Review: Fear the Rug
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 12 23, 2013
More than anything, Toby Tate deserves recognition for picking a truly off-the-wall (well, floor) item to be the source of the evil in his latest novella. Longtime fans of horror have seen countless evil weapons, clothes, mirrors, and paintings, but this is the first time I can recall reading about an evil rug.It seems ridiculous. The basic premise of the story is that Daniel Ivanov inherits an evil prayer rug when his father dies, and then bad things start happening. There are so many ways the story could have veered into some sort of surreal horror-comedy, but Tate navigates those treacherous waters and delivers an old-fashioned horror story that just works on every level and is a ton of fun to read.If there's one thing I can fault this book on, it's the incredibly short chapter length. As in Tate's Lilith, the chapters end after a page or two. That worked for the earlier book because it was an action-packed story with multiple points of view and events taking place in different locations. The Black Church, though, only has one POV character and is a much slower story, and I think it would have been better served by having chapter breaks only when Daniel switches physical location.