A Choir of Ill Children by Tom Piccirilli

Guest review by Red Bonney

It's a dark, wet, rancid book. It's about the dangers of certain people reproducing when they clearly should have been yanked out of the gene pool by the life guard. It's a good book. Reading it was like being sucked down into a gator infested swamp: you get that sinking feeling, but you know you'll be eaten before you drown, and all around you is the earthy smell of the bog. There was a story line, I'm sure of it. I think it was hidden between the random bouts of underage, extra-marital sex, that may or may not have been the hallucinatory dreams of our reluctant hero, Thomas. There was lots of writing on walls and on skin and some of it made sense. Most of it did not.

Thomas has three brothers in one. Sebastian, Jonah and Cole are conjoined triplets, joined at the cranium. They also have a sister, but she was nearly completely absorbed by Thomas when they were still in the womb. This goes back to the theory that some people shouldn't reproduce, namely, the entire list of characters in the book. It was difficult to find a normal character, and I would have to say it was Thomas, though he turned out to be a sex fiend with a penchant for younger partners. The Reverend Bibbler would be next, but his name alone strikes him off the
normal list.

So, Thomas was the reluctant hero, as I said, and very reluctant. He was the town's magnate, so to speak, the wealthiest man in town, who owns the mill that makes the town live. He lives in the most haunted house with his brothers and their care giver, Dodi, who is also their lover and was installed by the local conjure woman, Velma Coots, to keep an eye on them. Velma, I believe, should have gotten more page time. That's another moral hidden in these pages, always listen to the local conjure woman, she knows what she's talking about.

In a nutshell, this book was a lot like real life in that there were a lot of unexplained and unexplainable events, a lot of questions and not enough answers. Conversely, it was nothing at all like real life, with the ghosts and all-consuming evil threatening on the horizon. I can't tell you what the book was really about, it's a mystery and a horror and a romance (a sick, twisted, fucked up romance, but a romance nonetheless) and nothing was explicit.

I hope you are as confused as I am about this book now. You should read it and tell me what it was about.