I belong to a group on Facebook called Books of Horror (I definitely recommend joining it) and the review below was recently posted by the writer S.E Howard Blowing my own trumpet isn’t my thing but as she really got what I was aiming for, I checked with her if she was okay with my sharing her review – she was. So here it is, word for word. Some spoilers ahead.
“I recently finished reading “The Ninth Circle” by Luke Walker, about a young man named Sam, and Rachel, his wife, who have returned to his childhood home in the charming village of Buxley in the English countryside. Sam, whose father recently died, longs to reconnect with his roots, and dreams of moving back to his bucolic hometown to escape the relative hustle and bustle of city life. Rachel isn’t nearly as keen on the idea as her husband, but she loves him enough to go along with things, or at least to humor him. Just as their visit seems to be going well, and they’re wrapping up with dinner and pints at the local pub, disaster strikes. Literally. Nuclear war breaks out, and within moments, the idyllic town and just about everything in it are obliterated. Sam and Rachel join a handful of other patrons scrambling for shelter in the cellar just before the bombs strike. In the aftermath, they stumble out into a strange, hellish new world, one ravaged by fire, radiation, and, as they quickly discover, something far more insidious and horrifying.
Walker hits the ground running from a story perspective, and no sooner do Sam, Rachel, and the others emerge from the shelter of the tavern’s basement do they encounter the first of what proves to be several nightmarish entities: a villager who has been mutilated and charred, riddled with glass shards that protrude from their eyes, and all over their mangled body. The group’s instinct to help someone so gruesomely injured quickly backfires, as one of the would-be Good Samaritans is abruptly engulfed in flames when he approaches. As Sam, Rachel, and the rest watch helplessly, their fellow survivor gruesomely burns to death, and they realize whatever the thing covered in glass shards is, it’s not human anymore.
As they attempt to flee, they discover there are more of these creatures, all seeming to share the same simple but brutal objective: kill anyone left alive. Sam’s initial group of survivors finds others hiding in a local grocery store, and from there, the ragtag group eventually decides to make their way to the village church for shelter. Along the way, terrible things happen, as they’re wont to do in horror stories, and to me, as a reader, nothing more so than [SPOILER ALERT/TRIGGER WARNING] the sexual assault of one of the women in the group. In post-apocalyptical stories, whether it be a zombie apocalypse or nuclear Armageddon, we are often confronted by the disturbing realization that human beings are the true monsters, and Walker doesn’t shy away from that, although to me, the biggest monsters in that scenario were Sam and some of the other men who stood by, paralyzed by fear and indecision, while the young woman’s assailant abducts her forcibly from their midst.
To their collective credit, Sam and his new friends spend much of the book’s second half trying to make up for this lapse in courage and decency, and soon the story pivots back to both their attempt to reach the church, and the enigmatic creatures that pursue them. In addition to the “burning people” originally encountered, these also appear as individuals somehow untouched by the nuclear fires at all, a creepy flash mob that drives and separates Sam and his friends, then traps them inside once they reach the church grounds. No matter their outward appearances, one thing about the creatures remains the same: the fleeting glimpse of something shadow-like and sinister darting around and among them, like a puppeteer manipulating and controlling them behind the scenes.
There’s a method to this madness, and a reason these shadow-beings and their minions are so focused on this particular rag-tag band of survivors, and Sam in particular. But to give that away would spoil the surprise. 
Walker does a phenomenal job of setting the stage in his story. Thanks to his richly descriptive narrative, as a reader, I was able to visualize the village of Buxley clearly in my mind, both before the nuclear blast and in the fiery aftermath. And while many writers are able to set a great scene with their narrative, but fall flat with character development, Walker demonstrates a deft and expert hand at both. You don’t always like his characters, or the choices they make, but you can’t help but feel the confusion, shock, and mounting terror that grips them, and find it in your heart to empathize with them nonetheless.
As an ensemble, Walker’s cast depiction collectively reminded me fondly of Stephen King’s “The Stand” in all the best (if not nostalgic) ways. I could feel that same King-esque influence on many of his individual characters, as well, especially Rachel, Sam’s wife, and Beth (the young woman mentioned earlier). Both share the same inner resolve and resilience seen in so many of my favorite vintage King heroines (such as Leigh, from “Christine,” who calmly tells the hero, Dennis, they can use sanitary napkins as wicks when making Molotov cocktails to lob at the titular villain).
Overall, I only had two nitpicks with “The Ninth Circle”:
1. The creatures. I feel like the story would have been better served without so many incarnations of them. Yes, they’re shadow forms using whatever bodies they inhabit temporarily, but still, the mangled, reanimated corpses from the beginning (the “burning people”) were creepy AF and I wish Walker had used them instead of the impassive flash mob that took centerstage later in the story (and weren’t nearly as frightening).
2. The ending. Don’t get me wrong. It’s surprising and chilling, and it haunts you. But it felt rather abrupt, without any windup or pitch, to use a baseball analogy. I feel there needed to be some seeds planted earlier in the book to bring that dark blossom to full fruition. A little extra groundwork would’ve gone a long way in making that landing stick even more.
Those minor details aside, I have to say I really enjoyed Walker’s style and obvious talent as a storyteller, and I’m glad to have discovered him. He’s definitely worth keeping on my reading radar.”
As you can imagine, I’m pretty happy with this review. It can often feel like you’re wasting your time with writing, so this helped in a big way.
The Ninth Circle is out now in ebook and paperback.
Luke Walker - Writer 