Description: Way back in April 1862, Confederate Captain Jubal Beauchamp leads a charge across a Georgia battleground… Fast forward to 2009 and a Civil War re-enactment becomes all too real. When Sam and Dean head down South to investigate they find that history has got somewhat out of hand…
This review is based on a free review copy received from the publisher/author.
The Bibliomaniac ‘s Review:
Joe Schreiber is perhaps best known for the much-hyped Star Wars tie-in zombie novel Death Troopers, considered one of the more compelling books in that particular franchise. I mention this to illustrate his smooth and nearly invisible writing style; free of extraneous fillips or an overexaggerated way with words, he uses that same neat, terse style in The Unholy Cause, effortlessly building a subliminal feeling of tension throughout the whole story. There are numerous places in the story where a turn of phrase or bit of description made me grin in pleasure—a casual allusion to Star Wars, Dean’s mention of furries to the still-innocent Castiel—but as an example, take this beautiful line describing the markers in an old Southern cemetery:
“The names had disappeared completely off many of the stones, leaving only smooth amnesiac marble.”
The Unholy Cause takes place at some point during Season Five, since the second chapter opens with Sam having a none-too-pleasant dream about Lucifer coming for him. Sam and Dean end up taking over a case in Georgia from fellow hunter Rufus, whose anonymous tip seems to have come straight from Lucifer himself. What they find in Mission’s Ridge, Georgia is both compelling and suspicious: an unexplainable pair of deaths among a pair of Civil War re-enactors, and their companion Castiel continuing his search for God, trying to track down someone who was apparently a witness to the Last Supper.
There are a number of fascinating secondary characters in this novel— Castiel’s “Witness”, coroner Todd Winston, fellow hunter Tommy McClane and his young son Nate, Civil War re-enactor Sarah Rafferty—but none are more interesting than Sheriff Jack (Jacqueline) Daniels, whose occult tattoo and hostile stonewalling of the boys’ investigation set up one of the book’s biggest red herrings. She sees through the brothers’ ‘Agent Townes and Van Zandt’ aliases without blinking and has no problem arresting them when she feels they’re interfering in her own investigation.
When the reveal comes about Castiel’s “Witness”, it isn’t much of a surprise—having been discussed much earlier in the book—but Schreiber uses that particular element of Christian mythology to better effect than many other previous movies and books have done. The novel fits in seamlessly with Season Five’s mythology, and would make a fantastic episode of the series, save for the fact that the explosive finale would cost so much to make on a TV budget that it’d be better suited for a big-screen movie.
I don’t often read movie or TV show tie-in novels—not even for movies or TV series that I like—but both the previous Supernatural novel I reviewed here and The Unholy Cause are making me reconsider that choice. Both fit in with the series’ canon so well that I couldn’t find anything to dislike about them, and I’m happy to recommend The Unholy Cause to fans of the show—and fans of genre novels in general—without a moment’s hesitation.
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