Eminence Front by Rebecca Rowland
Clash Books (January 20, 2026)
Review by W.D. Gagliani
If you’ve ever been freaked out by blizzard conditions and outrageously large snowfall totals, this short novel is likely to bring its share of shivers to bear on your chionophobia.
Titled after a relentlessly driving Pete Townshend song from The Who’s It’s Hard album, Rebecca Rowland (Optic Nerve, The Horrors Hiding in Plain Sight, and numerous splatterpunk short stories) makes the most of this exercise in mostly “quiet horror” by casting a vaguely Lovecraftian shadow over its story, in which the cosmic dread is almost tangible.
In a New England neighborhood locked in the throes of a paralyzing winter blizzard, a group of neighbors — bonded in part by their claustrophobic winter geography — whose stories intertwine even though their worlds are as far apart as could be, find themselves reckoning not only with the remnants of their nightmarishly mundane lives and the crippling blizzard, but also with an unseen evil swept in with the snow.
For example, there’s John, the agoraphobic who hasn’t left his house in five years and whose long-term lover has just left him. And local dive bartender Steve, whose younger wife recently left him and who is now falling into an inconvenient sexual relationship with his neighbor Janet, who is married to his friend Dan. Married couple Kim and Tom and their two sons, with Kim obsessed over being “perfect” (among more tedious obsessions, such as daily bathroom scrubbing, etc., in an attempt to invite his acceptance and, perhaps, love) while cruelly distant Tom schemes to join a sex club so he can “show off” her body. And there’s Carol, a dedicated teacher who moved in her deaf mother after the Alzheimer’s diagnosis and now, harried and unfulfilled, is forced to keep trying to pry her mom from the locked shed — and whatever it is she can “hear” inside that’s trying to get out.
And, tying it all together for the in-the-loop reader there is Jackie Ketchum, a relatively successful horror writer whose pen name is Jack Mayr — a nod to legendary writer, the late Jack Ketchum, whose real name was Dallas Mayr — but who is currently blocked (“out of steam”), depressed by her recent lonely fortieth birthday, and sinking faster into substance abuse enabled by Steve the bartender’s low-key dealing.
These are the neighbors whose daily lives appear to be filled with unrealized dreams, current nightmares, and varying levels of dissatisfaction, all leading to borderline powder-keg situations that belie the idyllic first impressions. Their stories are concentric, interconnected in mundane but occasionally surprising ways, and when the blizzard ushers in the evil that feeds on their problems, their lives will truly never be the same.
The storm brings with it cosmic manifestation of everyone’s worst fears and unfortunately worst instincts, and a cascading death-and-murder cycle threatens to swallow the entire neighborhood.
Is the storm the monster, is the monster within the storm, or does the snow merely unleash monsters already present and straining to get out? Is the monster the characters’ substance abuse laid bare? Are those worst instincts brought on by the snow-white powder that touches some of their lives (nicely referring back to the Townshend lyric)? Is the futility of their lives fueling the storm or vice versa? There are no easy answers, only questions we can all pose ourselves… if we dare.
Balancing as it does a rare mix of quiet dread and near-Splatterpunk gore that keeps you guessing, I found Eminence Front weirdly reminiscent of Carpenter’s The Thing minus the blunt science fiction tropes, featuring more psychological terror in the way the “creature” targets all the residents in various ways, until the neighborhood itself becomes yet another victim in a long line of historical victims.
To be savored on the coldest of days, when the glimpse of a bundled-up neighbor’s figure against the snowy sky might cause an altogether too inconvenient a response, Rowland’s Eminence Front is a well-balanced blend of psychology, quiet cosmic dread, and a blood-red smattering of splatterpunk. It’s the kind of tale that terrifies because one can’t help but wonder if the reader’s life could just as easily fit into this neighborhood, or indeed any neighborhood. Perhaps it’s also reminding us the life we’re living isn’t quite what it appears to be. As The Who might say/shout, “It’s a put on!”
