Review: Hell Spawn by Declan Fin
Katie Roome- November 24, 2020
Hell Spawn is an action packed novel that is one part exorcism horror, one part urban fantasy. This first installment in the Saint Tommy, NYPD series reverberates with tension, featuring physical battles with the demon-possessed, God-given superpowers, and chillingly palpable evil.
Here at the Periapsis Press blog, we only post reviews of works we recommend, so you already know I enjoyed Hell Spawn. I encourage you to check it out!
This review contains minor spoilers.
Hell Spawn Publisher Description:
My name is Officer Thomas Nolan, and I am a saint.
Tommy Nolan lives a quiet life. He walks his beat – showing mercy to the desperate. Locking away the dangerous. Going to church, sharing dinner with his wife and son. Everyone likes Tommy, even the men he puts behind bars.
Then one day a demon shows up and he can smell it. Tommy can smell evil – real evil. Now he’s New York City’s only hope against a horrifying serial killer that preys on the young and defenseless.
But smell alone isn’t enough to get a warrant. Can Tommy track down the killer and prove his guilt?
Dragon Award Nominated Author Declan Finn returns with his typical action-packed, Catholic influenced style, in this groundbreaking horror series about an honest, religious man given the powers of a saint to fight demons in the Big Apple.
How do you do forensics on a killer possessed by a demon?
Can Tommy catch the killer before he becomes a martyr? Or will the demon bring darkness beyond imagination to the whole of New York? Read Hell Spawn today and find out!
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Fantasy Horror
Hell Spawn takes place in New York City and stars a sharp detective with powers that enable him to stand up to powerful, supernatural forces.
The mash-up of urban fantasy, with its tendency towards high stakes and grueling fight scenes, injects the exorcism horror premise with non-stop action and retribution against evil.
Strong Action
These powers, including bilocation and healing, deliver most of the action. Tommy is a likable character and the demon he faces off with equivalently loathsome, making every confrontation a suspenseful one-two punch of trepidation and gratification.
The story kept up the pace, too. When the action let up, the tension swept in to replace it in a drive towards the satisfying conclusion. This story starts the series, but stands alone well, without compromising on the comeuppance that evil deserves.
Urban
Declan Fin’s NYC is grim, as the setting for a story with both a serial killer and a demon must be. However, it is not “dark” in the sense that it is not hopeless. There is a sense of community and belonging for most of the people we meet, and even the criminal element in the neighborhood works to keep out the worse bad guys.
Of course, Fin also taps into the fear such dense population presents to the mind, that you don’t truly know your neighbors and you are never far from threats to your family.
The contemporary, real-world setting is starker than most examples of urban fantasy due to the blatant naming of activist groups and the incorporation of real-world antagonists taking actions we recognize as evil as opposed to mythological beings whose behavior has cataclysmic consequences but may be morally muddled.
Horror
And that is from where the true horror in Hell Spawn springs: not the debilitating agony of a loved one held hostage by a demon, as so often seen in exorcism horror, but from real-world perpetrators of evil much closer to home. The evil usually kept safely behind the fourth wall and the suspension of disbelief is undeniably part of our world, our country, our cities.
Of course, this existential sort of horror is not the only kind present in Hell Spawn. There is a great deal of body horror, due to the nature of the serial killer, and a truly shudder-inducing haunting sequence.
Reckoning
But, to reiterate, Tommy gives this evil no quarter. Instead of the typical, possession tale trajectory, there is no wallowing in helplessness, no harrowing battle with one’s own guilty conscience, no futile death with the demon still at large. Fin’s upstanding hero has been empowered by God to lay the smack down.
The demon can only possess a willing and degenerate host—a simple mechanism which makes all the delicious vengeance possible. There is no young girl thrashing around and projectile vomiting because she played with a Ouija board (although that is still not advisable).
Instead, it is depraved criminals—people who actively reject redemption and embrace their own demonic possession—who face off with the hero. There is no need for him to pull his punches.
Check Out Hell Spawn!
Hell Spawn is an intense ride that delivers both dreadful terror and righteous retribution. This is an amazing start to Saint Tommy’s journey!
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