Review: Infrasonic by Aubrey Carvell

SPOILER WARNING: This review gets into many of the details of Infrasonic, so I highly recommend that you read the book first. You can read my spoiler-free thoughts here if you are on the fence. Reading this review however will contain many spoilers.

Infrasonic has an extensive list of trigger warnings, which I do appreciate. I am someone who ignores trigger warnings like the plague because I don't feel triggered by horror fiction and I know I'm going to like a book less if I know what to expect. That being said I think they're important for the people who need them, and I can see why a lot of the topics in this book would upset someone.

Had I read the trigger warnings for Infrasonic, I would have known going in that there is cruelty to an animal. Those of you who know me know that this is my least favorite horror trope. In much the same way that "saving the cat" is a shortcut to showing a heroic character, "killing the cat" feels like a shortcut to show sadism. I often see the cats or dogs or other household pets being killed or tortured as a lazy way to paint a book as edgy or extreme in place of actually trying to make the audience uncomfortable. In recent years I've seen it done a lot and I'm so seldom impressed by it.

In the first chapter of this book I was enjoying getting to know the setting and the characters. I already felt for Wilbur and his situation. Then his cousin violently kills a cat in a very painful and graphic way and the book lost me for a long time following. Some of Wilbur's best characterization is in the aftermath of the cat's death, which he is haunted by. He's frustrated with himself for not standing up to his cousin, Gayle, he's angry that he didn't save the cat. He names the cat posthumously and buries it as a sort of penance. It says a lot about him and the direction of his character arc, and these are all elements that could have made the trope land for me had they been executed a little better. Unfortunately, it was brought up so often it felt a lot like beating a dead horse--or dead cat, if you will.

One fourth of the book is Wilbur beating himself up about the cat accompanied with vivid descriptions of the death. This one incident almost single-handedly accounts for all the "extreme" elements of the book in the first half. That really sucks because there was already more interesting stuff going on that seems to take a backseat to guilt after the cat dies. One could be forgiven for thinking this was a book about survivor's guilt following a violent cat murder because not only is it the prominent focus in the first quarter of the book, it comes up again at the inciting incident near the halfway mark, and at the dramatic showdown between Wilbur and Gayle toward the end. And about a dozen other random times in passing.

All that being said (and my biggest gripe with the book out of the way) I am once again glad that I didn't check the trigger warnings. If I had seen that the story includesmy least favorite trope I might have passed it over entirely and never given the story a second thought.

But many parts of it were right up my alley.

It doesn't start until about halfway through, but once the extreme elements hit, I found they were done quite well. Having the small town so well established made it feel like a harder shift when the violence breaks out in creative and shocking ways. This, actually, is one of my favorite horror tropes and one I find underutilized. I am such a sucker for when normal, every day people are infected/influenced/altered to act upon their most violent fantasies. It was such a pleasant surprise when that was the direction that the plot took after a slow-burn build up. It slowly but surely got me back on board, and I am so glad that I stuck with it through the first half.

There is a frantic, feverish pacing that is easily established at this point. To my surprise, and delight, it maintains that pacing more or less throughout the entire second half of the book. The few places Wilbur and the audience slow down to catch their breath are infused with so much uneasiness that they were just as engaging as the graphic horrors and breakneck chases.

I don't think the good parts of the book were perfect. I felt the humans-turned-monsters (cleverly referred to as signaldrunk in the story) were over-explained a touch by the end. I felt the priest's exposition monologue was shoehorned in. The end felt rushed and unearned in comparison to how neatly everything else had been laid out.

But I did find that there was just under half of this book where I didn't ever want to put it down. The core concepts were appealing, the gore was painted with broad strokes that really activated my imagination, and overall I found Carvell's writing style to be incredibly engaging. It took me several sittings to push my way through the opening chapters, but I read the entire second half on my way to bed last night because it had me hooked.

The small town vibes were impeccable. I loved some of the characters. Father Fitzmorris was an unexpected favorite of mine--and that is saying something because I'm generally quite skeptical of priest characters at the best of times. There were other characters, like Wilbur's mother and cousin who I loved to hate. This made some of the deaths as satisfying as they were emotionally charged. Even at the times I didn't like Wilbur, or was getting terribly frustrated with him, there was a lot of empathy for him still.

When some people say "extreme" horror they mean to push it past the points of silliness. This has elements of that B-movie, over the top violence, but it also has a lot of emotional horror and complex relationships. Wilbur's relationship to his controllling mother is a great example of this because she is seen as such a negative force, but he's able to express such love and gratitude for her after her death. The book teases a similar relationship between Wilbur and Gayle (whom he briefly tries to see as a potential protector) but I felt like that complexity stumbled across the finish line in its presentation--much like the resolution to Wilbur's relationship with his father which felt very rushed.

I would have loved to see the themes of race and otherness explored a little more in the opening chapters of this book. These ideas were introduced, and must have played largely into Wilbur's relationship to his dad, but they didn't seem fully realized.

At the end of the day, I think Infrasonic's largest failing was resource management. There was only so much time and attention to give the many characters, themes, and conflicts. All the ideas were good, but the allocation felt uneven.

I would love to read more of Carvell's work somewhere down the line, and can't wait to see what other titles Bad Omen Books has in its future.