Dude, does SUPERNATURAL: NEVERMORE sure have a lot sentences that start with “Dude.” I’ve never seen the CW TV series on which Keith R.A. DeCandido’s tie-in novel is based, but its rep as a small-scale scare show was enough to make me give this original outing a try. But what really did it is its plot about a serial killer basing his murders on stories by Edgar Allan Poe – even if that’s nothing new.
Sam and Dean Winchester are two brothers tooling across the country in their Chevy Impala, carrying on their father’s work busting ghosts and hunting monsters. They fund their travels via credit-card fraud and hustling games of pool. In this novel, they come to the Bronx when they hear about two college students killed by an orangutan.
Add to that another crime in which a guy is found bricked up in a basement, and the Poe factor is off the charts, Sam assumes. When they’re not investigating around town – including Poe’s old home – they’re shacking up at the house of a friend of a friend: an aging classic rocker named Mannfred who smokes weed and fronts a bad bar band.
Oh, and Mannfred’s house is haunted by the ghost of a rock chick in a Queensrÿche T-shirt. They pelt her with rock salt to dissipate her spirit, but it keeps coming back, only after weekend gigs.
So NEVERMORE offers two plots going at once, only one of them interesting. Regardless, something that struck me as odd is that for all the poking around of noses Sam and Dean do, the brothers don’t really solve either mystery. But luckily they’re present when someone else does, so everyone gets closure.
DeCandido’s story starts off decent enough, but interest wanes by the midpoint. I blame mostly the annoying characters, particularly that of Dean, the pretty-boy pussy hound who talks in frat-lingo.
Worse, this is one of those books that comes with a three-page list of songs the author recommends you listen to while reading. Broken concentration aside, doing that runs the risk of alienating readers with opposite music tastes. It may be true to Dean’s character to have him worship ’70s rock, but don’t tell me I need to listen to Deep Purple and The Allman Brothers. Do you want me to hate it? It’s one thing to drop a Jethro Tull reference, but it’s a WOLF’S TRAP-type irritation to tell me who’s responsible for the solos. Is this a horror novel or an issue of Creem? –Rod Lott
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A list of recommended songs?! That’s enough to make me skip this book right there!
I really like the show, but I’m a sucker for teen melodrama, and I grimaced just looking at the cover–I didn’t think this type of show would translate well onto paper, and I’m not surprised, sadly. I hate about novelizations made when the show is still on the air because the plot essentially is static–things are at a given state when the book begins and must end up there again at the end, so it dovetails with the show. Bo-ring.
Kind of funny that you mention that sort of thing, since the book opens with a note that (paraphrasing here) “this takes place between such-and-such episode and such-and-such episode.” That kind of thing irritates me; I think only hardcore nerd fans would even care.