Review: The Nocent part 2: Advent of the Scathing by: Paul Loh

Paul Loh’s latest entry into the undead horror genre is an attempt to cover as many horror topics as possible in one novella. Set in the fictional town of Marble Cliffs, Arizona, the storyline weaves the tales of several of the inhabitants as a new evil enters the population. One of the characters, Mina, is a fairly recent transplant to Marble Cliffs from Tucson and currently employed at the local newspaper. Her interaction with the other residents leads her to what was telegraphed to be a murder mystery with some paranormal circumstances. This interlude was entertaining for a short while but then the cut scene took the reader in another direction, alien abduction and mind control.

This direction was the lead in for yet another horror genre introduction, vampires. To recap, we have a paranormal murder that turned out to be an alien abduction leading to a detective that may or may not be a vampire that leads the reader to alien mind control that later becomes reanimated bodies thereby providing zombies.

If that sounds confusing to anyone, it is.

The cast of characters is kept relatively short with only some minor introduction of secondary characters. The writing was, at times, concise and crisp whereas other sequences appeared to meander around the main plot in an effort to complete the subplots. These subplots, the detective, Kenn, and his talking parrot, Stratford, who channels his dead brother’s soul (?), the convenience store owner who thought he saw his wife dead in the bathtub that was either murder or suicide but was actually an alien masquerading as his wife, the reporter who encounters Kenn the detective, the store owner’s son and his rock band and a Disneyland type theme park. How do all these things fit together?

I asked myself that a few times while reading.

Let’s not forget the aliens and their dastardly mind control experiment that will unleash the brains of a thousand dead aliens, the Nocent, into host bodies all by inserting a chip on the back of the host’s hand. This is where we get the zombie presence. Apparently, the alien minds had some sort of alien virus from their homeworld, Sypraxia, known as the Scathing that induces a coma in the host, kills them then reanimates the body.

This soon devolves into a ‘Us’ v ‘Them’ within the town with the Untaken hunkered down at Happyville Playland, the aforementioned Disneyland type theme park, the Defectors, hand chipped yet not victims of the Scathing, at the copper mill and the Revenant, victims of the Scathing, wandering around looking for more citizens, defectors or anyone unlucky enough to not have noticed all this going on in town.

With so many horror genres represented within a storyline, one would expect the plot to be captivating and intense.

Sadly, it was not.

Maybe it was the formatting of the copy I received, possibly something was missing from the overall plot that would make the story more enjoyable. If that’s the case, then by all means let me know.

As it stands, the version of this work that was sent was not much more than a few steps above a rough draft. There was some serious paragraph formatting issues and chapter problems. The overall story was somewhat interesting to read but I felt sidetracked the reader with so many subplots that it contained within. Sure, paranormal is cool to read about but why add all the other genres? If it’s a zombie novel, then the reader expects zombies, same is true for aliens, vampires and ghosts. To be able to combine all those elements into a cohesive work takes someone with great skill and writing ability.

Overall, The Nocent, the title a nice play on innocent, was not that well written, some of the dialogue between characters read as stilted and stereotypical. Nothing new was introduced with exception to all the other horror genres generally represented.

I’ve read worse and I’ve read better. This particular novella comes across as if it was rapidly written and then spot checked instead of being thoroughly edited.

Available on Amazon