"Fires Rising", by Michael Laimo

Fires Rising

Michael Laimo's "Fires Rising" is a bit of a guilty pleasure, honestly. To start, the negatives: the writing is weak, to put it simply. Dramatic moments are written like this. To reinforce tension. When something scary is happening. Because Laimo can't naturally write fear and horror into his prose. So he has to manufacture it. And this happens. So very. Very. Often.

The premise of the book is intriguing - an item of unimaginable evil is buried deep within a church, and of course it's been unwittingly uncovered. The "unimaginable evil in the bowels of a church" angle is cliché enough - it's been done in video games and movies time and time again - but because we're never given any backstory on why it's there, who put it there, even how it was done, it exists for the sole purpose of existing. Oh, there's the usual good vs. evil thing, but there's no theological or philosophical discussion as to the deeper nature of what's going. It's evil, and it's there. That might work for another writer, but Laimo isn't strong enough to make the devil in the details come through.

Characters in "Fires Rising" are...okay. Most of the action takes place over a 24-hour period, so I can waive the lack of in-depth characterization. Laimo does manage to capture a good feeling of horror and terror - the claustrophobia and fear of the men trapped in the church came across convincingly, and that's what kept me intrigued until the end. Even if he still insisted on writing fragmentary sentences. Every single time something scary happened. It was like he was doing a literary William Shatner impression. And it became really annoying. Really quickly.

You can easily tell that Laimo borrowed lots of his inspiration from another religious thriller - think defiled churches and dreaming priests. As I said above, originality is not the strong point of "Fires Rising". The climax was equal parts interesting and equal parts hollow - a book of this ilk doesn't give the antagonist more than a fighting shot, no matter how enthusiastically Laimo tried to describe him/it.

And all things considered, the antagonist was a bit of a letdown, given how easily he/it was defeated. The twist at the end was tacked on and pointless, doing nothing to keep things on a cliffhanger. I've read books that end on cliffhangers before, and I've wanted to tear the last page out, desperately looking for that elusive resolution. The end of "Fires Rising"…not so much. Not so much at all. More like a bemused and jaded "huh." Not even a questioning "huh?", just a noncommittal, nonchalant "huh".

Select quotations on the back cover of the book compared Michael Laimo to Stephen King and Clive Barker, suggesting that Laimo would soon take over their titles as the King of Horror. To that, I simply say "No, no, and no."

Overall, "Fires Rising" is decent for a few cheap thrills, and forgettable for everything else.