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The Heavens Rise Christopher Rice Books

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The Heavens Rise Christopher Rice Books

Christopher Rice is a really good writer. Evocative, elegant, literate. He has made his own world as a writer, but New Orleans, so potent in his mother's novels of my youth, seems to draw him back. I know the city well enough to understand its allure. No one who ever has lived there can ever quite let it go.

"The Heavens Rise" is, I suppose, a horror story. But it is a tragic romance wrapped in a horror story, not the other way around, and this gives the book an emotional heart that saves it from any risk of being a penny-dreadful mixture of gore and suspense. I am not particularly a horror fan, and it was this emotional heart that kept me going when the plot might have put me off.

Louisiana and the beautiful, horrible, romantic city of New Orleans is the perfect setting for the intertwined stories of Niquolette, Anthem, Ben, Marissa and Marshall. This ensemble cast of characters - and the vividly painted secondary players who flutter briefly in their flickering light - gives us reason to forge ahead through even the darkest or far-fetched bits of narrative. Rice manages to echo some of the weirdness of his mother's story-telling while creating a tone and a palette entirely his own. He has a very distinct voice as an author and has earned his devoted following, including me.

Rice also does what, in my opinion, gay writers need to do in a mainstream market. He gives us a memorable, crucial character in Ben Broyard, who is gay. The fact that he is gay matters, but the book is not remotely about that. By doing this, Rice makes the gay world (however one defines that) visible and present. But Rice doesn't endanger the mainstream market for his novel by making it a "gay novel" (whatever that means). I am a huge consumer of "gay novels" and I understand the dilemma of gay writers who know all too well the resistance to gay genres in the straight world. Much as I resent it, I know the truth, and Rice seems to have created something that will both side-step straight prejudice and not betray who he is. I applaud that - and am grateful for it.


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The Heavens Rise Christopher Rice Books Reviews

Given that many of the reviews I read noted a disappointing ending, I was prepared to be let down, but it was quite the opposite experience. The pace quickened to a frenzy that rises to a crescendo of suspense and supernatural violence. Christopher Rice's prose is fast-paced, accessible, and unpretentious, and he is adept at making his characters feel real, like people I actually know. Even the villain reads like someone we all have known from our school days, the pompous snob with no regard for the lives of others, the bully who preys upon those he perceives to be weak, and yet this villain is driven by homicidal hatred and armed with a terrible gift. In truth, whether we realize it or not, Christopher Rice has brought to life one of our worst nightmares. I have enjoyed other books by Mr. Rice, and this one certainly did not disappoint. Thank you.
The Heavens Rise was a difficult book for me to start reading. It took a few weeks of picking it up and putting down to get into the concept of the story but after I did, I enjoyed it very much. Christopher Rice has a way of developing a strong basis for a story and allowing the characters to flow in and out as necessary.

After reading previous books by Christopher, I was expecting a toned down horror story, but that was not what I found. The story was much more graphic and gory than I had expected, but it had to be to make the reader understand the whole concept, the control that was had by those affected or inflicted with the abilities that they were displaying.

Don't expect A Density of Souls or Snow Garden. This is a supernatural, horror, thriller with all of the blood and pain associated with that genre but it's also a story about change and how people deal with it. Adaptation to our environment, evolving to become a different, not necessarily better, version of ourselves.
The Heavens Rise
Christopher Rice
Gallery, Oct 15 2013, $26.00
ISBN 9781476716084

In the Bayou in 2005, Niquette Delongpre's father dreamed of changing the land surrounded by swamp water into Elysium an estate like no other. The construction crew diligently working at the site dig into a long buried well. None of them or the Delongpre family knew at the time that they liberated an interred parasite better for mankind left buried. Soon afterward, the entire Delongpre family except for Niquette disappears near Bayou Rabineaux leaving behind the frightened teen and signs that their car went through a guardrail.

Niquette knows what has happened to her and her family. Filled with rage and remorse, she vows to never allow her recent need for violence to harm her boyfriend Ben and their best friend Anthem so pushes them away. However, they refuse to walk away from her. In 2013, Niquette realizes that the parasite infected another childhood peer Marshall who while he resides in a coma in an Atlanta Hospital plans to release his inner violence in an unsuspecting world.

Rotating viewpoint between the four protagonists and two time periods, readers get to know what motivates each of the quartet; especially the pair hosting the parasite inside them. Character driven, fans will relish this strong horror thriller that builds suspense from the eeriness of what was released from deep in the murky Bayou.

Harriet Klausner
Christopher Rice is a really good writer. Evocative, elegant, literate. He has made his own world as a writer, but New Orleans, so potent in his mother's novels of my youth, seems to draw him back. I know the city well enough to understand its allure. No one who ever has lived there can ever quite let it go.

"The Heavens Rise" is, I suppose, a horror story. But it is a tragic romance wrapped in a horror story, not the other way around, and this gives the book an emotional heart that saves it from any risk of being a penny-dreadful mixture of gore and suspense. I am not particularly a horror fan, and it was this emotional heart that kept me going when the plot might have put me off.

Louisiana and the beautiful, horrible, romantic city of New Orleans is the perfect setting for the intertwined stories of Niquolette, Anthem, Ben, Marissa and Marshall. This ensemble cast of characters - and the vividly painted secondary players who flutter briefly in their flickering light - gives us reason to forge ahead through even the darkest or far-fetched bits of narrative. Rice manages to echo some of the weirdness of his mother's story-telling while creating a tone and a palette entirely his own. He has a very distinct voice as an author and has earned his devoted following, including me.

Rice also does what, in my opinion, gay writers need to do in a mainstream market. He gives us a memorable, crucial character in Ben Broyard, who is gay. The fact that he is gay matters, but the book is not remotely about that. By doing this, Rice makes the gay world (however one defines that) visible and present. But Rice doesn't endanger the mainstream market for his novel by making it a "gay novel" (whatever that means). I am a huge consumer of "gay novels" and I understand the dilemma of gay writers who know all too well the resistance to gay genres in the straight world. Much as I resent it, I know the truth, and Rice seems to have created something that will both side-step straight prejudice and not betray who he is. I applaud that - and am grateful for it.