A strange organism stirs beneath the floorboards, where whispered confessions soak in the dark. Meanwhile, a charismatic woman under its influence exploits the lives of the vulnerable. She calls them “operational losses,” as she convinces herself that the lives of her dead tenants were already marked for ruin. Lilith is crazy, but not in the way that one would typically expect. She is composed, deliberate, and unnervingly calm. When whispers deny her divinity, she replies, “I am God’s right hand.” This response captures MADWOOD's uneasy mix of delusion and divinity.
When combined with rock-solid personal conviction, the pursuit of power and wealth can easily devolve into destructive chaos. And in Elias D. Thorn's novel, it does. This is exemplified by Lilith’s life-insurance scheme, which is delivered with a certain irony: “dead tenants don’t pay rent.” This line lands with both dark humor and moral horror.
Evil is already present, Madwood merely feeds on it: “It feeds where the air is heavy. Grief. Terror. Shame.” MADWOOD posits the idea that human suffering is mined as currency by corrupt systems. A perfect example of this would be Lilith's deliberate and calculated targeting of vulnerable members of society, whom she is able to recruit as tenants while encouraging policies that craftily position their deaths as profitable events. Her opinion about dead tenants and rent brings this idea to life as their deaths turn into payout schedules.
The horror elements aren't just described in broad abstractions but in graphic detail, making them physical and immediate: "Madwood wrapped around his bones like a hungry cancer…The fusion was exquisite." There are also such instances as Zhao’s grotesque transformation, or Wensen’s more subtle realization that his body has fused with a tree that has learned to mimic human behavior. These scenes are both tragic and deeply disturbing.
Motifs of exploitation, faith, emotional detachment, media spectacle, cult theology, and botanical horror are well-explored. Although abrupt shifts between these themes tend to slow the book’s pace a bit, MADWOOD’s central idea remains clear and rather thought-provoking throughout the story: Control is an illusion, and characters who think they're in charge eventually learn that they actually aren’t the authors of their fate.
Chilling and thematically rich, MADWOOD by Elias D. Thorn brings faith and human corruption to the fore through a lens of psychological and cosmic horror.
~ Gabriella Harrison for IndieReader