House of Bone and Rain
House of Bone and Rain, by Gabino Iglesias
Reviewed by Rob English
In the La Perla district of San Juan, a Puerto Rican woman is shot dead in a drug war. Her late-teenage son assembles his four best friends
and together they agree to take murderous revenge on the killers. This is a Revenge novel and a Coming-of-Age novel, all wrapped into a Horror novel.
In Horror you expect malevolent supernatural beings who terrify the story’s protagonists and may commit unspeakable acts of murder and mayhem to the story’s numerous victims; the House of Bone and Rain provides them: beings live in this novel that don’t exist in real life, and they might drag you offshore to a reef off La Perla and make a banquet of you.
Other, real-live malevolencies are hurricanes (sent by the God Juracán), which lash Puerto Rico with insane winds and rain and leave her without power and so many dead that the authorities won’t miss a few murdered cartel members. The boys take advantage of the hellacious weather, the complete night-time darkness, the ubiquitous drone of generators, and prayers to various Afro-Caribbean Gods and Orishas to give them cover on their poorly planned mission to avenge the murder of Bimbo’s mom.
At their age, the boy’s brains have not yet developed adult planning skills or a decent ability to imagine consequences. They proceed from teenage, tribal bonding, and they worry that they have no coherent plan, only an emotion-laden goal (plus knives, guns, and crowbars). To guide and protect them, they wear beads that might be of Santería, Mesa Blanca or Palo Mayombe origin. To defend the boys from being haunted by a dead victim, a young woman co-conspirator performs an unspeakable, yet wildly fascinating voodoo ritual. Their mothers and aunts light candles, pray rosaries, and seek lectures. In moments of extremis the boys see ghosts – are they real or are they figments of their highly stressed imaginations?
Some will say that this story is Murder pornography, and yes, much blood is shed in this novel, and there is angry violence; but it seems to me
that these days a thriller can’t get published without bloodshed.
Read this amazing, new book. Get to know the five boys, their women, the primeval bonding, the suspense. Visit San Juan as seen from the eyes of its struggling inhabitants.
And stay away from the reefs at La Perla.
Rob English is a book reader from Syracuse
Photo of Colorful houses in village by Diego F. Parra and photo of view of buildings and palm trees on the shore by Phil Evenden from pexels.com
Photo of book cover provided by Rob English
