This is the case of a good idea already sort of perfected (or done so effectively) by a previous work that this one both feels derivative and cheap. It’s also the case where this one feels underserved by its brevity. So it’s a weird case of it’s not great and there’s not enough of it.
The novel takes place on the wagon train of the Donner/Reed Party, famous for its mythic and mythologized end that may or may not have involved cannibalism after the party got stuck the snowy trails of mountains. This novel takes on that story and adds an element of some kind of flesh-craving disease that is controlling members of the party.
For me the biggest issue with this book is that its scope is thoroughly out of whack. Whole weeks will pass in a sentence but then things will linger, and I think for a short book, it needed to narrate more of the time passing and the dread, but also more convincingly seed the novel with more of the small early moments that help to build up the tension of horror books. So that’s what I mean that there’s not enough here. This is a book that goes from slow burn, to quick time passing in such janky ways that it’s uncomfortable. If you told me huge chunks of this novel were cut out to meet a much smaller word count, I’d believe it. But alas.
So that’s an issue of scope and pacing. But the bigger issue is that the movie Ravenous, which covers all this ground, more thoroughly, more interestingly, and with a lot more fun, is already a near perfect exploration, and clearly had to be somewhere in the back of the mind of the author.
(Photo: https://www.amazon.com/Hunger-Alma-Katsu/dp/0735212511/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1574171454&sr=8-1)