As Adam Nevill's Last Days begins, Kyle, an indie British filmmaker on the verge of bankruptcy, accepts an unusual commission in hopes of revitalizing his never-quite-successful career: the CEO of a New Age company offers him £100,000 to investigate the Temple of the Last Days, a heinous cult ruled by Sister Katherine, who led her devout followers from a London townhouse to a farm in Normandy, and eventually to a horrific mass murder/suicide near an abandoned Arizona mine in 1975. Kyle is directed to visit these locations, interview the last living cultists and craft a definitive narrative of the descent from hippie collective into bloodthirsty sadism. His patron adds one further instruction, almost as an afterthought: focus on the story's "paranormal" aspects.
Kyle and his partner Dan are plagued by bizarre manifestations on their first night of shooting, anomalies that escalate quickly into physical danger as the duo must confront the unsettling prospect that Sister Katherine's sanguinary spiritualism successfully conjured something--or somethings--into our world.
Nevill's prose gives a visual flow to the terror and viscera splattered throughout Last Days. The fluid pacing builds suspense and a growing dread, while the audiovisual jargon and personal eccentricities add authenticity to characters beset by unreal circumstances. Readers will find themselves turning on extra lights and scrutinizing darkened hallways as Kyle's world comes undone. This is not a novel for the faint-of-heart or those averse to disturbing subject matter. It does, however, reward avid horror fans with an engrossing mystery and memorable scares. --Tobias Mutter, freelance reviewer