Johnny Compton’s debut novel The Spite House from Tor Nightfire in 2023 was one of my favorite gothic horror reads in the last years, a familiar yet fresh take on the haunted house genre that read as if it were very personal to Compton, full of soul. It’s a story steeped in location and history. Though full of complexities, including multiple points of view and revelations, it’s simplified in the very relatable familial connection between a father and his daughters.
A year or so later Tor Nightfire published Compton’s next novel, Devils Kill Devils (he’s also had Dead First released earlier this year through a new publisher). There are some things in common between Devils Kill Devils and The Spite House beyond being classified as horror/thrillers. Devils Kill Devils also uses multiple points of view and builds a complex plot of revelations. The world-building mythology of it is even stronger, however, as Compton turns to adapting vampire folklore into something new that has dashes of religious cult and cosmic horror in the mix. Researching and returning to global elements of vampiric legend, Compton’s vampires aren’t exactly the typical gothic or romanticized form that has become familiar to modern cultures. Here it is something more ancient, more demonic, tying into those horror sub-genres just mentioned.
This makes the setting of Devils Kill Devils, and its stakes, much more large-scale than what The Spite House employed. There are still families at play here, but more dysfunctional ones than loving. There are friendships, but nothing like the anchoring ties that helped ground the protagonist of Compton’s first novel. Instead, Sarita, the protagonist here, is facing forces that seek to protect, control, or destroy her, with the fate of the world at stake and ancient groups and god-like entities involved. But she is largely alone on her path. Similarly, one of the antagonists, Sarita’s mother-in-law, is simply another human proxy for an eternal war, a woman whose anger and despair is being used.
This grandiosity of the plot and world/character building of Devils Kill Devils ends up making it a rather unwieldy and distancing novel, one whose shifting character perspectives and lack of emotional grounding make it a difficult read in spots, including to just simply enjoy. On the other hand, Compton’s dive into lore and religion here is quite unique and interesting to hold the attention of horror fans who appreciate such details and the sub-genres. The main theme the novel explores (which the title basically summarizes), that evil cannot help but turn and fight against itself, is also a fascinating one that Compton is exploring here.
In the end, Devils Kill Devils reads somewhat like a strict novelization of a film, something that if fully, literally visualized would be great to experience and have tons of captivating atmosphere, background, action, and character conflict, even if messy. But as a novel it lacks the literary finesse that would show Compton in the writing, or any real core in character/setting to ground it with the same kind of soul as Compton’s first novel achieved.
