And whether or not he wants to be lumped in with the happy hooligans inhabiting the horror genre, I don’t really know. It should be known by now that I’m of a very one-sided opinion. Furrington, wise Jesus, and the bloodthirsty Scowler. Soon Ry is forced to defend himself by resurrecting a trio of imaginary childhood protectors: kind Mr. Then a meteor falls from the sky, bringing with it not only a fragment from another world but also the arrival of a ruthless man intent on destroying the entire family. Ry wishes for anything to distract him from the grim memories of his father’s physical and emotional abuse. Nineteen-year-old Ry Burke, his mother, and his little sister eke out a living on their dying family farm. Or maybe readers will just have to find out just how much of a powerhouse Daniel Kraus is the hard way. Maybe now you’ll come to understand why it won the 2012 Odyssey Award, and the 2012 Parent’s Choice Award. Suffice it to say, I’m happy this one flew under the radar.īut hopefully now you’ll understand why I’ve championed Rotters as one of the best YA journeys ever set to paper. So maybe I should be thanking the “horror readers” and the “community” at large for not paying enough attention to the work of this author.

Why? Because now you have to deal with Scowler, a novel Kraus has been quoted as saying was one of the toughest things he’s ever written – something that terrified him, even as he was penning the damned thing himself.

You don’t let something as powerful as this novel walk on by without telling it to “hold on a minute”. Letting Rotters slip by was the first mistake “horror” readers worldwide made. Kraus is in a league of his own.īut I digress. In fact, I think most authors aren’t even ready for this level of game.

Hell, I think most readers probably still aren’t. Who was looking at YA besides the publishers and the authors? Not the “hardcore” horror readers. See, amid the landscape of heroes and heroines, vampires and werewolves, and the whiny, whinier, and whiniest of main characters, came a novel so filled with emotional turmoil and intelligent, thought-provoking subject matter, that our beloved genre barely even noticed.

I’ve been following Kraus’ work since shortly after the release of his second novel, Rotters – a book that is at both times terrifying and revolutionary, especially with the majority of fictional works fired at the youth of today being so utterly vapid and brainless.

Scowler book