Four students, travelling back to university from a friend’s party, crash their car in a desolate part of the Yorkshire moors. They stumble across a village that has no right being there: it isn’t on any map and has no means of communication with the outside world.
It also doesn’t take kindly to strangers.
Ruth Glover lives in Ringrock, but she wants out. She fears for the safety of her baby and the ritual that takes an offering from one of the village families each and every month.
Four outsiders might just be the key to her escape.
Doctor Sebastian Wheelwright rules the village with an iron fist. Anything that upsets the delicate balance of how his community operates has to be removed, with extreme prejudice if necessary.
Ethan, Odd, Noah and Kyle… they cannot be allowed to stay. But neither can they be allowed to leave, once they learn the secret of the Ringrock itself.
Dark bleatings, my lovely tribe. I am delighted to be talking about a novel called Ringrock today because I had such a blast reading it.
The story opens with a death metal band with extremely loyal fans, a few of which are selected to meet their heroes after a gig, but things go quite horribly from them. I was already hooked. Then, immediately after, we shift to four guys in a car that run off the road (inexplicably), go over a cliff, and crash in a lake. When they surface, they appear to be in a village with no obvious exits, living in the past with no technology or knowledge of the “outside” world. I was reeled in by how jarring the prologue with the band was against this, curious about how the two could possibly tie together, and the immediate folky (and extremely weird) vibes.
In the first few chapters, I was reminded of Dan Howarth’s Last Night of Freedom (an excellent novel that I also recommend) because of the ‘4 modern guys in a seemingly backwards village’ feel, and also because of how lifelike these characters were.
As they trudge towards the town, soaked and scared, the guys encounter a young woman with a baby who seems desperate to get out of there – only there’s nowhere to go. She is vague about a doctor, the road out, and everything else, but agrees to take them back to her family home. From there, things get REALLY weird.
Very rarely, I find a book with so many hooks. I was 100% in and pretty excited by how fascinated I was right from the start. What’s more rare than such a gem is that gem maintaining its shine throughout. Some things that start with such a huge bang fizzle out and lose momentum. But oh no, not here, my dear tribe! The author knew exactly what he was doing, lining up dominos in places I forgot they were placed, only to flick them over at the most opportune times later on.
We’ve got very distinct and likeable characters, what seems to be some sort of conspiracy, human sacrifice, folk horror, corrupted higher power, and several people to be invested in. I was as excited about the plot as I was the characters, which is another rarity for me.
This is The Village meets Black Mirror, and I absolutely loved it. It’s a 5/5 for me and I recommend it to fans of small town and folk horror.
If you’d like to check out the book or the author, I’ve popped some links below for you:
Bleeeeat!
Happy Goat Horror 
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