What begins as a search and rescue effort turns into a search and destroy fight for survival in this remarkably creative dark adventure novel, The Pagan, written by Rod Nave.
When a team of young volunteers charter a plane from Miami to Haiti to help the victims of the recent 2010 earthquake, they unwittingly embark on an adventure of satanic proportions. Being transported as powerless pawns to a past pact made with the Devil, the rescue team inadvertently enters a “quicksand-like sequence” of extraordinary events.
The dozen rescue workers land in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, and assemble their gear for a bus ride into the jungle on a mission to provide aid and medical assistance to villagers far from the city. They soon find themselves engulfed in a quagmire of voodoo-glazed zombie natives who dominate their bus. In an attempt to avoid the dangerous onslaught of natives attacking the bus, they throw food and supplies out of the bus windows to distract the crowd and allow them to escape. The driver, fearful of being overruled by the mob, drives the bus down a dirt road and up a gated driveway to an abandoned mansion. The group seeks shelter to gather their thoughts, take inventory of lost items, and create their next plan of action, “Plan B”. As you explore your new surroundings, things get a little weird, creepy, and unsettling. What appeared to be a sequence of random events that resulted in the group being stranded in this dilapidated mansion is revealed to be a force planned by the devil. The mansion, unknown upon entering, is in fact the home of the group leader’s grandfather, a place where he lived as a child for a short period of time. Certain artifacts and events trigger the memory of him, and he too soon realizes that his presence is the consequence of a deal made with the Devil over 200 years ago by previous generations of his family. The Devil has manifested himself as a pagan doll to claim the debt owed to him by these mortal souls.
Rod Nave writes beautifully and creates a novel that reads like a script for a really scary movie. He cleverly updated his novel with a very recent event: the January 12, 2010 earthquake in Haiti, just five months before the time of this review. His use of dialogue and character development is impressive. He creates a believable group of characters within believable circumstances, even with the sobering reality of having a cell phone available. It takes what is at first a predictable development of situations and makes masterful plot twists and surprises, spiraling the reader into a dizzying world of blood-soaked voodoo spells, devil worship, Christian rituals, and the piercing, sinister blue eyes. from The Pagans. Be careful, “Don’t drop the clay statue”, you don’t want to see what happens if you break its shell and release what’s inside. “Watch out! Oh no… Oh my God!”