04/15/2026 Exploring the Labyrinth by Kit Power: A GATHERING OF CROWS, essay 26

Exploring The Labyrinth

In this series, I will be reading every Brian Keene fiction book that has been published (and is still available in print) and then producing an essay on it. With the exception of Girl On The Glider, these essays will be based upon a first read of the books concerned. The article will assume you’ve read the book, and you should expect MASSIVE spoilers.

I hope you enjoy my voyage of discovery.

A Gathering of Crows

Welcome to Brinkley Springs, West Virginia. It’s a very small town, and one seeming to shrink almost by the day; the old-timers are dying off (and when they do, the houses they leave behind sit unsold), the young people are leaving and for the most part not returning, local businesses are shuttering, and the Sunday Baptist church attendance is dwindling.

Brinkley Springs is dying.

One of the things I gestured at in the essay on Darkness on the Edge of Town, without hitting it square on, is how much that novella manages in the setup to paint a vivid portrait of a town on the slow but inexorable economic slide into oblivion. It’s a story well-known to anyone remotely familiar with the lives of the millions of Americans who live in what some liberal coast dwellers and political commentators insist on calling ‘flyover country’ (and what some on the right disingenuously insist on calling ‘The Real America’, as though the whole fucking point of the country was the mind-boggling diversity that makes up its environment and peoples - America isn’t one country, it’s six different countries tied up in a burlap sack and flung into the great tidal river of history), either through direct lived experience or, for people like me (English), via the recorded work of Bruce Springsteen and Steve Earle. Like those artists, Keene understands the way to talk about this is not to talk about it, in terms of engaging with the grand sweep of history, but to instead relentlessly focus on the human beings trying (and this being a Keene story, often failing) to live through it.

And that’s the (incredibly effective) approach he takes, over and over again; in Terminal, in Darkness… and here, in A Gathering Of Crows.

In Brinkley Springs, the rot is deeper set; it feels like the town is not dying but effectively deceased, and what we’re witnessing - what the remaining residents are enduring - is the death rattle, the rigour mortis, the excruciatingly slow process of decomposition.

Enter five servants of Meeble, one of Keene’s pantheons (known collectively as The Thirteen). Tonight, these supernatural creatures who were once men (and who can take the form of the titular Crows) will feast on that corpse, leaving behind nothing but dust.

At least, that’s the plan.

It’s another masterful setup and Keene does superb work introducing the premise alongside the cast; we visit with various townsfolk as the power cuts and howling of dogs that precede the attack roll out. It’s cinematic as hell, and once more I found myself impressed by the sheer scale of Keene’s imagination. This is one of the bigger ensembles so far, as befits this kind of novel-length tale of peril and slaughter, and Keene draws them with enough pace and efficiency that they all feel vivid, alive. As a reader who really struggles to remember names, stories like this can be a minefield if the characters aren’t sufficiently well-drawn as to be easily distinguishable; many’s the time I’ll get a certain distance in and find myself asking ‘wait, who is this, again?’.

There’s none of that here; we’ve got teenagers Randy, Sam, and Stephanie (and their archetypal awkward love triangle); there’s Donny, the Gulf War vet who only came back to town to support his terminally ill mother and is literally getting set to head out of town when the carnage commences (and Marsha, the girl he left behind, who is also sister to Randy). There are middle-aged gents Paul and Gus (and their elderly, widowed pal Axel, who lives nearby and is experiencing suicidal ideation as a result of his loneliness and atheritis), Jean and her young son Bobby; and there’s Esther, who runs the bed-and-breakfast that’s one of the few functioning businesses left in town, and her friend Myrtle (who is a ‘new age’ lover of crystals and incense who is about to discover the limited power of ‘good vibes’ in the face of overwhelming evil). And as the power cut rolls through town, we get to meet them all… and as the dogs start howling and the peepers fall silent, we start to feel very, very afraid for them.

And then Keene reveals the identity of the mysterious guest who is staying at Esther’s B&B (though more committed constant readers will have already guessed, based on the buggy and Axel’s description of an ‘Amish fellah’).

Fortunately for the residents of Brinkley Springs, Levi Stoltzfus has also come to town.

This is Levi’s third appearance in the project so far; I first met him in Shades, and he was also effectively the lead character in Ghost Walk.

And at this point, I absolutely love him.

Seriously. I cackled when the narrative finally reached him, even though I’d known what the buggy earlier signified. Levi is, for my money, one of Keene’s finest creations (and as I’ve snuck a peak ahead, I know he’s also one of Keene's personal favourites or at least was at the time he wrote the PostScript for The Rising: Deliverance). For me, he carries that near-perfect balance of hyper-competence/power, as one of the most powerful magi on earth, alongside a genuine vulnerability, because, unlike the awesome enemies he faces, Levi is painfully human.

He’s also a dangerous character to have around in a crisis. Levi has studied all the arts, including the darkest, and as we’ve seen in previous entries, our man takes a brutally pragmatic approach to the trolley problem, and God help you if you’re the only person on your branch of the track. This is something his last two appearances have made very clear, and is something Keene plays with to great effect in this novel (though if this is your first dance with Levi, you might never notice, and it certainly won’t dampen your enjoyment).

And so the stage is set; powerful adversaries, an equally powerful but dangerous magi (who has no idea who or what he’s up against), a small town full of more-or-less innocent victims, and a ticking clock, as the crow brothers need to ensure everyone is dead before dawn.

This is the kind of pure pulp horror Keene excels at, and the next three hundred and change pages are a tour de force; a series of brutal horror set-pieces, as the sadistic brothers inflict various cruel and painful deaths on the population (preferring the taste of fear in their victims, and, in an act that Levi finds revolting to his core, consuming the souls of the deceased), while Levi struggles to understand the nature of the threat, and formulate a solution.

I’m genuinely jealous of the way Keene expertly balances the sense of threat and danger; when Levi first confronts the attackers, he’s clearly dangerously out of his depth. In fact, he barely survives the encounter, using powerful magics to produce just enough effect to give him space to run. It quickly becomes apparent that knowledge is power; these creatures, while powerful, are not in the same league as the forces Levi has faced down in previous stories, but their relative anonymity means they’re a real threat- Levi can’t fight them if he doesn’t understand the rules that govern them (and the brothers, of course, have no intention of giving Levi any clues; they’re aware of his power and are determined to kill him, along with the rest of the town, before he can discover enough information to be dangerous).

And so a lethal cat-and-mouse game takes place, with the town’s population being whittled down, Levi racing to uncover the brothers' secrets, and the brothers racing to wipe everyone out before Levi can become a threat.

Keene pulls a very neat trick at this point, and one that is rewarding for long-term fans of his work; as we’ve seen in prior entries, Levi has proven to be capable, however reluctantly, of sacrificing others, if it’s the only way to see off a world-ending threat. So, when we discover that Randy (he of the awkward love triangle and brother of Marsha) has the Keeniverse equivalent of The Shine, those of us who are constant readers start to get a very bad feeling.

The way we discover this is an absolutely fantastic scene, too, vintage Keene: one of the Crows attacks Randy’s family home. His father is murdered, and his mother attacks the Crow to allow Randy to escape, but instead, Randy tries to shoot the attacker. The moment when he realises that the bullet has passed through the villain and hit his mother is genuinely heartbreaking. It’s darkly thrilling when, immediately after that moment, the Crow discovers he can’t cross a line of salt that Randy spilt during the confrontation. It’s clever because the moment means so much more for the reader than Randy himself (who, to be fair to him, is not exactly having his best day), and for the constant reader, there’s an extra layer of ‘oh, shit’... Because this is a Levi story.

And there’s an extra layer of clever, because if you don’t have that knowledge, I don’t think your enjoyment would be at all affected; you’d still appreciate how Randy’s nascent powers give him the opportunity to escape (by allowing him to get car engines running, despite the spell the Crows have cast over the town as a whole to prevent any tech from working), and how that analogy brings him to Levi’s attention, and ultimately helps provide Levi with crucial data in his quest to name his opposition, and by naming gain power over them.

It’s just, if you do know…

And for me that’s A Gathering Of Crows in a nutshell. We’re twenty-four books into Keene’s fiction career now, and this novel does an amazing job showcasing his strengths and growth as a pulp horror/splatterpunk writer; a huge cast of brilliantly realised characters, a claustrophobic environment, ruthless and apparently unbeatable (and highly sadistic) magical attackers… and a lone magi who might have the power to beat them, but lacks the knowledge. It plays to Keene’s strengths (the sheer range of drop-in death scenes, as increasing numbers of townsfolk meet their fate, is breathtaking, as is how clearly and mercilessly Keene shows them, knowing instinctively when to zoom in and when to cut away), but there’s a confidence here, a swagger borne of experience, that lets him play with long-term reader audience expectations while keeping a first timer riveted to their seat. And the way Levi ultimately dispatches the villains is brilliantly realised; right at the last possible moment, this reader felt like the conclusion was hanging in the balance, and by a very, very thin thread.

It also highlights something that I noted in Scratch; at this point, Keene appears to have completely nailed exposition. The way the reveal of the Crows' origin and intentions is woven into the ticking clock of the narrative itself is sheer brilliance, cleverly creating a situation where the reader is increasingly rabidly demanding backstory in the hopes that lives will be saved. It’s so clever and enviously seamless.

In conclusion, I think A Gathering Of Crows is a bit of a triumph.

And next up is Girl On A Glider, which is my ground zero Keene text, and the reason this project exists. I’ll be very interested to see how I feel about it on a revisit.

Talk soon.

KP

10/6/25

ORDER VOLUME 1 OF EXPLORING THE LABYRINTH NOW!

Exploring The Labyrinth Volume One collects the first 30 essays in this series, and features an introduction by Eric LaRocca, and an intimate, exclusive, career spanning interview with Brian Keene.

Order now to get your copy on October 13th: http://mybook.to/KPETL

 LINKS TO WORKS BY BRIAN KEENE:

Order Brian Keene books and many other indie horror titles direct from Vortex Books:

https://vortexbooksandcomicsonline.bigcartel.com/products

Missing a Keene title and can't find it on Vortex, check out his Amazon page:

https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B001IQW9KY/

 BIO FOR KIT POWER:

Kit Power is an author of horror and dark crime fiction novels, novellas, and short stories, also a reviewer, essayist, and podcaster. The Finite, A Song For The End (BFA finalist, 2021), and Millionaire’s Day (BFA finalist, 2025) are his most recent fiction works; three novellas with interconnected elements that bring the apocalypse to his hometown of Milton Keynes in three very different ways. He encourages you not to read too much into that.

When he’s not gleefully visiting destruction on his hometown (fictionally), Kit writes non-fiction (much of which is collected in the two-volume My Life In Horror tomes, available wherever books are sold), reviews, blogs, and podcasts on subjects as diverse as Sherlock Holmes, Bruce Springsteen, and short horror fiction.

And if you enjoyed what you just read, please back his Patreon and buy his damn books, because the man needs to eat. Thanks.

Find Kit at the below links:

Find his podcast feed at https://talkingrobocop.libsyn.com/

Find his Patreon (free membership gets you the newsletter, as little as a $1 a month gets something new every week) at: Kit Power | creating Blog posts, Podcasts, Reviews, and Stories long and sho | Patreon

Find him on Bluesky: @kitgonzo.bsky.social