MARCH 2017 - AudioFile
A trio of mercenaries is reunited for a deceptively simple task—to check on a young man they’ve heard is being held against his will in Little Heaven. The remote settlement in the wilds of the New Mexico desert harbors horror beyond even their imaginations. Corey Brill’s narration embraces every aspect of this story—the gritty Western elements, the shudder-inducing menace, and the surprisingly redemptive camaraderie. His calm narration amplifies the gory details of the narrative, and he illuminates each character’s motives and emotional depth with subtle vocal shading and inflection. Though not for the faint of heart, Brill’s hushed descriptions cast a spell that lingers long after the story has drawn to a close. B.E.K. © AudioFile 2017, Portland, Maine
Publishers Weekly
07/04/2016
Cutter (The Deep) portrays three very damaged people trying to do good in this disturbing tale, which is elevated by illustrations by Adam Gorham. When Micah Shughrue wakes up to find his daughter missing, he’s terrified that a darkness from his past has come to claim her, so he enlists his former colleagues Minerva Atwater and Ebenezer Elkins to go back to the place that nearly broke them 15 years before: Little Heaven, a religious compound in the wilds of New Mexico that’s run by the slimy Rev. Amos Flesher. Flash back from 1980 to 1965, when the trio of mercenaries take a job to find Nate, a young boy who has been taken to Little Heaven. Just getting there is fraught with danger: dead birds fall from the sky, and the three investigators are chased by nightmarish creatures. Micah, Minerva, and Eb want to help the children at Little Heaven, but at what cost? Micah and his associates (calling them friends would be a stretch) are easy to root for, and horror fans yearning for the days of over-the-top stomach-churning gorefests will be darkly delighted. (Jan.)
San Francisco Chronicle on THE TROOP
"Resembling something like Deliverance as imagined by David Cronenberg."
Christopher Golden
A grim microcosm of terror and desperation...haunting.
Jonathan Maberry
Nick Cutter pulls out all the stops in THE TROOP. This is a brilliant and deeply disturbing novel that you absolutely cannot put down. Highly recommended.
Mira Grant
Nick Cutter brings a bone-chilling spin to a classic horror scenario in THE TROOP. It's Lord of the Flies meets Night of the Creeps, and I enjoyed it immensely.
SCOTT SMITH
Lean and crisp and over-the-top....Disquieting, disturbing.
STEPHEN KING on THE TROOP
THE TROOP scared the hell out of me, and I couldn't put it down. This is old-school horror at its best. Not for the faint-hearted, but for the rest of us sick puppies, it's a perfect gift for a winter night.
Suspense Magazine on THE DEEP
"Provides an unshakable haunting....Recommended for lovers of horror and books that make you question your sanity."
Ania Ahlborn
"If you aren't claustrophobic now, you will be after reading The Deep. Terror at its best!"
Clive Barker on THE DEEP
"Utterly terrifying."
Shelf Awareness
Grafts Lovecraftian imagery onto a Neo-Western foundation, throwing in a cult subplot for good measure....A sprawling horror epic comparable to Stephen King's It. Nick Cutter has a similar affinity for pulp storytelling adapted on a grand scale....Cutter knows horror, and he nails the basics well enough to support ambitious plotting and refreshing genre experimentation.
Josh Malerman
"Terrifying...The kind of horror that remains in the room of the reader. It's as if Nick Cutter spun a very human yarn into the myriad folds of a monster."
Seanan McGuire
A slow boil of unrelenting terror and inescapable consequences. Nick Cutter ups his game every time. Beautifully written—menace drips from every page.
Paul Tremblay
“Nick Cutter’s Little Heaven is a sprawling epic that can stand alongside the best of 80's King, Barker, and McCammon. It pits the coolest and most unlikely bounty hunters against an old time religious cult and the ickiest creation this side of John Carpenter’s The Thing. Fun, nasty, smart, and scary, and in all the right places.
Suspense Magazine
For all horror fans, this is the latest—maybe greatest—novel to come from the mind of the frightening Nick Cutter to date....portraying images, as always, that stay in your mind and stop calm, peaceful sleep from coming."
Booklist
Cutter proves yet again that he is a master of thoughtful pulp horror....drips with dread from the very first lines. With its claustrophobic, isolated setting, gory details, and strong action sequences, this book is sure to win over horror fans, but there is also a powerful underlying philosophical aspect here, which ponders the meaning of family, love, and community....Imagine that Bentley Little or the late Richard Laymon tried their hand at writing a Cormac McCarthy novel, and you understand who will enjoy this story.
Cemetery Dance
"Little Heaven is the first major horror novel of 2017, and it’s going to take a monumental deluge of quality horror to keep it off of those end-of-year best-of lists that will start popping up 11 months from now....[Cutter’s] developed a clear, strong voice through his body of work. His characters are complex and relatable...they live and breathe within the context of the novel; many of them walking that shaky tightrope between good and bad, sympathetic and irredeemable....Little Heaven is another excellent addition to Nick Cutter’s growing body of work, a grotesque masterpiece that sets the bar high for horror fiction in 2017."
Toronto Star
Terrifying... exceptionally well-written and gripping. Moreover, [the novel] wears its dark heart on its sleeve, illuminating our collective need to unpack the evil of our world—to observe it, challenge it, and ultimately learn to live with it, without going insane. A superbly-crafted epic, Little Heaven proves yet again that [Nick] Cutter is worthy of Stephen King’s praise—King once called Cutter’s writing “old-school horror at its best”—and is a tribute to the genre as a whole. Deeply, deeply unsettling, as it’s meant to be.
Robert McCammon
A gripping and terrifying story delivered by a very talented writer. Nick Cutter’s Little Heaven is an intense experience, and one not to be missed!
Booklist (starred review)
Cutter proves yet again that he is a master of thoughtful pulp horror….drips with dread from the very first lines. With its claustrophobic, isolated setting, gory details, and strong action sequences, this book is sure to win over horror fans, but there is also a powerful underlying philosophical aspect here, which ponders the meaning of family, love, and community….Imagine that Bentley Little or the late Richard Laymon tried their hand at writing a Cormac McCarthy novel, and you understand who will enjoy this story.
MARCH 2017 - AudioFile
A trio of mercenaries is reunited for a deceptively simple task—to check on a young man they’ve heard is being held against his will in Little Heaven. The remote settlement in the wilds of the New Mexico desert harbors horror beyond even their imaginations. Corey Brill’s narration embraces every aspect of this story—the gritty Western elements, the shudder-inducing menace, and the surprisingly redemptive camaraderie. His calm narration amplifies the gory details of the narrative, and he illuminates each character’s motives and emotional depth with subtle vocal shading and inflection. Though not for the faint of heart, Brill’s hushed descriptions cast a spell that lingers long after the story has drawn to a close. B.E.K. © AudioFile 2017, Portland, Maine
Kirkus Reviews
2016-10-05
Little Heaven, as described by Cutter (the pseudonym of Canadian writer Craig Davidson), is a big slice of hell. And this deeply disturbing story throws the reader right into the thick of it, along with a trio of mercenaries who encounter the supernatural within a Jonestown-like religious compound.The story opens in 1980, when three professional killers—spiky bounty hunter Minerva Atwater, refined English mercenary Ebenezer Elkins, and reformed family man Micah Shughrue—are still damaged by the events of 15 years earlier. That story is told in flashback, as the ragtag team—who became allies after trying and failing to assassinate each other—is hired by Ellen Bellhaven to rescue her nephew from the compound. Getting there requires navigating a dark wood, where they find evidence of undead, demonic creatures. Things get much worse at Little Heaven, as children turn sadistic, the head preacher turns power-crazed, some of the congregants are graphically murdered, and ominous insects and vermin are everywhere. The three outlaws follow a trail to a looming black mountain, where they face the shape-shifting embodiment of all this evil. They survive, but 15 years later it returns to abduct Shughrue’s daughter, prompting a fateful rematch. The story is gripping and the language often poetic, and the three killers make oddly sympathetic heroes. But readers will need to maintain a high tolerance for grisly violence and unsettling imagery and be ready for a few sleepless nights. The early sections have enough dark humor to give a false sense of security. But once the team reaches Little Heaven, the pace of the horror is unrelenting.
