Review: Creed

Creed by James Herbert
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I really enjoyed the writing of this, but the story was a little underwhelming. Only I don't know if it was the story itself or just the 2020 bug. I think, from a distance, it should be a 4-star book, but my experience was a 3-star. So let's call it 3.5.

The Good

1. Creed is a Jerk
He's such a brilliant anti-hero. He's self-centred, smokes and drinks far too much, treats people like dirt, and he delights in his job of snapping embarrassing photos of the rich and famous. He excels at his job. Because he has no shame. He is a despicable human being and totally doesn't care.

2. Creed is a Cynic
This guy doesn't believe anything he can't see with his own eyes. And even when he does see it himself, he'll still try to find a logical explanation for it. This made for an interesting mind-f*ck. Because it makes us, the reader, cynical as well. Are we going to believe in the supernatural occurrences? Or are we going to believe whatever thin logical explanation Creed finds?

3. The Storytelling is Fantastic
More than anything, I loved the way this was written. This is a proper story-telling narrative, with the author explaining things for us and injecting some brilliant humour in the process. It's clever, witty, and I found myself just really enjoying the narrator as a character himself.

4. The RANDOMNESS
Honestly, most of the time I had no idea what was happening, where it was going, what it was trying to set up. Zero ideas. It was hectic. There was so much random stuff happening - demons and vampires and bugs and faces at windows and evil toilets and ... SO MUCH. I thoroughly enjoyed how disturbing it all was, but I found it more amusing than terrifying. Did I mention the evil toilet??

The Bad

1. The Plot is ... What?
I still am not 100% sure of what the heck was happening here. It begins with Creed snapping a photo he shouldn't have, and it leads to this absolute chaos that is basically Creed being terrorised for reasons I couldn't work out. It was strange and hard to follow and it lessened my motivation to pick it up because the drive wasn't really there for me.

2. The Scare Factor is Low
I was hoping for a horror story but this definitely felt more like comedy. There are some creepy moments but the way Creed (and the narrator) deals with everything just makes it more humourous. I think, because Creed never entirely believed any of this horrific stuff was happening, it took the threat out of it. It was hilarious, but never raised a single goosebump for me.

FINAL THOUGHTS
I won't lie, the 2020 bug has really affected my reading experiences this year, and I find I'm a lot harder to please. I suspect this story lost a star to that. On paper, this book is everything I should have enjoyed, but it took me a lot longer to read than I anticipated, because I never really had the urge to pick it up again. I think that's part the fault of the plot, but also part me.

It's funny and unique, and Creed is a brilliant character, but as a horror novel it does fall a little flat. Still, there are some really interesting monsters here and the writing is truly brilliant, so others are likely to be more impressed than me.

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