''The Revelation'' is
horror
Horror may refer to:
Arts, entertainment, and media
Genres
*Horror fiction, a genre of fiction
** Japanese horror, Japanese horror fiction
**Korean horror, Korean horror fiction
* Horror film, a film genre
*Horror comics, comic books focusing o ...
author
Bentley Little
Bentley Little (born 1960 in Mesa, Arizona) is an American author of horror fiction. Publishing an average of a novel a year since 1990, Little avoids publicity and rarely does promotional work or interviews for his writing.
Early life
Little i ...
's first published novel. It was awarded the
Bram Stoker Award for best novel by a new author in 1990.
Plot
The novel (as many of Little's works do) deals with a series of unexplained events in a small town in Arizona. A church is defaced with goat's blood, the pastor and his family disappear, and several townspeople begin having terrifying visions of deformed infants. Eventually, an unknown force begins to attack and murder several of the townspeople. Gordon, the main protagonist, discovers that his wife is pregnant and begins to fear for her safety and that of the unborn child. Soon, a seemingly unbalanced
evangelical preacher named Brother Elias comes to the town to preach about the
end times. Widely ignored at first, he gradually gains a following of people as more and more bizarre events unfold in the town. As the terror mounts, Elias convinces Gordon, the sheriff, and the new pastor to join him in his quest to stop
Satan
Satan,, ; grc, ὁ σατανᾶς or , ; ar, شيطانالخَنَّاس , also known as Devil in Christianity, the Devil, and sometimes also called Lucifer in Christianity, is an non-physical entity, entity in the Abrahamic religions ...
from raising an army of deformed infants. It seems that the devil has the power to corrupt the unborn into horrible servants of darkness, and over the centuries hundreds of these stillborn children have been buried in the hills surrounding the town. At this time, Elias also reveals he is not human, but an earthly servant of God whose role it is to stop Satan from assembling his army. He further explains that he has done this several times over the millennia. The four men face off against the incarnation of the devil, who has taken the form of the missing pastor. They succeed in stopping him, though Elias knows that the battle is never truly over and begins wandering away to make preparations for the next battle.
References
1990 novels
Novels set in Arizona
1990 debut novels
Bram Stoker Award for Best First Novel winners
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