over the last couple of years, we have seen a few authors rocketed out of the horror ghetto in various ways. Not everyone can go zero to sixty right out of the gate like Josh Malerman did. Your Paul Tremblay's or Sarah Pinbrough's spent years publishing well-respected work in the genre without mainstream success. Sarah Pinborough after years in the salt mines chipping away found a voice writing thrillers for women in the vein of Gone Girl. I love those books and it appears to be the direction she WANTS to go but it is a little different of a direction for her.
The most exciting thing about the outlandishly amazing reaction to and support of Jeremy Robert Johnson's new novel The Loop is that it feels like a JRJ book. Saga press may have awkwardly marketed this book with a smart but eye-rolling comparison to very successful off the mark stuff but The Loop is a Jeremy Robert Johnson book. Since I was around Jeremy from my time in Portland, I can't NOT sense his fears, his humor, and obsessions in the text. I admit as this book approached, I wondered if the bigger tent would dilute that strange feeling comes off the page of a JRJ book like an airborne virus.
The thing is as weird as Angeldust Apocalypse is Jeremy always had a voice and style that informed by popular authors even when he was writing twinkie and cockroach suited nuclear war survivor novellas. Being a stay-at-home dad is more of a threat to his bizarro nature than a mainstream publisher. The good news is we now get the author exploring multiple themes and let me tell you The future of Dad horror is in good hands no doubt.
Whatever, I am giving him shit with love because the Loop is great. I couldn't be much happier about a book doing well unless it had my name was on it. Jeremy has dreamed big and worked harder. The Loop has tons of hype and the good news it lives up to it.
That said, "Stranger things meets World War Z?" The Loop has more in common with early Cronenberg films like Rabid and Shivers, but sure Stranger Things. What the fuck do I know about marketing? As it is doing well. Saga is one of the best presses going releasing a lot of the best books, while this book has plenty of coming of age elements but the kids are modern and a bit older. They are going to a cave party not playing D and D. The setting is basically a fictional version of Bend Oregon JRJ's hometown. This provides many of the most subtle but excellent observations.
It takes place in Thunder Falls which is a city that is home to a large biotech hub. This is where the paranoid conspiracy tracks starts, something JRJ did in his underrated novel Skullcrack City. There is a disease, an emergency signal and the infected are horny and violent. Disease, technology, and chaos swirl together in a novel as quickly paced as Tremblay’s Survivor Song earlier in the year. That book had a built-in ticking clock, The Loop gets the propulsion from the chaos and violence.
That is not to say that we don’t have lighter moments. Johnson creates funny moments as he always has, sometimes in the sheer insanity but mostly in our main character. Lucy is an outsider, her reality as an adopted teenager who was born in Peru to parents she lost in an accident is a wise a crucial choice by the author. It gives the POV a sharper knife for dissecting her town. She was just barely able to function in this town, and now she has to fight past feral crazies?
Gore drenched and cringe-inducing events happen left and right in this story of Science fiction/ monster/ body horror. There is fun stuff with a class division that is more like the Breakfast Club than Stranger Things. Lucy and her fellow adopted friends Bucket has the best most heart-filled relationship in the book. I think these are elements some readers will miss due to the white knuckle pace.
The Loop in most years would be a shoo-in for best horror novel of the year. The thing is this is a year of masterpieces from Silvia Moreno Garcia, Paul Tremblay, and Stephen Graham Jones who is my current leader with The Only Good Indian. I am not sure how the year will shake out but damn this book is a great sign of things to come from Jeremy Robert Johnson.
The Loop is a fun horror novel that might be better thought of as Nick Cutter’s The Troop meets Breakfast Club. This is the kind of super monster that escapes the mad scientist’s lab when the guy in the white coat grew-up reading Stephen King and watching Cronenberg movies far too young and dreamed of having a book on the shelf. Throw in adulthood spent getting out a highlighter to study how Brian Evenson stories work on the brain and you have this book. It is a must-read for horror fans, as a Philip K Dickian who enjoys mind-fuckery Skullcrack City is a little more up my alley but the good news is we can read both.
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