NO SPOILERS!!! I will very clearly mark when the spoilers start.
It genuinely pains me to write this review considering how much I adore a lot of LaRocca’s work, but having read this book back when it came out and rereading it very recently I have to say: this book does not live up to what I know LaRocca can deliver.
There are a lot of their works that I would consider to be absolutely mandatory reading for any modern horror lover (This Skin Was Once Mine, The Trees Grew Because I Bled There, to name a couple ), but the one that I would personally rank above all others is Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke, so this is the one I will use to contrast and explain ( without spoilers ) why Everything The Darkness Eats does not live up to the precedent set up by their earlier work ( in my opinion, obvs ).
Without giving anything away if you have not read Things Have Gotten Worse ( which, if you haven’t, stop reading and go find that novella; It is essential in everyway ) I will say that what makes that particular story so impactful is its urgent drive, its urge to wade deep into the darkness, and his incredible use of language. Some might consider LaRocca a bit of a pulpy author since they like to wallow in those murky waters, but what always comes through in his work is their deep love and deft wielding of poetic language.
The stories might be ( and are ) repulsive in many ways, but the poetry of his words are truly enthralling and make you want to lick at the maceration dripping from its pages. And yet, I do believe that it is this very love for the poetic that made The Darkness fall flat for me.
You see, everything I love from LaRocca is either a novella or an anthology and this makes me contemplate the creativity found in restriction. Restrictions force you to be concise, inventive, and punishing to your own work. They make you “Murder your darlings”, i.e. they make you trim those bits of prose that are beautiful yet serve no use in the story as a whole, and that is exactlly what is missing from Everything The Darkness Eats.
Don’t get me wrong, this novel is absolutely full of amazing language, horrific images, and inventive story lines, but the energy and drive of the novel gets bogged down in its beautiful descriptions and passages. I truly believe that if this novel were parsed down into a novella ( or maybe 2 short stories? ) it would be a truly great work.
As it is, the focus on the actual language stretches the story out to the point where each point of impact is so far apart that they land softly. What this book needed was brevity so that – as with Things Have Gotten Worse – the narrative of the pieces works as one solid continuum that pushes from page to page to page to the ultimate insurmountable end that leaves breathless.
I would never want to say that any author should limit themselves to any specific form, but I will say that there might be certain aesthetic styles that do not lend themselves to extrapolation as much as others.
I will 100% keep on reading everything LaRocca puts outs and I still consider them to be one of the most important voices in modern horror, but this was for sure a dark spot on an incredible string of fire-bright stories.