Book Review: The Queen by Nick Cutter

There’s been lots of talk of ‘body horror’ this past Fall, with films like The Substance coming out and making quite the (bloody) splash. The Queen by Nick Cutter could also be considered body horror, which is defined (according to Wikipedia) as a subgenre of horror that that intentionally showcases grotesque violations of the human body. I’ll be honest in saying that I didn’t realize this would be the kind of horror that Cutter’s latest book was centered around, but I generally enjoy his writing, which made me pick this latest one up. I’ve reviewed a few of his previous books, and even those that he writes under his real name Craig Davidson I’ve always liked, and this one was also a good read, although I have a few minor complaints I’ll get into. For now, the squeamishness you’ll feel watching the trailer below will give you a glimpse into what you can expect in The Queen.

Plot Summary

Margaret is a senior in high school, but she hasn’t attended in a month. She hasn’t even left the house after her best friend Charity disappears. Charity hasn’t been seen since a disturbing incident at a party that is hinted at throughout the book, but not revealed until about 3/4s of the way in. Margaret decides to finally leave the house after receiving a brand new iPhone that’s dropped off at her front door, and it seems to be receiving messages from Charity. It instructs her to visit certain places around town, and Margaret is hopeful this means Charity is still alive. But the locations become stranger and stranger, and after witnessing a desecrated mattress in the bowels of their school’s furnace room, Margaret begins to question whether Charity is really behind the texts, and if it is her, whether she should be found at all. While Margaret is on her gruesome scavenger hunt, we meet a deranged billionaire who has an unhealthy fascination with insects, and he’s just landed in Margaret’s town. He’s also looking for Charity, but for very different reasons. The first few pages of the book opens with Margaret trapped in an industrial kitchen, with dangerous creatures outside of the doors, ready to kill her, so we know the scavenger hunt the day before won’t go well. I don’t want to reveal any further plot points to avoid spoilers, but Cutter does a great job of bringing us back to this place towards the end of the book and wrapping up the plot from there.

My Thoughts

By choosing to begin the book with a quick glimpse into Margaret’s deadly situation, Cutter is able to lend an air of suspense to her creepy scavenger hunt the day before, without giving away too much of the coming plot points. As a horror novel it comes as no surprise there will be dead bodies, so when this is confirmed for us right off the bat, it doesn’t ruin anything, it just promises the inevitable. It also acts as a nice reminder to what we are working towards as readers, which to be perfectly honest, is needed, as the plot begins to lose steam about half way through, simply because it begins to feel unnecessarily convoluted. Cutter pulls it back together however with the arrival of the villain billionaire, and the momentum once again speeds up when him and Margaret finally meet.

Those who get squeamish around bugs should give this one a pass, but I’ll admit to being (weirdly) relieved that this book isn’t really about the cruelty that humans can do to one another; instead its a reminder that animals, humans, insects, just about everybody are hardwired to act in a certain way. Having told the story from a teenage girl’s point of view, the theme of friendship, bullying, high school drama also plays a large role, although once having been a teenage girl myself, this POV didn’t always ring true for me. Interestingly, Cutter addresses this decision in the acknowledgments, which I appreciated. However he does a fantastic job of depicting the confusing, terrifying, and cold hard truths of high school social stratas and one’s ‘standing’ within these;

“Most of those who watched the video couldn’t have picked Charity out of a police lineup. Yet suddenly she was the most known student at school. When the video crossed the online threshold into other schools, she became the most known person in town. Known is problematic. Known isn’t beloved, it isn’t respected, it isn’t admired. It can be the most dehumanizing thing of all, becoming known.”

-p.225 of The Queen by Nick Cutter, ARC edition

One will always think of King’s famous novel Carrie when we talk about horror novels that end in high school students being slaughtered, but I haven’t read that book (or seen the movie) so this review won’t benefit from any comparisons or analysis on that front. However I will say that the choice to set a horror novel within the lives of high school students helps readers accept the unacceptable, or believe the unbelievable. It’s a scary time in one’s life, so having gruesome horror to distract from that is always a welcome escape.