Little Heaven (2017) by Nick Cutter

Nick Cutter first came to my attention when researching the sub-genres of body horror and survival horror within the context of modern horror literature at large. His book The Troop was my introduction to his work and I was blown away. Its plot hurtles forward and embraces both body horror and survival horror while achieving an escalating sense of dread and terror that becomes uncomfortably difficult to endure. I count it among the top 5 best horror reads I’ve encountered.

I recently was researching recommendations for folk horror (do others do this?) and found a list of the best examples that listed Little Heaven near the top. So, it was with both excitement and not a small amount of trepidation that I waded into this one. In simple terms, the book is seemingly a mash-up of Lovecraftian cosmic horror, mixed with a fanatical religious cult clearly inspired by Jim Jones and his People’s Temple compound. 

Unlike their real-life counterparts in Guyana, the Reverend Amos Flesher has built his primitive compound, Little Heaven, in the isolated wooded mountains of New Mexico where he is ministering to several families who have followed him to receive revelations he claims are straight from God. The question quickly becomes what exactly is the entity that Flesher believes to be God?

We are almost immediately introduced to supernatural elements ranging from weird otherworldly creatures who kidnap our main character’s daughter at the book’s start to a female bounty hunter who cannot die. These various plot points all tie together when we eventually flesh out our main cast of characters, a trio made up of Micah, a former soldier/protector for a drug dealer, Minerva, an apparently immortal female bounty hunter, and Ebenezer, an African-American hitman. Each of these hardened characters is highly dangerous in his or her own right and only Micah is afforded anything approaching empathy.

The plot skips between two different timelines, 1965, when the trio first encounter each other and accept an offer to visit Little Heaven and determine whether their benefactor’s nephew is safe. The other timeline takes place in 1980 and details the trio’s reluctant and inevitable return to Little Heaven to retrieve Micah’s kidnapped daughter. The events in both timelines that transpire in the hidden woods and hills of New Mexico are harrowing, terrifying, and gut-wrenching. 

The setting and the religious cult worshiping something ancient in the mountains brings a very effective folk horror aspect to the fore. I was reminded at times of of both Adam Nevill’s excellent The Ritual (which I would highly recommend) and T.E.D. Klein's The Ceremonies (an absolute must for anyone interested in folk horror).

Little Heaven is not an easy-to-digest book and it goes galloping into territory that is genuinely off-putting and uneasy to read. I’ve learned that this is a hallmark of the author’s fearless style. That said, the prose is at times breathtakingly beautiful and very literary in a way that reminded me of Cormac McCarthy, although with a much more straightforward narrative style (and punctuation and quotation marks!). 

I appreciated the inclusion of quite a bit of dark humor sprinkled throughout, though the overall tone is pitch black. There is action aplenty, myriad horrific creatures, and despicably evil men doing things that made my skin crawl. The final climax leaves several unanswered questions, though the narrative has a clear and complete closure to it; in the end, many of the mysteries remain mysteries.

If you like being affected deeply by a novel that mixes cosmic horror, folk horror, survival horror, body horror (the gore is plentiful and described in great detail), and surprisingly edge-of-your-seat men's adventure-style action with lots of gunplay, then Little Heaven may be exactly what you’re looking for. But be forewarned—it is stern stuff.

Nick Cutter is the pseudonym for Craig Davidson, a highly respected Canadian fiction novelist. The Nick Cutter name appears to exclusively be used for his horror novel output

Reviewed by Steve Carroll