A finalist for the 2017 Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in a First Novel.Deftly written and utterly addictive, this Western literary horror debut will find a home with fans of authors like Joe Hill, Cormac McCarthy, and Anne Rice.One night in 1980, a man becomes a monster.Haunted by his past, Travis Stillwell spends his nights searching out women in West Texas honky-tonks. What he does … out women in West Texas honky-tonks. What he does with them doesn’t make him proud, just quiets the demons for a little while. But after Travis crosses paths one night with a mysterious pale-skinned girl, he wakes weak and bloodied in his cabover camper the next morningwith no sign of a girl, no memory of the night before.
Annabelle Gaskin spies the camper parked behind her motel and offers the cowboy a few odd jobs to pay his board. Travis takes her up on the offer, if only to buy time, to lay low and heal. By day, he mends the old motel, insinuating himself into the lives of Annabelle and her ten-year-old son. By night, in the cave of his camper, he fights an unspeakable hunger. Before long, Annabelle and her boy come to realize that this strange cowboy is not what he seems.
Half a state away, a grizzled Texas Ranger is hunting Travis for his past misdeeds, but what he finds will lead him to a revelation far more monstrous. A man of the law, he’ll have to decide how far into the darkness he’ll go for the sake of justice.
When these lives converge on a dusty autumn night, an old evil will find new lifeand new blood.
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4.5/5 stars!
Rarely do I find myself struggling to find the words I want to say about a book, but today I am. Know why? Because IN THE VALLEY OF THE SUN was so beautifully written, powerful, surprising and engaging.. Oh! Apparently, I CAN find the words if I try hard enough!
In this dark tale set during 1980, there’s everything a horror lover could want. You’ve got a villain with so many layers to him, reading about him is like peeling an onion. There is no bad guy with a black hat here…well, actually, he does wear a black hat, but you know what I mean. He’s complicated. All of the other characters have depth to them as well and even though some of them do bad things, you are privy to the reasons they are doing them and you can understand. You can identify. You can relate.
There is a level of trust expected of the reader with this book. There are allusions made to events that you must trust will be made clear later, (and they were.) Even though those events were brought to light, they only complicated, (there’s that word again!) my feelings for the characters and I love when that happens.
I don’t want to give away too much of the story as I feel that it should be related to you as the author intended. Since the book never said the word, I’m not going to say it either. What is actually going on is deftly handled, sometimes gory and disgusting, sometimes poignant and heartbreaking.
I find myself thinking about the book days after I finished it and that’s always a sign that I’ve read something special. If you like characters with layers, if you like dark fiction beautifully told, (think Cormac McCarthy or Peter Straub), if you like a little more blood and gore than McCarthy or Straub usually provide, and you like to curl up with a book that surrounds and engulfs you, read this book now!
Highly recommended!
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*I received a paperback ARC from the publisher in exchange for my honest feedback. This is it.*
Well this is certainly a new take on a favorite subject! And I loved it! I began to get an inkling of what Travis(major character) had become within the first part of the book! The author is able to make the reader feel his despair, his desolation in heart and mind, and his longing for a family to belong to!
Then on the other side of the coin is the human family he comes upon! Mother and son seem to adopt him but as time goes on both realize Travis is a lot more then they bargained for! Though this little family has secrets of its own that has been buried for a number of years!
Add in the violence, blood, murders, and the law that is closing in on Travis and you have one heck of a magnificent story! This is a good one folks and well worth the read!
I found this to be a refreshing take on the typical vampire story. The author generates an almost tragic sympathy for the hapless antagonist. Hard to shake. Haunting.
This book was very well written…. darkly poetic and ominous. Davidson masterfully balances the macabre with raw emotional conflict. It was an unexpected tale and a very satisfying read with some great passages. I highly recommend it!!
Turns out there’s a middle space between Tender Mercies and Preacher and Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer. It’s called In the Valley of the Sun. And if I didn’t know Andy Davidson had written it, I’d swear this was some long lost William Gay. I burned through this. It’s got teeth on every page.
In the Valley of the Sun is a flint-hard, gorgeously written nightmare.
Haunting & Darkly Poetic but Slowly Paced… “In the Valley of the Sun” is a purposely disjointed, haunting novel that sings its bleak, darkly poetic composition so quietly into your ear, you leave it unsure of its meaning… Here, author Andy Davidson creates a stark and bitter emotional landscape that burdens your consciousness with its endless, seemingly empty search for truth and meaning. His slow, laborious prose pressing harshly against your soul, leaving you feeling heavy and pained.
You leave this book unsure of Travis’s redemption or destruction. You walk away feeling anger, emptiness, but also enlightenment. You walk away pondering the many shades of grey between the simplistic concepts of “good” and “evil”. And you certainly leave this book with a chill down your spine and a cold emptiness in your gut.
However, so slow is Davidson’s pacing, so long and winding are the paths of his characters, I had to slow my normal reading speed down to a glacial crawl in order to properly digest the impact of each sentence upon the next. This book was the first one I’ve ever had to read with a pen and paper at my side. Just so I could plot events, connections, and circumstances in order to understand the origins of the horrors unfolding before me within its pages. And while the premise is grand. His character development and western frame-working, as well as, his different take on vampires and vampirism, unique and appreciated. The use of parts over chapters spanning vastly different times, characters, and subplots. In conjunction with the sloth-like speed of the first three quarters of it, create a confusing web of “cause and effect” scenarios far beyond what I am willing to endure. I only have so much literary patience, and sadly here it ran out halfway through. Which, made it difficult to stay focused and fully enjoy. Ultimately, for me, this book was just too slow to keep my full attention.
This is hands down the best vampire novel I have ever read. Davidson starts his book with a peek into the main character’s twisted psychological makeup. Davidson continues with a story about love and loneliness, hope and rejection. It’s about law enforcement and criminals and Vietnam. But mostly it’s about the blood-hungry, fragile (yes, fragile), and violent existence of those characters stricken with the vampire’s curse.
The tension at the beginning of the novel was enough to keep me turning pages, and by the time I got three-quarters of the way through, I was gasping and saying things out loud like, “Oh no!” and, “Not THAT!” Davidson’s writing is meaty with creative metaphors and fresh vocabulary and a poetic bent even during the most violent scenes. His allusions are deep but accessible.
This is entertaining, accessible, literary horror. I’m having a hard time thinking of ANYthing negative to say about In the Valley of the Sun. Highly recommended!
It’s quite different from other vampire books.
If you like horror, this is for you. It raised the hair on the back of my neck more than once!
A well written, often graphic, vampire-ish story. These aren’t your typical vampires and the cross of a serial killer and vampire was an interesting twist, but it wasn’t fully realized. However, I was left feeling quite sad after finishing. Everyone important loses something of value. For most, it’s their lives. I still think the book would have been a compelling read with a couple of redemptive elements. I know that good doesn’t always triumph over evil, but a little good surviving would have been nice (besides the characters that live).
With lyrical prose and creeping dread, Davidson deftly turns the screws… Sure to haunt a new generation of readers.
Davidson’s rich prose plunges the reader into a hell all the more terrifying for its banality—behind a dusty, middle of nowhere motel (swampy pool and all) an unspeakable evil is slowly approaching the boiling point. Equal parts psychological horror, procedural thriller, and good old-fashioned western, In the Valley of the Sun grabs you by the throat and drags you down a twisted road, ending in a horrifying, bloody finale.
Could not finish this book. Hardly ever say that, but this one was gross, meandering and disgusting. Wish I had not bought it.
In the Valley of the Sun moves to a slapback echo and does not disappoint. Andy Davidson writes his gritty debut novel the way experienced drivers command the road. And Travis Stillwell’s story is by turns spare and solemn—but also vast and treacherous—as the Southwest he drives.
On the surface, In the Valley of the Sun is a perfectly paced thriller that’s chillingly fun to read, but Davidson’s prose transcends genre like a fresh Cormac McCarthy. He slides the reader into these characters who are desperately searching for a lost innocence. We shudder at what they do and what is done to them, and as we journey with them through a soul-shredding darkness that reveals the brilliant gossamer threads of joy, we are overcome with equal parts terror and compassion. A must read!
In the Valley of the Sun is a beautiful nightmare. A book that haunts, teases, and compels. Rarely does a debut grab and jerk you in, leaving you wanting to finish every page as if it’s the last thing you’ll ever read. Davidson’s love and mastery of the language enhance the beauty of the plot, and add to the terror that can’t be avoided once you start reading. This, plus the perfectly written characters that force us to care for them, make this novel a must-read for any brave horror fan.
In the Valley of the Sun is a riveting blend of vampire horror, a serial killer’s tale, and police procedural. Andy Davidson’s monsters—both supernatural and all-too-human—are beautifully conceived, leading us to an easy empathy with demons we’d ordinarily flee. Here is first-rate storytelling that grabs your attention and keeps you guessing.
I wasn’t sure about this book when I started it, but it soon drew me in, and I couldn’t wait to see what was going to happen next. If you like to be “creeped out”, this is the book for you!
I could taste the dirt. Having lived in West Texas, that was where I immediately placed the novel. Gothic elements, horror, tragedy, varied pacing – the reader is taken on a journey into the macabre and desolation. The veneer is broken and we see what lurks beneath.
I was writing my own horror thriller at the time and this was one of my reads along the way. Thank you Andy, great job!