[REVIEW] Everything The Darkness Eats by Eric LaRocca
In just under two years, Eric LaRocca has exploded into the horror scene and terrified countless readers. The success of LaRocca’s debut novella Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke and its viral word-of-mouth promotion demonstrated the possibilities of social media as an avenue for connecting indie authors and their future readers. Since then, LaRocca has become known for experimenting with narrative structure, pushing what exactly horror can be. Despite being a debut novel, Everything The Darkness Eats is far from LaRocca’s first attempt at telling stories in tandem, as a gay couple battles with their homophobic neighbors while a pattern of bizarre disappearance rock a small town.
I listened to this novel on a long drive from Texas to Arizona. LaRocca’s novel served as an excellent means of keeping me awake as I drove across large stretches of pitch-black desert. Everything The Darkness Eats is a beautifully written novel, with LaRocca blending evocative language and frightening imagery to truly shock and frighten me awake on my journey. But despite the excellent prose, this is far from the first LaRocca piece that I’ve struggled with conceptually.
This novel is broken into two narratives: a serial killer story about the town’s elders disappearing under strange circumstances and a grounded story about a gay couple navigating their neighbor’s homophobia. The former plotline instantly hooked me as a lonely old woman is seduced and drawn into danger before being willed into compliance by weird and cosmic forces; however, the other storyline felt overly simple, falling into the standard beats of a queer couple experiencing homophobia, being ignored as they report to the authorities, and becoming the victims of queer violence as their concerns go unheard. While I was extremely intrigued by half of the novel, Everything the Darkness Eats felt like two different novellas sewn together, the seams inflamed and noticeable in a way that weakens the poignancy of the novel’s more intriguing storyline. I even wondered if Everything the Darkness Eats was the result of the author feeling pressured to write a novel-length work despite not having a novel-length idea.
One of the most frustrating aspects of this novel was how loosely connected the two storylines were throughout the novel. Detective Malik’s investigation of the town’s disappearances comes across as an occasional hardship to his and Brett’s relationship, but very little happens to Malik in his own storyline that bolsters his understanding of what’s going on in the town. This results in a connection that feels forced, as if LaRocca was urged to connect the two storylines with surface-level plotting. For example, the novel ends with Malik surviving a gruesome attack, yet very luckily ending up in the driveway of the very serial killer at the center of the other storyline. This moment feels especially heavy-handed, reading as some sort of deus ex machina happenstance that pulled me out of the novel’s climax.
Still, I wonder if this is an intentional, though ineffective plot choice on LaRocca’s part as his novel enters the cosmic horror space. I choose to give the author some credit. With a storyline that can be boiled down to a killer’s attempt at appeasing a captured god via forced devotion, I can’t help but wonder if the convenience of Malik’s appearance at the climax of the other story ties into the horror genre’s preoccupation with tragic fate.
Everything The Darkness Eats is rooted in the cosmic and the deified. It isn’t too far of a stretch to claim that the cosmic beings at the center of the two storylines have them entangled together intentionally; however, LaRocca’s weaving of the two stories doesn’t feel cohesive, which causes any catharsis to fall between the cracks in the novel’s conceptualization. The serial killer storyline and its supernatural undercurrents eclipses Malik’s story of smalltown homophobia, creating a frustrating ending that by no means feels pre-destined. While I applaud LaRocca’s continued experimentation with form and genre blending, this novel’s dual storylines don’t balance and complement one another. The reader is left craving the next chapter break, pulled out of the story by the repeated question: how is LaRocca going to give us that payoff? While this novel didn’t work for me, I continue to believe in the promise of LaRocca’s talent.