REVIEW: Episode Thirteen (book) by Craig DiLouie

Episode Thirteen is horror. I bought my copy new.

Review:

This book is set up as the written version of "found footage" horror - it's composed of journal entries, emails, text messages, and transcripts of video and audio footage left behind by the cast and crew of a ghost hunting show called Fade to Black. 

Episode 13 of the show is going to center around a place called Foundation House, which is famous for being a site of paranormal research in the 1970s. After working with several research subjects in order to find the top three most psychically sensitive, the research team planned to conduct several experiments to contact paranormal entities. One of the research subjects dropped out, but the other two stuck around long enough to be driven crazy by the experiments. The research team had planned further work when they all mysteriously disappeared.

Fade to Black's cast and crew consists of Matt Kirklin (true believer and lead investigator), his wife Claire Kirklin (scientist, skeptic, and co-lead investigator), Jessica Valenza (stage name for Rashida Brewer, the show's only professional actress), Kevin Linscott (true believer, former cop, and the show's tech manager), and Jake Wolfson (the show's cameraman). 

Matt's under some pressure - it's still up in the air whether the show will be renewed for a second season, so Episode 13 has to be really good. What he doesn't realize is that his scientist wife has become increasingly unhappy with being on the show and is planning on leaving. Jessica, meanwhile, is painfully aware that this is her biggest and most steady acting job ever, and that it could go up in smoke at any minute. Kevin is a bit sore because he originally wanted to be part of the primary investigation crew, and he'll take any chance he can get to talk about a supposed experience he had with a demon when he was a police officer. Jake prefers to stay in the background and has no interest in sharing personal details about himself.

Matt, Claire, and the others will only get 72 hours at Foundation House before it's demolished. By Day 2, things are already looking promising. They have no idea what kind of rabbit hole they've found for themselves.

I admit it, I enjoy "found footage" horror, although the explanations for how the footage came to be found and why no one helped the characters sooner are sometimes hard to believe. I wasn't really fond of how it was done here - by the end of the book readers learn (not a spoiler) that all the footage and journals were left in a pile for others to discover.

That said, the overall experience was really good. Characters' "voices" were distinct and believable without any sort of reliance on transcription of accents or anything annoying like that. I was initially worried about the book's length - it seemed like things might get stale after a while, investigating two main rooms in Foundation House. Without spoiling things, I'll say that this turned out to not be an issue. There was more than enough to Foundation House and its secrets to keep me glued to the pages.

Something about the ending wasn't quite satisfying, although I'm not really sure what, if anything, would have been better. Still, I really enjoyed the journey there. The tension and anxiety during the final part of the group's investigation was great - not too much, just enough to keep pulling me along so I could see where everything ended up.