Book Review: Red

I received Red and turned on a copy of Sam Sham's Little Red Riding Hood. Then, set in the proper mood, I tore into Red, pun intended, skipping past the introductions to chew into the meat of this story. But while Paul Kane certainly delivers on blood and gore, the meat of a plot is missing, and the logic of the story's monster just left me scratching my head.

The characters are all interesting enough, but every setup feels the same. Witness a person who suddenly has a stranger in their life, but they're happy with this sudden change. But oh no, it's the big bad wolf in disguise. Again. And with the snapping, and the chewing, and the eating. And red. Every introduction goes the same way, so the descriptions of the characters become less like real personalities and more like cardboard cutouts.

This is supposed to be a tale about revenge, but it seems like an awfully complicated way to go about it. The link between the last chapter and the epilogue is a case of an unreliable narrator of the annoying sort, and again, reinforces my feelings that powerful and petty go hand in hand for the big bad wolf. Was there a point to the fight at all? No, not really. In this way, the ending feels like a bait and switch.

For fans of gory horror, this book is going to be a treat. But I never really saw a wolf in my mind while reading this. Instead, Freddy Krueger morphed into different living fantasies that turn into nightmares. It's a well written story, but once I made this comparison with the first death, every death scene felt repetitive. Toward the end, I kept thinking, Are you sure you're not the land shark?

I'm giving this three out of five stars. Red is a good, fast read, and the first sex scene/murder is certainly intense enough to pull any horror fan through to the last page. But fans looking for deeper meaning will find the illusion lacking in depth.