Book Review: ‘NOCTURNAL’ by Scott Sigler

My taste in horror leans towards the prudish. I like shadowy figures, dim corridors, ambiguity, and creepy children. I cannot stress that enough; I am all about the creepy children. So I was cautious when I picked up Nocturnal by Scott Sigler, whose other big hits were Contagious and Infected.  I haven’t read them, but both of those words are disgusting.

And there’s certainly no shortage of disgusting in this book. Bodies are being found on the streets of San Francisco with broken bones and torn off limbs.  Near each corpse is a strange symbol written in blood. Homicide detective Bryan Clauser and his partner Pookie Chang find it odd when they are taken off the case almost immediately. Odder still are the vivid dreams Bryan has of hunting and killing the victims just before they are found. Sharing those dreams is a teenage outsider, a budding artist whose sketches depict elaborate revenge fantasies of those who bully him. The small gang that picks on him is beginning to get picked off, one by one, by a subterranean variety of monsters, resembling a very dark and unfriendly Sesame Street. Just who are the people in your neighborhood? Monstrous hybrids, that’s who.

The biggest hurdle in this book is the first 100 pages. Sigler’s weaknesses as a writer are not overwhelming; he’s energetic and engaging. However, it does take a while for the story to pick up. There is an excessive amount of dialogue, good for establishing rapport but failing when it becomes inane banter. Too many characters are introduced at once, few important enough to justify a paragraph of description. There is also an insane amount of detail, enough to make Tolkien blush. While it’s nice Sigler is really into guns and chromosomes, I feel – and I don’t think I’m alone here – I don’t need a college-level essay on either. If I wanted to read a textbook, I wouldn’t have picked up something from the “New Releases in Science Fiction” table. So, Sigler isn’t exactly a kill-your-darlings type of author. Maybe it’s the English major in me, but I hate that. Not out of principle, but because it lowers the property value on an otherwise excellent story, causing readers to tune out before anything interesting happens.

And that’s a damn shame, because the last 400 pages are so much fun. Somewhere in the story, perhaps after meeting the Tourette’s-afflicted fortune teller who talks with a voice box, this book starts coasting along. Once accustomed to the knock-off noir narration, you can appreciate it for what it’s worth – a big, juicy, meaty mofo with likable characters and a lot of action. A lot goes down in this book. Even at 500 pages, Sigler wastes no time with subtle, psychological tension and instead offers several big baddies, obscenely disgusting sex, a little romance, a lot of bromance, and a Tourette’s-afflicted fortune teller who talks with a voice box. The ending is gratifying, with just enough loose ends to hint at a sequel, but not so ambiguous that a sequel would be necessary.