Clay McLeod Chapman is making sure 2025 starts off with a bang for horror readers. The first release Tuesday of the year, January 7th, brings readers Wake Up And Open Your Eyes. His newest release from Quirk Books, this novel is a hard-hitting horror tale that feels all too real. Coming off the holiday season, it may be just the catharsis you need. Or, well, it may completely terrify you. Could be both.
Wake Up And Open Your Eyes is unflinchingly honest and complex. I know reading the description looks straightforward. Mass possession seemingly incited by certain media outlets, conspiracy theories, a divided nation… We know what’s going on, right? This novel is political. That statement is redundant—books and art have always been political—but in the current landscape sometimes it bears repeating. That being said, though, Clay did not take a shallow approach.
What he has done, quite successfully, is humanize both sides. The red and blue, conservative and liberal, possessed and sane; whatever words you want to use, Wake Up And Open Your Eyes crosses party lines. He made the antagonists into protagonists. That is not an easy task. It requires copious amounts of empathy. Clay has proven to be a master of grief horror, so it doesn’t come as a surprise that he could accomplish this.
What did come as a surprise to me was seeing myself reflected in one of these characters. I assumed, wrongly, that I would see my family on one side and me and my communities on the other. Oh, if only I had been let off so easily. The horror on these pages is more than violent mass possession—it is just how easy it would be for anyone to get hooked into an ideology like this. How easily we can all be isolated. How vulnerable we are.
Don’t get me wrong, the rest of the horror elements in this novel shine, too. This may be the most body horror I’ve read yet from Clay, and this was my eleventh read of his. And while this is a possession story, fans of zombie and plague narratives will find plenty to love. There’s even a tunnel scene that, I feel, tops the infamous scene from Stephen King’s The Stand. Wake Up And Open Your Eyes is gnarly. It is visceral. It’s bleak. It should be.
I can’t promise you’ll like this book. All I can offer is that I did. Writing this review has only made it grow in my esteem. As a literary work, it’s brilliant. As art, it is effective. As horror, it is terrifying. This book, as outlandish and at times absurd as it is, is real. And that’s what may make it divisive. It’s also what makes it important. I have done more thinking on this book and because of this book in the past week than I did writing papers in college. It’s powerful.
Wake Up and Open Your Eyes is a start for 2025, but it’s also an end for me. I’m honored to have this be the last review I have on my books. Abby Wolf is the newest writer here at The Fandomentals and she is going to do an incredible job handling all things horror books for you. Her first review on Candy Cain Kills Again by Brian McAuley is a fantastic read. I highly recommend you keep your eyes open for all of her pieces to come.
Happy holidays and happy new year!
Images courtesy of Quirk Books.
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