“One of the best writers in modern horror to come along in the last decade. Janz is one of my new favorites.” – Brian KeeneThe old house waited. For years there had been rumors that the owner, Lilith Martin, had been part of an unholy cult. People spoke of blasphemous rituals, black rites filled with blood, sex…and sacrifices. Then Lilith died and the house sat empty. Until now. Lilith’s nephew, … Until now.
Lilith’s nephew, Chris, and his wife, Ellie, are moving in. Ellie isn’t happy about living in such a dark, foreboding place, but she wants to get pregnant and this house has a lot more room to raise a baby than their apartment. Unfortunately, she and Chris will soon learn that Lilith has other plans.
FLAME TREE PRESS is the new fiction imprint of Flame Tree Publishing. Launched in 2018 the list brings together brilliant new authors and the more established; the award winners, and exciting, original voices.
more
Originally published in 2013, The Darkest Lullaby is one of Jonathan Janz’s earliest titles, preceded only by The Sorrows and House of Skin, and shows a number of familiar themes and elements the author would return to over the course of his future works.
As is common in Janz’s books, family is one of the most prominent elements helping to fuel the horror. Chris Crane and wife, Ellie, have inherited a lush estate in Indiana, prompting them to uproot their lives in California and relocate with the promise of a fresh start for their lives. Although Aunt Lilith has left them acres and acres of land, the house itself is in disrepair and the young couple have little money to spare for this fixer-upper opportunity. To make matters worse, there’s all kinds of rumors surrounding Chris’s dearly departed aunt involving cults, the belief in demonic evolution, and a number of warnings that the land itself is haunted.
Needless to say, life in Indiana is a far cry from the sun, warmth, and picturesque beaches Chris and Ellie are accustomed to!
The Darkest Lullaby is a slow burn horror book, but one that I found constantly engaging, even if some of the overarching elements are readily familiar. For one, we have the inherited estate and lurking evils, which comes apiece of House of Skin. Although that book was Janz’s first novel it was his second published work, and The Darkest Lullaby treads similar ground. Like Paul Carver, Chris is an aspiring author, and both men are clearly modeled after Janz himself with their good looks, muscular bodies, and easy going nature.
Haunted and cursed estates are, of course, no stranger to Janz and he’s built quite an impressive bibliography around this idea, one he’s returned to time and time again since his debut with The Sorrows, including 2019’s The Dark Game. We know Janz is a fan of the gothic, and his appreciation for that brand of horror spills forth quite prominently over the course of his body of work. While The Darkest Lullaby isn’t as straightforward a gothic horror novel as, say, The Siren and the Specter, it does have a fair amount of overlap with that sub-genre, particularly as Ellie begins to find herself trapped on this land and takes on a stronger role in the book’s latter half.
It’s curious, too, the ways in which Janz returns to the concept of an inherited estate. I wonder if there’s a more quintessentially American fantasy than being bequeathed lush property and the promise of wealth from a dead relative, and it’s certainly one Janz gave plenty of attention to in these early novels. Beneath that unexpected luck and the promise of riches, though, are the guarantees of evil, which is certainly a pointed, and welcome, bit of commentary. Janz spares little expense as he deeply mines the corruptive nature of power and the ways in which it poisons interpersonal relationships, the land we live on, and, most prominently, the self. The Darkest Lullaby veers into a few intriguing moments of ecological horror as we see just how tainted and twisted the land has become under the will of old, rich, evil Aunt Lilith.
While The Darkest Lullaby plumbs a number of familiar elements in Janz’s growing body of work, it feels neither repetitive nor unwelcome. Quite the contrary, in my opinion. There’s a certain comfort in that familiarity, and the ways Janz eases you into the story feels like slipping on a pair of comfy but well-worn slippers. For as dark and bleak as it is, The Darkest Lullaby, oddly enough, is a bit of comfort read, at least for this Janz fan. Story-wise, it meets those certain needs and expectations, but the author still manages to deliver a few welcome shocks and jolts. At one point, I even found myself delighted at the shift in this particular story’s trajectory, and I’m glad Janz tread there fearlessly, even as he knowingly delivers a nod to a rather famous and quintessential Stephen King story. Janz is good about proudly wearing his influences on his sleeve, but make no mistake, he’s an author fully in command of his own works. He knows what he’s doing, knows where his strengths lie, and because of it he consistently delivers.