10/20/26
New episode of KEENEVERSATIONS is now live and free to listen to via Spotify, Patreon, or right here on this website.
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I leave tomorrow for KingCon in Atlantic City. Mary and the cats will continue unpacking while I’m gone. (You think I’m kidding, but the cats are very helpful at fishing styrofoam packing out of empty boxes and batting it all around the house).
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Women In Horror Year: Day 133
This Wretched Valley by Jenny Kiefer
This trip is going to be Dylan’s big break. Her geologist friend Clay has discovered an untouched cliff face in the Kentucky wilderness, and she is going to be the first person to climb it. Together with Clay, his research assistant Sylvia, and Dylan’s boyfriend Luke, Dylan is going to document her achievement on Instagram and finally cement her place as the next rising star in rock climbing.
Seven months later, three bodies are discovered in the trees just off the highway. All are in various states of decay: one a stark, white skeleton; the second emptied of its organs; and the third a mutilated corpse with the tongue, eyes, ears, and fingers removed. But Dylan is still missing—and no trace of her, dead or alive, has been discovered.
Were the climbers murdered? Did they succumb to cannibalism? Or are their impossible bodies the work of an even more sinister force?
This dread-inducing debut builds to a bloodcurdling climax, and will leave you shocked by the final twist.
This review might be best suited for readers my age, who look back fondly on the original golden age of horror fiction, and who are so overwhelmed by the sheer quantity and crafters of this new golden age, that they don’t know who to start with or where to begin.
Start here.
This Wretched Valley is one of the better debut horror novels I’ve read in quite some time. It is a pulpy popcorn weekend distraction. It is also utterly bleak and utterly unflinching — a relentless read on both a visceral and emotional level. It is the type of horror novel we sadly don’t get as much of these days, and would have been right at home at Zebra two generations ago or Leisure Books one generation ago. And if you are one of those readers my age, then you know that is a high compliment coming from me. Much like Somer Canon, Jenny Kiefer knows this genre’s history, and unlike a lot of her peers, both writers are tapping into and paying homage to stuff that came out decades ago, rather than a whatever was popular five years before.
More than one reviewer has compared this novel to The Descent and The Blair Witch Project, and both of those comparisons are apt, but both of those are also films. To put it in more literary terms — think Karl Edward Wagner’s “Sticks” and Rick Hautala’s Little Brothers, with a heavy dose of Brian Keene and J. F. Gonzalez’s ruthlessness. There are no tropes here you haven’t encountered a thousand times before, but Kiefer puts HER spin and HER voice on them, and delivers a solid good time.
Another thing that really stands out is Kiefer’s mastery of setting and her skill at capturing place. As someone who’s spent most of his life living in various parts of Appalachia, the descriptions and dialogue ring very true — the sounds of the insects, the fog on the mountains, the way a forest or hollow can go from lush and teeming to still and dead in the time it takes to step over a log.
Highly recommended for readers looking for some pulpy classic horror fiction, This Wretched Valley is available in paperback, eBook, and audiobook from Quirk Books.
