Hell Believes in You - Reviewing M. Todd's "Chains"

Chains is by far one of the most interesting books I have read this year: its structure, its pacing and above all, its strangely compelling antagonist are just a breath of fresh air in often formulaic horror fiction.
To be honest I initially had my doubts I would like it, mainly because I've really had it with books who move between two timelines present and past. Having now finished the book, I realize it was very necessary for Chains to do so and in hindsight I'm glad it did, because I ended up enjoying the "past" parts more than the storyline and the characters in present. And to be fair, M. Todd does not follow the trend of alternating the two timelines, but brings in the past in due places as an explanation. But, first things first, let's start from the beginning with the plot.

It doesn't matter what you believe. Hell believes in you.

Chains is a folk horror book that borrows folkloric elements from Dutch mythology; we follow a Canadian family with Dutch origins, Max and his mother Hennie, who need to put up with an evil from their old home country. A Faustian deal made by Max's grandfather Ursel during WWII makes sure that this nervous young man and his loved ones suffer some serious terror at the hands of this monster! 

Horror comes in many guises and forms and here it is the unscrupulous Dutch folk monster Kludde/Kledde. Let me highlight how much I enjoyed this shapeshifting trickster! He's truly off the charts in what evil he can do... Always a cheeky or mean remark on his lips, consistently bad, corrupt and highly unreliable, he feeds on the fear of his victims, playing with them like cat playing with its prey to magnify and relish the flavor of this fear! Little Ursel, as an orphaned young boy seeking revenge, had no choice but fall into his repellent trap.

But the range of his evil is not limited to this little boy, every side character playing a role in Chains is to some degree affected by Kludde. And this is a point that I think is important, because I find Todd giving a back story to almost all of his side characters very successfully done - the stories of Hennie and her late husband Rien; Iam Reitt, the Native American bodyguard of the city counsellor; Max's friend, Asian-Canadian Ken Sugiyama; Everil the punk and of course little Ursel were infinitely more interesting to me than main character Max.
 

Max not being particularly interesting has its reasons, though; especially the first half of the book reads like some kind of fairy tale or an homage to Central European tellings, like a distorted Red Riding Hood where the wolf/werewolf/shapeshifter surprises protagonist by arriving at his (grand)mother's house before him. So accordingly, Todd plays with archetypes: the young innocent, the chosen one (or more likely the "cursed one") who needs to defeat his fears by confronting them is reflected in Max and the absolute evil in Kludde. And the language is accordingly a little stripped down especially in this first part but as the story unfolds, reaching dimensions that go beyond this initial homage to Dutch folklore, the story gains in pace and the dialogues in fluency.

Alles hat ein Ende, nur die Wurst hat zwei.

As a half German who probably (hopefully! My grandmother used to sing this song!) enjoys a certain familiarity to the culture but also a certain distance, dialogues like the following between two WWII soldiers cracked me up:

What a bunch of banana benders. Such arsch mit ohren walking around. If they were to come face-to-face with any of our soldiers, they would turn to kotzbrocken. Nothing but a gang of hosenscheißer, all of them." Len liked to be creative with his words.
"Yes, here comes one of the blockflötengesichts now", said Rolf.

Blockflötengesicht!!!

Although somewhat exaggerated, it wouldn't be unrealistic to imagine people talking like this and I still laugh at this excerpt. Although my grandparents lived in a neighboring town on the border to Netherlands, I unfortunately know next to nothing about Dutch/Belgian folklore and found the nocturnal, shapeshifting evil Kludde very interesting. Almost like the French loup-garou but cunning and articulate. I had the impression that Todd either knows this mythology first hand from his own background or his researches were very thorough.

Ultimately, I enjoyed this book progressively more and more. I was glad that it ended on a semi-cliffhanger; you could stop reading here but the ending also gives hope that "Chains" could spawn sequels. Any reader who finds this folklore appealing, but also the ones who don't but are into fresh antagonists, shouldn't miss it, I certainly had a good time.

My thanks to M. Todd for sending me a digital copy of "Chains" in exchange of an honest review.