James Herbert meets Silent Hill in this unforgettable horror novel from an acclaimed voice in epic fantasy.

John Sharrock is a struggling writer living in a small English market town. He and his wife have recently separated, he is battling depression, and of late he is experiencing strange thoughts and dreams. When his dog begins acting strangely, it is the first sign that something is terribly wrong within the animal kingdom. Soon after, a series of horrific animal attacks hints at a deadly new virus.

John must survive bloodthirsty pets and ferocious local wildlife as he embarks on a journey to save his estranged wife and seek answers to the question: what caused all animal life to turn hostile?

Set against the backdrop of the uncertain spring of 2016, Hostile blends gruesome set pieces with psychological horror and delivers a knockout finale that is guaranteed to shock readers.

It seems fitting that Luke Scull’s debut Horror novel is set around the time of the 2016 Brexit vote, since that was the moment it feels like we all started tumbling into a horrific dystopia and we’re still falling.

However, Scull’s narrative takes place in the run up to that fateful lie-strewn vote (£350 million for the NHS does get a mention in its pages) and centres on a few days in the town of Warminster and the nearby Longleat safari park.

Scull’s familiarity with that area comes through in his setting descriptions, both of the park itself and some local hostelries that one might enjoy on the way. However, one hopes that the encounter with a group of doggers (and I don’t mean dog walkers) in the local woods is purely a work of imagination. Certainly that experience proves horrific in more ways than one.

Much as Steven King made an author into a lead character with Paul Sheldon in Misery, Scull gives the character of fantasy author John Sharrock the lion’s share of the multiple point of view narrative in Hostile as his author wrestles with the burden of obligation in a three-book contract. I’m sure Steven King never had both ankles broken by a fanatical fan – although he did say “Certain parts of him are [me]… but I think you will find that, if you continue to write fiction, every character you create is partly you.” In that vein Sharrock’s experiences must also represent some extrapolation from Scull’s own life as a fantasy author. This includes making the point to all us budding authors out here that a publishing contract is not necessarily the inevitably ‘happy ever after moment’ any more than a wedding is. It’s the start of a journey and one that Sharrock in Hostile is struggling with, both as an author and a husband.

And if that weren’t enough, Alfie, his diminutive shih tzu has suddenly gone wide-eyed and aggressive. This sudden hostility from a beloved tame animal is not an isolated incident, and with all the charismatic megafauna of Longleat just down the road, there is scope for some serious complications.

Events unfold very much like a disaster movie, with deft quick worldbuilding introducing us to characters and a flash of backstory from which the reader can deduce a lot. For example when a minor character observes that

He seemed to be consoling Maria, who looked like she’d been crying again.

The simple addition of ‘again’ does a lot of good work in that line.

There is also a cinematic quality to the way Scull switches settings and point of view characters and then brings them back as their travails weave in and around Sharrock’s journey sometimes illuminating it, sometimes confounding it. As with all good disaster movies some obnoxious characters get delightfully hideous come-uppances, and others make heroic last stands.

There is a Sean of the Dead vibe to the very British localized setting, the shuffling incompetence of some embattled villagers and inevitably the army intervention. Scull captures something of middle England in this passage

…the appearance of these two queue jumpers had obviously caused the receptionist to disappear and further disrupted the dysfunctional system. It was therefore open season for muttering, tutting and––worst of all, to John’s mind––the long drawn out sigh.

Notwithstanding the beasts of Longleat, and ferocious pets, other more prosaic animals can quickly turn lethal – for example cows can run at up to 25 mph which would tax even Usain Bolt to outpace.

Scull peppers the plot with some confusing clues as, like the characters in the TV series Lost, Sharrock and friends struggle to understand what has caused the outbreak and how they might survive it.

Besides Sharrock, the next character to get most page time is the enigmatic Lilith Von Goth – a young PhD student sometimes going by her given name of Kimberley Grimes. Lilith is as troubled as Sharrock. We first meet her in a delicately described moment of self-harm. Scull neatly captures the rational lure of an act that seems so senseless to an observer, in a way I’d not read since Rebecca Bray’s A Certain Age. There are other dark themes within the book going beyond self-harm into suicidal ideation such that Scull has a page of afterward that lists sources of help for those in the grip of mental health difficulties.

Through it all, Scull peppers his vision of 2016 with perspectives that would have seemed prescient at the time but now simply confirm what has become self-evident.

For example when baker Adam reflects on the benefits of his year spent in the Balearic islands.

It saddened him to think that future generations might not have the same opportunity depending on the outcome of the vote.

Or Tom the gravedigger’s contemplation

Maybe things would change if the UK vote to leave the European Union. Maybe they wouldn’t. Tom was old enough to know that whoever ran the country, the rich generally got richer and the poor generally got poorer, as surely as death follows life.

In Hostile Scull gives us intriguing characters, eye-catching prose, and a plot as twisting and sinuous as any reptile in the Longleat snake house. One roots for Sharrock.  As with the Brexit vote, he must strive to escape the shadow the past has cast on his present and future and his journey for redemption slips quite literally between reality and allegory, as in this cycle ride through the night.

That had been less than a year ago. Now, the gold and the warmth ad been replaced by the cold monochrome of a twilight purgatory. He might have been cycling through the astral plane, surrounded by nothing but the spirits of the dead and the memories of time now turned to ash.

It is an encouraging first venture from Scull into the horror genre and the afterword has some intriguing asides about the setting that might yet prove a bit of a tourist boost for Warminster, local animals permitting!

Hostile is available now – you can order your copy on Amazon