This is an older Koryta--copyright 2011--and it's obvious reading it why he decided to start using a pen name for his more Horror-oriented novels, this is more Horror than it is anything else, really. It's not overly inventive Horror: It has a strong whiff of Folk Horror (at least, it's set in Appalachia, which is kinda where Folk Horror always seems to want to be) but it's not wildly unlike something Manly Wade Wellman would have written in the 1950s (seriously, a strong whiff of "Vandy, Vandy") which isn't really snark. Koryta's strengths are here, character and plot arcs and stuff, but there's some dragging through the early-middle, as the novel seems to be wavering between supernatural and not--which doesn't seem plausible given the overall shape of the novel, but it is as it is. The main being a bit self-sacrificing is also kinda a Koryta thing, or at least a thing in his range if not exactly a tendency. A good novel overall, though I was expecting less like Horror (which is fine.)
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