Ratings3
Average rating3.7
Stephen King meets Tim O’Brien in John Milas’s The Militia House, a spine-tingling and boldly original gothic horror novel.
It’s 2010, and the recently promoted Corporal Loyette and his unit are finishing up their deployment at a new base in Kajaki, Afghanistan. Their duties here are straightforward―loading and unloading cargo into and out of helicopters―and their days are a mix of boredom and dread. The Brits they’re replacing delight in telling them the history of the old barracks just off base, a Soviet-era militia house they claim is haunted, and Loyette and his men don’t need much convincing to make a clandestine trip outside the wire to explore it.
It’s a short, middle-of-the-day adventure, but the men experience a mounting agitation after their visit to the militia house. In the days that follow they try to forget about the strange, unsettling sights and sounds from the house, but things are increasingly . . . not right. Loyette becomes determined to ignore his and his marines’ growing unease, convinced that it’s just the strain of war playing tricks on them. But something about the militia house will not let them go.
Meticulously plotted and viscerally immediate in its telling, The Militia House is a gripping and brilliant exploration of the unceasing horrors of war that’s no more easily shaken than the militia house itself.
Reviews with the most likes.
Gothic horror isn't my jam so take my review with a grain of salt.
It's not a bad novel and there's certainly a striking imagery I just wish Milas had done more with it because as it is it feels a little rushed and lacking in payoff.
DNF at 12%.
My husband is a prior marine, and hearing a marine talking marine things in what was supposed to be a horror/thriller book just didn't do it for me. I know the acronyms, I know the terminology, I know the concepts.... but I'm here for thrills and scares and I didn't get a feeling like it was going to be that thrilling/scary.
Unless you count hearing FOB over and over again terrifying.