10/21/2026 Exploring the Labyrinth by Kit Power: THE DAMNED HIGHWAY, essay 32

Candace Nola

11 hours ago

8 min read

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.

EARTHWOM GODS II - Deluge

Essay 32

As I write this, it’s my second Friday night in my new home, and my first in my new office. I’m sitting at Dad’s old desk (thanks, Dad), on Dad’s old, incredibly comfortable office chair (thanks, Dad), mostly but not entirely surrounded by cardboard boxes that contain far too many things I’ve brought from his five-bed house to my new three-bed.

My new office is a conservatory. I like it. Even in March, it’s cold, this time of night, but I like that, too (and during a so-far rare sunny day, it’s fucking glorious). I’ve got the Black Sabbitch live album playing through Dad’s old smart speaker (thanks, Dad).

And, most importantly for the subject of tonight’s essay, behind the impeccable riffage of Children of the Grave, the rain is rattling off the roof.

I’m not sure it’s true anymore, but certainly as far as mid-February, it rained every single day in the UK. Obviously not continuously, as is the case in the world of Earthworm Gods, but still… it wears a man down; even a man as supposedly weather-stoic as your humble narrator. All earth is really just mud. The white car you ended up with for some stupid reason never seems to be clean, because the constant rain somehow conspires to drain around the streaks of mud the tyres and other traffic have thrown up.

The air itself begins to feel not just cold, but damp. You constantly feel like you want to cough, even though your throat is clear. Physical exercise feels somehow heavier, limbs (and for that matter, eyelids) under the influence of invisible weights, relentlessly counselling a state of inertia.

I mention all this because I finished reading Earthworm Gods II a month or more ago, but the recent spate of weather has caused me to appreciate anew just what an extraordinary job Keene did with the atmosphere of this novel. A direct sequel to his fourth novel, the narrative picks up exactly where that story ends, with Kevin and Sarah in a pickup truck, fleeing Teddy‘s homestead. It’s a no-bullshit in media res start, and while I imagine it works very well if you pick this book up directly after finishing Earthworm Gods (or The Conqueror Worms, I guess, if you’re reading in old money), I honestly found it a bit jarring, for the first couple of pages - who were these people, again? And how bad had things gotten at the end of that particular novel, anyway (spoilers, very fucking bad, and getting worse by the hour)?

Part of that was likely stylistic whiplash, to be fair; the last two Keene titles were operating in very different modes, both from each other and from his wider oeuvre, so re-entry to Keene’s watery apocalypse was always likely to be a bit bumpy… but I also think it was partly a stylistic choice by Keene, and if so, it’s one I applaud.

Because I found Earthworm Gods II devastatingly effective, on pretty much every level.

The brutal cold open (thanks, I’m here all week, don’t forget to tip your waitress) sets out the stall immediately, plunging us back into immediate mortal peril and seemingly impossible odds. In fact, as someone 30+ books into the Keene Kannon (sorry, blame residual Dr Thompson radiation for that one), I felt that sense of doom far more acutely than in any story to date, I think.

There are a couple of reasons for that; the first is that prior to City of the Dead (and The Rising: Selected Scenes From The End Of The World), I didn’t know for sure what kind of apocalyptic writer Keene was, and specifically if he was the kind of writer prepared for everything to end in fire, if that’s where the story took him. Part of the thrill of the first-time read of The Rising and its sequels is simply not knowing if Keene is going to go there, or if he’s going to pull back, find some last-minute way to choose hope (to be clear, both approaches have considerable artistic merit, and either done well can be brilliant and devastating in equal measure).

But since then, well… we’ve kind of got the shape of things; those of us who are Keene Readers (sorry, sorry, I don’t think the mescaline has completely worn off) know quite a bit about The Thirteen, and the multiverse they’re munching their way through, alt earth by alt earth.

Which means we know how Earthworm Gods II is going to end.

And that sense of crushing inevitability suffuses every page of the novel, perfectly personified by the relentlessness of the weather. I spent the vast majority of my time reading this novel on a screen reader, in very comfortable, climate-controlled conditions; still, I gotta tell you, I outright shivered on several occasions on my way through, in sympathy at the atmosphere (both emotional and physical) that the book evoked.

I dunno, maybe this says something about my English sensitivities, carefully honed by a lifetime of disappointing summers typified by that most stultifying and demoralising of weather conditions, drizzle, but I just think this is such a desperately shitty, unpleasant way for the world to end. And I found it really got into my bones, especially as I met young Henry, trapped in the attic of his slowly flooding grain silo (with his sodden and half-starved cat, Moxey). Honestly, the pitiless wretchedness of this boy, and his animal, and their shared circumstance and certain fate did actually edge up on gut-check territory for me; knowing what Keene is capable of as a writer, did I really want to go there (insert ‘sunk cost’ fallacy joke here, I guess)? I’m not kidding; not since Urban Gothic has a Keene novel gotten under my skin in quite this way. Even in something as full-on nasty and hopeless as Entombed, there was at least the salve of it being a bunch of pretty unlikable people doing unspeakable things to each other. Fuckin Henry, though - what did he do to deserve this miserable fate? And what could possibly suck more for a fucking cat than to slowly starve to death while never being able to get dry?

(Actually, if you’ve read the book, you know the answer to this one. Damn you, Keene. You’re a monster).

Meanwhile, on the hapless boat of ragtag survivors, the inevitable might-makes-right poison pill character makes the equally inevitable betrayal of the Actually Competent leader… and look, to be clear, I found all this so damn narratively and emotionally effective precisely because of the predictability. This novel really hammered home to me, as a reader and writer perhaps a little too fond of the twist as a way of delivering narrative fireworks, just how much dread can be evoked in the heart of a reader by a bleak sense of inevitability, and what a powerful reading experience such a narrative can carry.

Except then, Keene, that magnificent bastard, finds a way to judo throw that shit; we meet a member of the Black Lodge, who manages to throw in that most lethal of horror story cocktail ingredients: hope.

Not to rehash my recent autobiographical travails ( see the essays from Darkness On The Edge of Town to present for the last year of my life in condensed rollercoaster form), but I cannot tell you how surprised I was - shocked would not be too strong a word for it - when suddenly, there seemed at least a chance of snatching some salvation for a cast I was certain was doomed. And the impact was profound, for a perhaps surprising reason; I felt even more fear and dread for the characters than I had when I thought I knew it was all going to end in tears… because, well, it’s fucking Keene. Is he enough of an evil genius to introduce an element of hope in the final fifth of his up-to-then inevitable ‘everybody drowns’ ending, only to snatch it away at the last gasp? I mean, do I need to answer that, or can I just glare over the top of my glasses?

It’s like you’re on a high-octane thrill ride, the kind of roughhouse rollercoaster your neck muscles will be complaining about the next day, yelling your tits off, adrenaline coursing, thinking (in as much as you’re capable of thought) this is the dog’s bollocks, no way to top this… and then the fucking lights go out, and your stomach drops so far down it seems to have looped a loop and ended up back in your mouth.

And I was locked in, in full-bore cannot-put-this-fucking-book down, fuck-sleep mode, heart in mouth up to pretty much the final sentence.

I gotta tell you, I wasn’t expecting anything like this out of Earthworm Gods II, and as I reflect on it for this essay, I’m honestly still a bit gobsmacked by the narrative turn. And, not to jump ahead, but I can’t help but wonder if this and the ending of Zombies Vs Clickers represent some kind of shift in Keene’s sensibilities as a writer.

Mostly, though, I think it’s the two writing lessons Earthworm Gods II delivered that will stick with me the most. The first is the horror of inevitability.

And the second is the fear generated by the introduction of hope in the face of that inevitability.

I think maybe that’s one for all of us to sit with, no?

Next up: Clickers Vs Zombies.

6/3/26

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.