Book Review: All the Fiends of Hell by Adam Nevill (2024)
(This review is spoiler-free.)
Ritual Limited
In the opening chapter of All the Fiends of Hell, readers are thrust into a surreal nightmare where the protagonist, Karl, emerges from a fortnight of fever-induced delirium to witness his neighbors flying upward and vanishing into the night’s sky. High above, a bloody, thick-veined moon hangs over the scene, seemingly drawing those below to its horrific mass. The air is filled with the cacophonous boom of great bells, their reverberation blotting out all other sound.
For anyone familiar with the (mostly American) evangelical Christian concept of the Rapture, the imagery is traumatizingly familiar. Only instead of meeting the fabled savior in the air and proceeding to establish an eternal kingdom, these floating people are presumably going somewhere much worse, and what appears to be taking them is far from heavenly. Karl, sick for weeks at this point and unable to trust his senses, collapses midway through the vision, unsure if what he witnessed was
“Only useless and untrustworthy men, orphans, and the mentally ill..”
Some time later, Karl awakens to find his neighborhood bereft of life apart from an elderly neighbor who was also bedridden during the ‘night of the bells.’ The front doors of the residences around him are all open, the streets quiet and still beneath the birdless sky. While the debilitating flu has left him, so has everyone and everything else, and Karl struggles to make sense of the changes before him. There’s a strange rosewater stain to the sky above, and an unnatural looking red cloud on the horizon.
But is the world as empty as it seems? In time, Karl catches glimpses of folk who come and go, apparitions that speak and move divorced from context before disappearing. Try as he might, they continually elude him. Far worse, violent, invisible entities move about the environs, stinking of chemicals and smashing objects, chasing movement but seemingly unable to clearly sense the environment around them. While they can't quite hone in on Karl, he instinctively understands that they are hunting him.
Karl soon finds himself in the company of two other unlikely survivors: Hayley and Jake, siblings six and twelve, who are filling their bellies in a candy shop while they await their long overdue parents. Karl reluctantly takes the children into his charge, and they begin their shared search for a haven in the strange new world. In time, Karl finds purpose in watching after the them, and discovers layers of character and capability within himself which eluded him in the old world. Together, the three wander parts of the Midlands, salvaging what they can and encountering others who, like them, survived the ‘night of the bells,’ and all the while the unbroken red cloud on the horizon is drawing closer. In time, rumors of salvation at sea reach their ears, and the trio heads for the southwest coast.
Ask Not For Whom
This is a tough novel to write about without engaging in spoilers, but I want to say up top that Nevill showed immense creativity crafting his horrors for this outing, and I felt the build and gradual revelations about the monstrous elements of the story, both human and otherwise, were exceptionally well-executed. While I’ve enjoyed his recent publications, All the Fiends of Hell feels like it had a bit more time to mature in the creation and development process, and it makes for a strong entry in the author’s catalog overall.
One of the standout elements of this novel–both generally speaking and when compared to Nevill’s other work–is the main character. At the outset, Karl is in multiple kinds of stasis, rendered inert both by his illness and his broader circumstances in life. He’s nearly a year past his divorce, and has limped through a bleary, aimless existence since his marriage fell apart; an admittedly talentless everyman who never quite got his personal compass in order. Now forty-six, he has no developed career, no passion, no prospects, and describes himself as being indecisive to the point of paralysis…hardly a character equipped for taking on the strange apocalypse in which he finds himself.
Karl is cripplingly introspective, and spends his early post-sickness days re-litigating all of the failing of his pre-apocalyse life until he realizes that all of those things have been wiped clean, and a failure or not, he has a chance to unburden himself of all of those shortcomings. The new world is sparsely populated, and this longtime wallflower has a chance to play a defining role in the lives of those broken souls he encounters in the new world, particularly the orphaned Jake and Hayley.
The pacing and plot of the novel are solid, balancing new apocalyptic setpieces with notable character development, and each leg of Karl’s journey features new revelations about the event that changed the world. The other survivors he encounters each provide a wrinkle of humanity that contributes to the effectiveness of the story as a whole, and it feels very much like Nevill was ready to shift gears after his recent overt folk horror entries.
The Enemy of My Enemy is an Enemy?
The one significant struggle of the novel that I noted is developing Karl’s antagonists. Specifically, he is drawn into begrudged conflict with another survivor as well as the increasingly-monstrous creatures that have come to inhabit the empty world, and in splitting the novel’s energy between illustrating these separate battles, neither quite get their due in my assessment. Each conflict is interesting and distinct, but I still had a solid appetite for further development on each when the novel wrapped up. Nevill doesn’t tend to skew long in his works, typically running 300-400 pages, and by dividing the energy of the novel so distinctly between separate conflicts, I found the runtime a bit short for the richness of the material.
A Place on the Shelf
As I’ve read Nevill extensively, I do want to offer some general comments on Fiends in comparison to his other work. I think most of his readers are multi-work readers, and I hear more commentary about ranking and comparison with his works than many other authors. While I’m not especially keen on engaging with that myself, I do see value in illustrating how this work differs from the ones that got us here.
No horror Nevill spawns is simple, and what at first may appear mundane soon betrays a darkened shadow, a blood-shot eye, a tooth too long for the smile in which it appears. Terror in Nevill's work is uncanny, assessed in a glimpse that lingers too long but smartly is never brought wholly into the light.
In Fiends, Nevill does something that feels oddly brave, moving away from the familiar circles of folk, folk-adjacent and esoterica spaces into a War of the Worlds-style invasion. Yet, he keeps his customary subterfuge, never letting the reader hoist these (presumed) aliens onto the table for an autopsy. Sure, it’s indicated that they come from above, arriving in structures which blot out the stars, but they also show a maliciousness and wanton cruelty that feel very earthly, even demonic. And of course….there’s the novel's title, which casts our attention below rather than above. While the novel feels thematically new for the author, these smeared archetypal lines are classic Nevill—we saw parallels of this in The Ritual and No One Gets Out Alive—and the closing impression is that our favorite UK horror author may be on the verge of some new explorations.
If that’s where his compass is pointing these days, I say go to it, Adam.
Final Thoughts
In All the Fiends of Hell, Nevill launches his horror show on page one, spending little time on the events that preceded the apocalypse in either reference or return. The new world is ominous and still, and those that dwell in it are ill-equipped to parse the mysterious dangers that confront them. Nevill's hallmarks are here: the steady, introspective, reflective nature of his protagonist; the immutable and almost incomprehensible creatures that defy ready visualization; the escalating helplessness of those pitted against them…but there's also something new going on here with theme and narrative, and Fiends may well mark the beginning of a new direction for the author.
The book itself is an excellent and exciting read, and the devastated world Nevill presents is incredibly rich—so much so that my only complaint is that we didn’t get enough time with it. There’s not a weak link among the characters, and the monsters of this story are some of the most interesting I’ve encountered in recent fiction. All the Fiends of Hell is a strong entry in Nevill’s catalog, and an ideal entry point for new readers.
Score: 8.0
Strengths
Wonderful vision, played out well
Feels like a new wrinkle for Nevill, but remains on-brand
Unexpectedly strong main character
Pushes the reader to want to know more about the world
Weaknesses
Dual conflict leaves each feeling like there was unrealized narrative potential
Ambiguous description of monsters will leave some readers grumpy?
You can preorder All the Fiends of Hell from Ritual Limited, or from Amazon. The book releases on April 2nd, 2024.
Like Adam Nevill? I’ve also reviewed Under A Watchful Eye, and The Vessel.
You might also like: A Quiet Place, The Last of Us Part 1, 28 Days Later
