This is a Trex book review for This Wretched Valley by Jenny Kiefer.
I genuinely don’t remember where I saw this book first. I think it was in the free magazine from my public library. Anyway, it was on my to-read list for a while since I have a fondness for books where nature is trying to kill everyone. Fiction or non-fiction, I love a book where man’s hubris is checked utterly by nature. The book opens with the remains of four bodies and an abandoned Jeep being found on the side of the highway in rural Kentucky. From there we go back to who those four people used to be and how they ended up as a confusing set of remains.
Clay is a graduate student in geology at the University of Kentucky completing his dissertation using LIDAR technology to map rock formations. He finds what he believes to be an uncharted rock wall in Kentucky. With hopes to finish his dissertation and also turn this discovery into a career mapping climbing locations professionally, he plans a field excursion out to the wall. He brings in a fellow graduate student in his program, Sylvia, to help him research the location. Her research is in the relationship between native plants and geology. Clay also recruits his rock-climbing friend, Dylan, who recently received a sponsorship and is excited to be the first person to set climbing routes on this virgin rock wall. Dylan’s boyfriend, Luke, and his dog, Slade, come to belay for Dylan. On their way to the site, they stop at a diner for a last meal of sorts. The waitress tell them that the patch of forest they’re headed for is dangerous. People who go in don’t come out the same if at all. Obviously, they go anyway. From the get-go, things start to go wrong. Slade is scared and acting oddly, every plant Sylvia sees is poisonous, there is no sign of the huge rock formation they’re heading for, and the gps is misbehaving. Obviously, they push forward.
Eventually, they reach the lip of a valley and see the giant rock. It’s everything Clay and Dylan hoped for. Slade has to be dragged into the valley. The rock has a magnetism to it, especially for Dylan. Drawn by the rock, Dylan wakes up before everyone else the next morning and starts to free climb. In her haste, she leaves the tent unzipped and Slade escapes. When Luke wakes, he’s beside himself. It’s unlike Slade to stray but he’s nowhere to be found. After an hour of looking, Dylan convinces Luke to quit. Now Luke is filled with resentment at her seemingly callous attitude toward their dog, ingratitude at the sacrifices he made to be there, and general disregard of his emotional state. Dylan is a woman possessed by this rock and her dreams of making it big as a climbing celebrity. Clay is somewhat inexplicably bumbling and brooding. Sylvia, at this point, seems to be the only person who is acting pretty normal and is doing responsible research and documentation. Slade remains missing. Dylan is mapping yet another climbing route and is high on the wall when disaster strikes. She falls and multiple of her clips fail. Dylan’s weight pulls Luke off the ground and the rope swings her like a pendulum into his body. Luke’s head smashes against the wall. She cuts them both down and it’s immediately apparent that Luke needs medical attention at a hospital. He is concussed and has seriously injured both an ankle and a wrist. This is when things really start to spiral for the group.
From here, the book takes a slightly different course than I expected. From the first pages, it’s clear to the reader that the physical location is wrong or evil or…something. What was surprising was that in addition to the supernaturally evil locale, there are evil ghosts. So this is a place possessed. The ghost character and backgrounds for them are really interesting additions to the story. The interactions between our main characters and these ghosts are creepy and mind-bending. I wondered though if there were too many different eras of ghost. Clearly the idea is that the place is evil and hungry, corrupting and capturing the souls of those who dare enter. There is ultimately no explanation for why. I get it, it’s supposed to be like an eldritch evil that defies explanations of men but I still wanted more. Similarly, some ghosts were more evil and in charge than others but didn’t really have much more background. Why did the oldest ghost seem to date back to the civil war? That doesn’t seem long enough unless the civil war itself was a catalyst somehow. Another thing that bothered me some was how the ghosts and the land seemed to be sharing the corpses. It was an interesting idea that they were both feeding off the fear and death but the different mechanisms left something to be desired. Like why did Sylvia get turned into a skeleton but Clay was left largely intact? I appreciated the variety but felt there was just a tiny bit more explanation or exploration needed. Anyway, this is mostly me poking holes in an otherwise perfectly good and satisfying horror novel. There is plenty of gore, suspense, disgust, betrayal, and visceral sensory detail here to give you at least mild nightmares.
Darker Books 