The Ward [Paperback]

Imagine waking up, and not knowing where you are. In fact you probably don't have to imagine it. You've probably done it haven't you. Woken up and not remembered what city, or even country you are in. It's disconcerting isn't it?

OK, so you wake up and you can't see. That makes it slightly more of a worry doesn't it? Oh, and you have a needle in your arm, and a catheter in... well, you know where catheters go. And you are in a bed. A hospital bed. And you have no idea why you're there, or even where there is. Now you're into scary territory.
Farrell is a photographer. The last thing he remembers is fighting with his model girlfriend. Lisa is a plastic surgery addict, and is constantly attempting to get the perfect face. Both of their paths have led them to the filthy, New Hope Hospital - or No Hope as it is known. And something very odd is going on. Needle marks on the inside of arms, decidedly dodgy nurses doing decidedly dodgy things with drips and medication. And where is Farrell's iPhone? And why can't he contact anyone? And why, when they try to leave, do they get hunted down by the security staff? And what are the photos on the bedside cabinet all about? What is the Modification Ward, and what is the real cost of the treatment?

S.L. Grey is a South African author alliance of Sarah Lotz and Louis Greenberg. One a crime writer, and co-author of Zombie books, and the other a fiction author and editor. Together they have written a masterpiece. Because so much is familiar, yet ever so slightly twisted it really drags you into the story. Story? No, the nightmare. The Ward is a very well written book. Atmospheric, spine tingling and quite, quite creepy. I found myself really wanting to skip ahead to see what was going on, I wanted to know who the weird guy is in the shower room, and what they meant by `Donor'. What was the price of the surgery?

Read this book. Go on, read it. But don't - whatever you do - read it in hospital. You never know where you may end up, and what you might end up paying.

S.L. Grey's 2011 debut novel was so brilliant that it is hard not to draw comparisons: The Mall was an understandably memorable sort of horrific (in a good way - it is horror, after all) and approached the themes and tropes of horror in a new, deliberately 'meta' sort of way. As well as being a horror novel about capitalism - and being chased by monsters - it was a horror novel about horror, and what happens after the movie ends.

Further muddying the waters, The Ward and The Mall share a lot of superficial structural similarities (say that five times fast) and, as is rapidly revealed, they even take place in the same world: the Downside.

The Mall was a discussion of consumerism's grotesque underbelly, a world of shoppers and retailers taken to a hideous extreme. S.L. Grey deftly avoided value judgements, but instead created the world's slimiest, slipperiest slope (and populated it with damp-breathed shambling monsters).

And so, on to The Ward, which features two people falling through the cracks in our world (literally). But this time, the central proposition isn't about consumerism, it is about health. There's a wee bit of societal grandstanding about the horrors of a broken health care system, but The Ward seems to be more about what health means to the individual: confidence vs insecurity, strength vs weakness, beauty vs ugliness. It is an examination of contrasts. Suitably, The Ward also has distinctly-drawn lines and clear behaviours of what constitutes right and wrong.

This distinction even applies to the two main characters. Lisa, a young woman with an acute lack of self-confidence, is an empathetic victim - someone the reader endorses, even while knowing that she's critically insecure. The other protagonist, Farrell, is the flip side of the coin: the reader follows him because he's a charismatic jerk, but is never 'on his side'. They're both reliable narrators in everything that doesn't have to do with their own self-image.

The Mall was people versus a faceless system; The Ward pits people against one another, with the system cheering in the wings. Interestingly enough, this comes despite the 'Downside', the scary under-universe of the series, being fleshed out in more detail. This mysterious, Kafkaesque Wonderland is revealed to have rules, personality and even a bit of, well, warmth - or, at the very least, humorous chinks in its hideous armor.

Perhaps the most revealing scene of The Ward, at least as far as developing the world goes, is when one of the human characters accidentally eavesdrops on some of the Downside, uh, people and hears what essentially amounts to office gossip. As a result, as creepy as the world is, the horror of The Ward comes from other human beings. The monsters of the Downside lurk in the background, ready to lend a hand (or tentacle, as the case may be). There are still chases and bladed weapons and nauseating beasties and sickening violence, but the perpetrators are, for the most part, human beings.

Simply taken on its own, The Ward is a stunningly visceral horror novel. Grey doesn't mind using a few of the old tricks, and, indeed, seeds them with great effect, including some stomach-churning body horror and few properly shouty "DON'T GO DOWN THERE!" moments. Two people are caught in a web of death, disfigurement and blind, scuttling terror. They squirm around like panicked flies, desperately willing to do anything to escape... If you like horror in any way, shape or form, read The Ward. It gave me nightmares, which, in this dark corner of genre, is a good thing.

More than that, Grey's world - the Downside - may be the most complete reinvention of the concept of hell since the Puritans. It is, in fact, exactly the government of punishment and redemption that would exist if hell were re-fabricated from first principles in our contemporary world. This is not merely a matter of demons with cell phones. Grey has broken through with a complete reimagining of the theological underpinnings - a system of redemption and punishment that's complete with bureaucracy, accurate (if uncomfortable) reflections of our own social processes, and, most of all, an accounting for free will.

Suffice it to say that, wherever S.L. Grey goes, I will follow. Taken on its own or as part of a greater whole, The Ward is a terrific piece of nightmarish engineering.

Excellent read start to finish, a book you just can't put down. Twists and turns throughout. Would make an excellent movie.