Title: Seed
Author: Ania Ahlborn
Narrator: Eric G. Dove
Publication Date: May 28, 2011
Publisher: 47North
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With nothing but the clothes on his back—and something horrific snapping at his heels—Jack Winter fled his rural Georgia home when he was still just a boy. Watching the world he knew vanish in a trucker’s rearview mirror, he thought he was leaving an unspeakable nightmare behind forever. But years later, the bright new future he’s built suddenly turns pitch black, as something fiendishly familiar looms dead ahead.
When Jack, his wife Aimee, and their two small children survive a violent car crash, it seems like a miracle. But Jack knows what he saw on the road that night, and it wasn’t divine intervention. The profound evil from his past won’t let them die…at least not quickly. It’s back, and it’s hungry; ready to make Jack pay for running, to work its malignant magic on his angelic youngest daughter, and to whisper a chilling promise: I’ve always been here, and I’ll never leave.
Country comfort is no match for spine-tingling Southern gothic suspense in Ania Ahlborn’s tale of an ordinary man with a demon on his back. Seed plants its page-turning terror deep in your soul, and lets it grow wild.
Around this time last year I was reading The Shuddering by Ania Ahlborn and being completely BLOWN AWAY by it! The obvious next step would be to locate every other book she’s ever written, but for some reason I just now got around to reading (listening to) Seed. The premise sounds sufficiently spooky and i needed another read for my Horror Reading Challenge, so I went into Seed prepared to love it! Unfortunately, it wasn’t everything I’d hoped for.
Seed is a possession story, plain and simple. It doesn’t take very long for the story to pick up and this to be made clear. It still came as a shock though when I discovered that the one being possessed was a six-year-old little girl. (Why is it always the girls, by the way?)
Jack, the dad in the story, has a past that is not made clear for much of the book. He seems like a good father and husband, never doing anything to make the reader seriously question his character. But as he slowly starts unraveling throughout the story and his past starts to come to light, it becomes obvious that he’s not the most upstanding of citizens. I actually really liked Jack as a character. Seeing things unfold through his eyes and living with his secrets really made the feelings of dread that much more tangible.
His wife, Aimee, was an okay character, and it was almost painful to see her go through the events of the book completely in the dark. And then there’s Charlie…
I’m not sure whether I loved or hated her. She dripped evil, which is impressive from a six-year-old character, and really makes me wonder how her mom was so oblivious. I guess people see what they want to see.
The southern gothic setting was actually kind of perfect for this story! I don’t know much about Louisiana, but this book made me want to avoid it a little… The backwoods towns alone are enough to keep me out! But seriously, Ania Ahlborn did a great job of setting a creepy deep south mood for this story.
The demonic possession in this book, while pretty creepy, was not the absolutely terrifying ordeal I had been hoping for. This book was really more of a slow burn horror novel than a collection jump-scares. While it was okay, it just wasn’t exactly what I was hoping for. The tension builds very slowly from page one and it all culminates at the very (very) end. And honestly, the ending wasn’t as shocking as I thought it might be. It had become pretty obvious what would happen by then time the big finish occurred.
Overall, I did enjoy Seed. It was a good, slow-burn horror novel and I would recommend it to people who are a fan of horror, or maybe those who want to start with a lighter horror novel before jumping right into Stephen King!
Truthfully, I didn’t love Eric G. Dove as a narrator. His voice was a little… bland. But I’m honestly really picky when it comes to male voice actors.
