REVIEW: The Acolyte by Nick Cutter @thenickcutter @chizinepub
The Acolyteby Nick Cutter
Chizine Publications
☠ AVAILABLE NOW ☠
Jonah Murtag is an Acolyte on the New Bethlehem police force. His job: eradicate all heretical religious faiths, their practitioners, and artefacts. Murtag's got problems - one of his partners is a zealot, and he's in love with the other one. Trouble at work, trouble at home. Murtag realizes that you can rob a citizenry of almost anything, but you can't take away its faith. When a string of bombings paralyzes the city, religious fanatics are initially suspected, but startling clues point to a far more ominous perpetrator. If Murtag doesn't get things sorted out, the Divine Council will dispatch The Quints, aka: Heaven's Own Bagmen. The clock is ticking towards doomsday for the Chosen of New Bethlehem. And Jonah Murtag's got another problem. The biggest and most worrisome... Jonah isn't a believer anymore.
My Review:
As an Acolyte, Jonah Murray's job is to eradicate all heretical religious faiths,etc... and while he's troubled in all aspects of his life, the biggest worry is that he no longer believes in the Prophet. As someone who is not religious, I'm always fascinated by reads regarding religious fanaticism and blind faith. It can seem extremely cult like with people using these beliefs and twisting them to suit their own selfish wants. I couldn't even imagine living in a world where everything looks like one big cult.
If you've read Nick Cutter before, then you are already familiar with the way he is beautifully disgusting in his detail of the macabre. He's especially talented in doing this with animals and children. There's one scene in the first 100 pages regarding animals that made me cringe... and then smile. 😈 His ability to throw you right into the pages with these details is one of my favorite things about his writing. There were even a couple of scenes that put me into an Enter the Void kind of mind... and if you've ever seen that movie, I think you'll know what I mean.
This book probably won't be for everyone, but I absolutely loved it. The only reason I don't have this as 5 star review is that I wasn't as engaged with this one as I was with his other work. Now that I've read everything under this pen name, I should probably now add his other work under his real name, Craig Davidson.
★★★★
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