Book Review: Wake Up and Open Your Eyes

The modern landscape of politics is scary.  I can’t pretend I had any firm grasp on the political climate throughout my early years, but what I know of it now is terrifying.  Modern politics has mutated into something truly tribal.  Gone are the days of compromise and mutual agreement, politics is much akin now days to a football game, in which both sides hate one another and everything they stand for.  With the expanse of the internet and social media, people have never been closer to information then they are now. Information can be biased though and the tumultuous political landscape has turned our need to be informed into a need to be validated.  We seek news and input from sources that correlate with our perspectives.  Truth is no longer an objective idea, because depending on who you ask and where you’re looking it’s all subjective.  That idea is scary to me, that we now live in a world where reality isn’t a constant we can all agree on. People are so willing to lead themselves down a rabbit hole just to feel justified in the beliefs of their own truths.  While the reality of this new era of political ideology is scary enough, it’s also a fascinating foundation for the latest horror book I’ve read by Clay McLeod Chapman called Wake Up and Open Your Eyes.

The story behind this book follows Noah Fairchild, a left-leaning family man living up the boroughs of New York. Despite his fairly progressive views, it’s clear to say Noah’s family back home in Virginia don’t share the same sentiment.  In fact, as the recent months have gone by Noah’s tolerance for his family’s right-wing conspiracies has grown into genuine concern.  It’s only when he receives a number of voice messages from his mother spouting about a “Great Reawakening” that Noah finally decides to head down and check on his family.  Soon after arriving though Noah soon realizes this isn’t just a conspiracy theory, he finds his parents living in squalor, clearly malnourished and delirious.  The big hint things obviously aren’t right are when his parents attack him in a deranged frenzy as the Great Reawakening begins.  He soon learns it’s not just his parents though that have fallen into this animalistic rage.  Soon the whole country begins to face the turmoil of all of it’s right-leaning citizens taking to the streets and brutally attacking people as they ask them to wake up and open their eyes to the truth they have all been awakened to.

While the idea of taking political radicalization and putting a supernatural twist on it is unique in its own right, I couldn’t help but feeling let down by how it was delivered throughout the course of this book’s narrative. Chapman sets up all the dominoes right in the early parts of this book.  There’s a genuine sense of tension and horror as you envelop your way through the lives of Noah’s family as they slowly but surely lose themselves to the demonic influence in unique ways.  But when the cat finally get’s out of the bag, Chapman stumbles considerably in doing something with it.  The narrative ultimately fizzles out the minute it hits its big reveal and it never finds the strength to pick itself back up.  I was not a fan of the structure behind this book either, it’s like Chapman couldn’t decide on a central format for the story to unfold by, so he jumps around from perspectives and time periods which ruins any sense of cohesion the book desperately needed. This has and remains one of my biggest gripes with horror stories in general, the ideas are far more appealing than the ultimate payoff and this book is no different in that regard.

I’m also conflicted on the writing and tone of this book too.  On one hand, I loved when the book was slow and methodical with its approach to the political satire mixed with the demonic possession.  When Chapman isn’t banging you over the head with his analogy’s, you genuinely feel this book is smartly commentating on a genuine issue we’re facing in the modern political landscape.  Yet as soon as you feel Chapman has got this nailed down, he spends a great bit of time ruining it with some bizarre tonal shifts. There’s a lot of egregious aspects to this book, but none more so than its sexual content.  I’m not a prude in any sense, but if you’re going to go to this much detail to implement this kind of stuff in your book, make it relevant. In this books case, it just feels juvenile and implemented purely for shock value than to add anything of genuine substance to the tone and themes of the narrative.

I just can’t help but feeling ultimately disappointed by this book in all honesty.  When I picked it up in the book store and read the synopsis I felt this was a truly unique idea that I felt had a lot of potential.  Horror as a genre has the ability to venture into fields no other media dares and while I can’t deny Wake Up and Open Your Eyes ability to venture into that territory, it does it half-heartedly.  When this book takes it slow, it actually nails the political commentary and horror, but it doesn’t stay slow for long and the majority of the book feels like it’s rushing itself along to shock and scare you not realizing it’s at it’s worse when trying to do so.