Almost done with Ketchum’s The Lost

And I’m just enthralled. Have been having trouble putting it down since it got started. Guy writes like a fucking steam train, just taking momentary stops to let the reader catch their breath before going off on another tear. I haven’t read much EH or splatterpunk, but the thing that I’ve appreciated about him is the humanity that he puts into every character, even the worst, most depraved and worst examples of humanity are still just that, human.

Ray almost feels like Jack got a premonition of Elliot Rodgers and all the incel killers that followed after him. Preening and predatory, without anything to offer to anyone while thinking of himself as God’s gift. All his violence, all the terror he’s sowing and it’s all just a petulant brat screaming about how much more he deserves, when he’s already got much more than anyone else.

But I think it’s Katherine who really impresses me. I didn’t understand the digression into the Tate Murders, but the way Ketchum wove that into the narrative was masterful. Katherine comes off as a spoiled rich girl, which she definitely is, but Ketchum’s knack for humanization comes out strong again because that nature of hers tells her that this guy is someone to be kept at arm’s length, until he tells her the dark secret, and she may’ve continued with him just for that feel of danger…until she finds out that she really does love her mom after all. Ms. Heartless found her heart, drew a hard line and didn’t budge from it.

Now, I’m still around a hundred pages (Ray’s just started his rampage) from the ending, so I know things are going to get much darker from here. That said, really could’ve done without yet another April/October romance, but even that’s wove into the themes that he’s after in the narrative, unintended consequences, the cost of involving yourself in other people’s lives, all that. Just great stuff. Absolutely outstanding.