The story takes us to a tiny backwater town on the edge of the Okenfenokee Swamp in Georgia called Staywater, where every thirteen years or so, someone always goes missing.

How every 13 years, that thing takes what it wants for its own.Readers expecting a huge detailed, denouement may be disappointed. It is a timeless novel of dread, more powerful for the hints Priest gives readers.

The past haunts all the characters, and like many of the best horror novels, the past is referenced only in passing. All in all, Cherie Priest’s The Toll is the ideal summer horror read.

Their youth has passed but the next stage of their journey has yet to arrive.

Cameron lives a rather humdrum lifestyle, the only thing he really clamors for is the attention of the barmaid Jess despite his “cousins” Daisy and Claire cautioning him against this for his “protection.” Staywater’s main gathering place is, unsurprisingly, a bar. Until they confront the monster they barely escaped from they’ll remain stuck in the shadows of indecision and regret.Although never given a name or tied to a particular mythology, the creature haunting the Georgian swamp feels decidedly British/European in origin. Dolls locked in an abandoned house chatter to themselves. They’re in for the fight of their lives.Staywater and the swamp outside town are a physical manifestations of liminal space.

Titus and Melanie Bell are on their honeymoon and have reservations in the Okefenokee Swamp cabins for a canoeing trip.

You must be a registered user to subscribe to threads. The Toll : Cherie Priest : 9780765378231 We use cookies to give you the best possible experience. Take a road trip into a Southern gothic horror novel. After driving across a bridge that shouldn’t be there, Titus wakes up lying on the ground. The Toll by Cherie Priest, 9780765378231, available at Book Depository with free delivery worldwide.

Entity? It would’ve made more sense to say the creature came with or was given access to the area by the European invaders.Setting aside the wonky timeline, the monster itself is deeply unsettling. There is no bargaining with something this vile and otherworldly. It gets what it wants no matter what…no matter how long it has to wait. A selfish girlfriend, a reckless teenage boy, a concerned cop, and a grieving mother push and pull Titus in too many directions.

With Check your inbox or spam folder now to confirm your subscription.Do you want to contribute and join the SFFWorld Team? We learn early on that Titus and Melanie’s relationship has been far from ideal, it has gone through ups and downs with marriage and a honeymoon in the swamp as something of a last ditch effort. If anything, it seems Titus is fighting against a sense of relief about his wife disappearing, which presents an internal tension whenever the story focuses on Titus. Overall. Cherie Priest is a modern master of the southern gothic horror novel, her stories evoke fear with a pervading haunted atmosphere. The Toll by Cherie Priest is a disturbingly dark tale of the supernatural, tinged with gothic horror and eldritch elements.

DAISY AND CLAIRE’S. In the end, everything comes down to a pair of secretive yet determined old ladies. It is alive and dead and undead all at once. The swamp is obvious; water and land colliding and diverging and blending and clashing. Priest takes readers through the town, introducing them to Cameron who lives with his “cousins” Daisy and Claire.

Like so many other small manufacturing cities across the country, Staywater, Georgia, began its slide into irrelevance in the mid-20th century and never recovered. Titus and Dave might as well still be lost on that non-existent bridge for all the moving on they’ve been able to do. Priest notes that the creature existed in the Okefenokee Swamp back when the main residents of the region were Indigenous people (she doesn’t name the tribe, but due to the complexity and incompleteness of the historical record she could be referring to half a dozen cultures). There’s a feel of motionless, stagnant water to everything – from the town itself to the rut the characters perceive themselves to be in.

But as far as I can tell, the Indigenous people of the area didn’t build stone corbel arch bridges or stone gates. What listeners say about The Toll.

He stands on the metaphorical bridge between nothing and something, and may have remained there indefinitely had Melanie never disappeared. For me, I don’t think I’d be happy with a granular explanation of why things happen, what the dark entity is, or why Staywater is a stagnant, haunted area. Cherie Priest is a modern master of the southern gothic horror novel, her stories evoke fear with a pervading haunted atmosphere. There’s no history laid out, rather, the characters drudge through their days knowing they have little control over the downward spiral in which Staywater has swept them. Average Customer Ratings. Priest smartly and deftly restrains the story for a more powerful effect.For my reading tastes, a new horror novel from Cherie Priest is appointment reading. From Cherie Priest, the author of The Family Plot and Maplecroft, comes The Toll, a tense, dark, and scary treat for modern fans of the traditionally strange and macabre. The former mill and logging town has seen better days but refuses to do anything to stave off further deterioration. A 2020 LOCUS AWARD FINALIST FOR BEST HORROR NOVEL From Cherie Priest, the author of The Family Plot and Maplecroft, comes The Toll, a tense, dark, and scary treat for modern fans of the traditionally strange and macabre. I loved Cherie Priest's other novel "The Family Plot", but this one was painfully, painfully boring.

Staywater feels both timeless and aging, magical and mundane, haunted and haunting.

And here’s where she loses me.

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