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Wendy N. Wagner

The Deer Kings Paperback – August 27, 2021

by Wendy Wagner (Author)

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"Deer saints, darkness and the strangeness of family ties; Wagner effortlessly mixes football and folk horror in this terrifying new novel." -Angela Slatter, award-winning author of The Bitterwood Bible and Other Recountings

In 1989, Gary Sheldon and his friends created their own saint.

In 2018, they discover it's become a god.

Gary thought he'd escaped Kingston, Oregon, the town where his parents died and where, one tragic summer, he and a group of outcast teens turned to the supernatural to protect themselves from a deranged drug dealer. But when his wife lands her dream job as a high school principal, he is forced to return to his hometown.

As Gary reconnects with old friends and his son thrives on the football team, the past feels like a distant memory. But unsettling encounters and mutilated animals in the woods reveal that the Deer Saint is still at work. Now Gary must look into his past to find answers: Who is making sacrifices to the Deer Saint? And what do they want with his family?

Print length

318 pages
Language

English
Publisher

JournalStone
Publication date

August 27, 2021
Dimensions

6 x 0.71 x 9 inches
ISBN-10

195030597X
ISBN-13

978-1950305971
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Wendy N. Wagner
10
Paperback
42 offers from $2.96

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Deer saints, darkness and the strangeness of family ties; Wagner effortlessly mixes football and folk horror in this terrifying new novel." -Angela Slatter, award-winning author of The Bitterwood Bible and Other Recountings

"In Wendy Wagner's masterful The Deer Kings, past and present are interwoven in a dark tapestry of occult mystery, small-town secrets, and mounting dread. This is a compulsively readable novel with strong characters that live and breathe on the page and a richly detailed and evocative Pacific Northwest setting. This story will sink its claws in you from the first word and won't release you until the last, and it will haunt your imagination long after you finish reading. One of the best books I've read in a long time, highly recommended!" -Bram Stoker Award(R)-winning author Tim Waggoner

"What Stephen King has done for New England, Wendy Wagner does for the Pacific Northwest. In The Deer Kings, Wagner captures the hidden magic and terror of coming of age in in her own specific, unerringly authentic voice. Exploring the unique horror of how the special and supernatural can be corrupted into the crass and everyday, The Deer Kings is a grand, gorgeous, and-at times-gory wonder." -Gordon B. White, author of As Summer's Mask Slips and Other Disruptions and Rookfield

"A novel of fog-shrouded towns and dark secrets, of corrupted youth and shadowy barns, and of insidious cults and rituals taking place beneath the veneer of a seemingly ordinary Oregon town, The Deer Kings is a novel by an author at the top of her game. With an evocative sense of place, flesh-and-blood characters anchored by long shadows to the sinister events of the past, and a narrative punctuated by jolts of startling horror, this compulsively readable novel has solidified Wendy Wagner's place as one of the most exciting writers in the genre." -Kealan Patrick Burke, Bram Stoker Award(R)-winning author of Kin and Sour Candy

"Not just a novel of cult fanaticism and sinister fears, but an enduring search for redemption: Wendy N. Wagner's The Deer Kings is a beautiful coming-of-age tale of friendship, sacrifice, and horror, when the monsters created from our youth prove not to vanish in older years." -Eric J. Guignard, award-winning author and editor, including That Which Grows Wild and Doorways to the Deadeye

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ JournalStone (August 27, 2021)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 318 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 195030597X
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1950305971
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.03 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 0.71 x 9 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #1,950,791 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #12,115 in Occult Fiction
- #84,504 in Literary Fiction (Books)

Customer Reviews:
15 ratings

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Wendy N. Wagner

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Wendy N. Wagner is the editor-in-chief of NIGHTMARE MAGAZINE and the managing/senior editor of LIGHTSPEED. Her short stories, essays, and poems run the gamut from horror to environmental literature. Her longer work includes the novella THE SECRET SKIN, the horror novel THE DEER KINGS, the Locus bestselling SF eco-thriller AN OATH OF DOGS, and two novels for the Pathfinder role-playing game. She lives in Oregon with her very understanding family, two large cats, and a Muppet disguised as a dog.

Customer reviews

4.5 out of 5

15 global ratings

5 star		70%
4 star		14%
3 star		15%
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Babblewocky

This one kept me up all night reading it...

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on September 20, 2022

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... and then I couldn't sleep the night I finished it. By turns very sweet and relatable and then utterly creepy and horrifying. Really lets the dangers of the mob mentality creep in subtly until you are surrounded by the dangers and there may be no way out. Quick read that will stay with you. Read this immediately- and you won't look at deer the same way again for a long time!

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Michele A. Tjader

A very very good book

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on May 2, 2022

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I read several books a week and rarely take the time to write a review. This is an exception.

This is an extraordinarily good book. It reminds me of Stephen King with a dash of Gaiman’s American Gods. I loved the plot, the characters, the setting, just everything. I cannot recommend it enough.

My first encounter with this book was an excerpt in a magazine to which I subscribe. Nightmare Magazine. Ms. Wagner is the editor. I have several different magazine subscriptions and so get to read a lot of excerpts. This one stayed with me. I wanted to buy the book right away, but it wasn’t on Kindle and so I waited because I’m drowning in physical books at my house.

I next stumbled across a short story in an anthology called The Deer God that was clearly an earlier version of this book. It made me recheck Amazon. Score! I immediately dowloaded it.

I ended up reading through the entire night. (Ms. Wagner, you owe me a good night’s sleep, but you’re forgiven.). I love this book on so many levels. It’s creepy, it’s relatable, it summarizes the often bizarre small-town sports rituals I remember from childhood, and it stays with you.

I will never look at a deer in the same way. Which is wonderful, because I live in WI and will now get a little shiver every time I see one: is that a lovely woodland creature, dinner, a road menace, or just maybe . . . A God?

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LS

A great addition to coming-of-age horror

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on January 23, 2022

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Wagner hit a lot of my favorite notes with The Deer Kings - coming-of-age, kids on bikes, and small-town horror. Having it set in the PNW was the cherry on top. Really enjoyed this one - highly recommended.

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M. Castle

If you like Stephen King, you'll love THE DEER KINGS

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on September 10, 2021

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THE DEER KINGS reminds me of many Stephen King books: a coming of age with a strong character driven narrative; a small town with old, dark secrets and details that make you feel like you've lived there all your life; and folklore that grows more interesting the further you read. All of this and more keeps your head buried within its pages until the very end.

I hope Wagner returns to THE DEER KINGS world in the future.

2 people found this helpful

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Barks Books

A creepy little coming of age tale

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on July 31, 2022

A coming-of-age tale, a close-knit group of unlikely friends, a villainous villain always lurking in the shadows and a boy who talks to ghosts. The story is told in two timelines and jumps back and forth between the 80’s and 2018. The core of this town is rotten, and the adults are strangely addicted to football (which admittedly I’ll never understand but others might) and will do anything to win. It’s wild.

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Top reviews from other countries

Charles Prepolec

Stephen King-style coming of age, folk horor and cultish practices in an Oregon football town.

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on October 23, 2021

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Wagner's first foray into novel-length horror hits nearly all the right notes in this highly engaging and fast-paced variation on the Stephen King IT-style 'return-to-the-small-town-of-my-suppressed-horrifying-youthful-trauma' story. Another, more current, comparable might in many ways be "The Children of Red Peak" by Craig DiLouie.

Gary Sheldon, who happens to have a knack for seeing shades of the dead, grew up in Kingston, OR, home of 'The Bucks', and left town years ago, after he, his sister, and his teenage friends accidentally (or perhaps not) tapped into some longstanding local supernatural forces in 1989 to defend themselves from a brutally destructive and nasty drug dealer that moves next door. Things get severely out of hand, after which Gary and every one of his friends, moved out of town. Now, it's 2018 and Gary's wife has been offered a position as High School Principal in Kingston and he has to move back and face the still lingering and long buried horrors of the past, including the truth behind the death of his parents and his own childhood brush with death.

Wagner delivers well-drawn characters and has them delivering natural and convincing dialogue, so you buy into them in a big way. The plot unfolds rapidly, but there's a richness to it and you get caught up in wanting to uncover more of the mythology/backstory driving it, which Wagner parcels-out in delectable and well-spaced bites. I had a hard time setting this down for even a short while as my curiosity was in overdrive. So, I loved this read. The 'nearly' in my opening comes down to some confusion about how, at least for me, what the kids conjure up relates to what has always existed in town, but it's a quibble that in no way kept me from enjoying this excellent ride.

This is well worth your time and money. I can't wait to see what Wendy Wagner does next.

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