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The Devil #1
The Devil's Kiss
As the years pass, Black Wilder is waiting for just the right moment to emerge from the shadows in the small prairie town. The time is now, the beasts are hungry, the Undead are awake, and the putrid stench of evil hangs in the area. The townspeople are about to be touched by the Devil's kiss.
449 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1981
173 people are currently reading
1026 people want to read
About the author
William W. Johnstone
1,041 books1,392 followersWilliam W. Johnstone is the #1 bestselling Western writer in America and the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of hundreds of books, with over 50 million copies sold. Born in southern Missouri, he was raised with strong moral and family values by his minister father, and tutored by his schoolteacher mother. He left school at fifteen to work in a carnival and then as a deputy sheriff before serving in the army. He went on to become known as "the Greatest Western writer of the 21st Century." Visit him online at WilliamJohnstone.net.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 60 reviews
April 4, 2021
This, friends, is the book that started it all. William Wallace Johnstone spent a decade playing the "fake it 'til you make it" game with his writing, and after ten long years of editors reading his manuscripts and herniating themselves into an early grave from laughter, somebody at Kensington with no sense of humor plucked The Devil's Kiss off the slush pile and said, "Let's publish this guy. What's the worst that could happen?"
Now, almost four decades later, with several hundred books to his name and a legacy that lives on like a testosterone-poisoned V.C. Andrews, the Johnstone name is still parting good ol' boys from their hard-earned money despite the man behind it being dead since 2004. Having concluded my jaunt through this 450-page tribute to the Republican party, incest, and Jesus Christ, I'm at a loss for words. Not because I'm reeling from what I just read, but because I have no idea how to review this book without repeating myself.
See, this ain't my first Johnstone rodeo. From the 80's on up through the mid-90's, Johnstone utterly ruled the mid-list horror market. The fervor and fury with which this man cranked out manuscripts must have seen him going through typewriters the way I go through toilet paper after a night of too much Long John Silver's. And I've made it my personal mission in life to read and review every last horror novel the guy wrote.
Because of course I have.
I've already worked my way through Bats, Toy Cemetery, and (most recently) Night Mask, but I figured before I got any further, I should probably go back to where it all started and see if Johnstone was always a few degrees short of a protractor, or if this madness developed later in his career.
* * * * *
My wife feels there are better things to spend money on than old horror novels, and despite how wrong she is on this front, one can't deny that collecting Johnstone's back catalog of horror books certainly bends one's wallet over the sawhorse. Nevertheless, finding myself in possession of more money than sense, I sprung for a full run of Johnstone's "The Devil" trilogy quadrilogy series, of which The Devil's Kiss is book one, and started reading.
Folks, let me tell you something: if you thought the "Left Behind" series needed more people shooting their guns instead of their mouths, if you got irritated that LaHaye and Jenkins kept cutting away from all the good parts (the sodomy, rape, and devil worship) then you're in for a treat. Nobody so earnestly, diligently, and hilariously describes mankind's various last stands against the forces of Ol' Scratch like Johnstone, and The Devil's Kiss proves beyond a shadow of a doubt how seriously he took Armageddon.
The Devil's Kiss is the story of Sam Balon, a preacher in the small Great Plains community of Whitfield, Nebraska, circa 1958. The fictional town of Whitfield is located within the equally-fictional Fork County, though based on his description of its size and location, my guess is Johnstone modeled Fork on the real-life Cherry County, Nebraska (which is both large and largely uninhabited). At the start of the story, Balon knows there's something rotten in Whitfield, he just can't figure out what.
People have gone missing, church attendance is dropping all across the board (Whitfield has no shortage of churches despite serving a population in the very, very low four-digits), and there've been queer goings-on ever since Black Wilder and his team of archaeologists started digging around the standing stones searching for who knows what. What's more, the community itself seems to have turned actively hostile against its own members: kids vanish all the time, formerly friendly neighbors now give each other the side-eye, and teenagers openly defy their elders. Even Sam's wife Michelle is stepping out on him, shacking up with other locals on Friday night, and coming home Saturday morning reeking of booze, body odor, and sex.
Sam may not know what's going on, but his Army training is telling him there's a fight a-brewing in Whitfield. Some men might turn tail and run, but not Sam Balon. A rugged, manly man of action, Balon served with the United Nations Partisan Infantry Korea (UNPIK) during the Korean War, a guerrilla commando group which served as a precursor to the modern-day US Special Forces, prior to taking up the business of soul winning. As Johnstone puts it:
"The devil despises the Sam Balon's of the world, and would prefer to stay away from them."
Naturally the devil of this world does nothing of the sort, otherwise this would be a real short story. Instead, the devil sends his agents, warlock Black Wilder and witch Nydia, to Whitfield. Their mission: turn the community away from God to instead service Satan. They do this by first taking over the local radio station so it can broadcast that newfangled Rock 'n Roll and Country music, thus ensuring all the kids turn into rebellious little shits, even more eager to disobey their parents than normal. Then they'll use the time-honored tradition of blood sacrifice, orgies, and promises of eternal power to seduce their flock to the Dark Side. If any of that doesn't work, there's always bestiality, pedophilia, and torture to fall back on.
The only thing they have to worry about are the handful of citizens they can't turn to the dark side. Hell's about to break loose in Nebraska, where a small handful of true believers have to somehow stave off not just their neighbors, but also the risen dead and a force of werewolf-like beasts to keep Satan from prevailing. Sam Balon doesn't realize it, but he's been nominated by God to be His champion. But how can mortal men and women stand against the ultimate, eternal embodiment of everything evil and profane?
Perhaps, you are thinking, the power of righteousness in some form of ritual, song, or exorcism can save the people of Whitfield from the path of damnation?
Or maybe prayer: the right words spoken at the right time to drive the Devil from his conquest?
Maybe you're a Celine Dion fan, and assume the power of love will conquer all? Could it be the ones committing the evil need to be forgiven, as Christ taught in his sermons about turning the other cheek, giving to the poor, and being unconcerned with worldly goods?
Nah, bro. This is William W. Johnstone.
Balon's gonna save the town and its inhabitants by Now that's a plan Jesus could truly get behind, am I right?
If all I just wrote has you itching to pay damn near twenty bucks for your own copy, there's something you should know. The Devil's Kiss is 449 pages long, and around 400 of those pages are devoted to the main characters talking to one another so they can explain what's going on to the reader. Balon talks to one friend about what he's seen, the friend talks back about what they've seen, then Balon drives around town for a little while mulling stuff over in his head before stopping to talk with somebody else he feels he can trust. Black Wilder and Nydia spend pages painstakingly expressing the rules of the game they (and Satan) have to follow, what they're going to do to the people they manage to convert, what they're going to do to the people who won't give up their faith in God, then reiterating those plans a few chapters later.
For a guy made out to be a man's man among men, Sam Balon sure spends a lot of time flapping his gums. Now, I'm sure some of you are thinking, "Wait a minute here, Michael...Sam's a preacher! You don't expect him to just pick up a gun and start killing people, do you?"
Well, eventually, but that's not the point. This is a Johnstone book -- if the guy doesn't turn out to have a belt-fed .50-cal in his nuke-proof basement, everybody's gonna be disappointed. But you gotta admit, all the iteratin' and reiteratin' going on in here makes it feel like he was getting paid by the word. The suspicions and preparations for the eventual siege consume 360 of this book's pages. Now, sure, it's spiced up with the occasional 'parents come home to find their kids having sex' scenes, 'Beasts chewing up corpses' scenes, and "Great Jumpin' Jehoshaphat, that guy's humpin' another guy!" scenes. There's also some fairly awkward lovemaking, your run-of-the-mill blood orgies, and a few references to the fact horses are hung like Sam Balon to make sure the pearls are well and truly clutched. Johnstone's so excited somebody bought his manuscript that he's got to let everybody know how much he knows about armed combat, unarmed combat, explosives, the Bible, and general not-being-a-pussy-ness.
For reference, Michael Crichton's Jurassic Park -- a book about goddamn dinosaurs eating people in Costa Rica, the science behind their creation, and one guy explaining why making them was an awful idea -- runs a mere 400 pages in my paperback copy. In the movie, Ian Malcolm is hilarious because he's played by Jeff Goldblum pretending to be a mathematician. In the book, Malcolm is a groan-inducing drag who underscores why mathematicians never get invited to the cool parties. He's absolutely a Crichton self-insert, but he's hardly the main character.
In The Devil's Kiss, Sam Balon is the Ian Malcolm analog, but not only does he never shut up, he gets more tail than a Vulpix and hundreds more pages of screen time. I've seen Harry Potter fanfic with less subtle self-insertions.
Hell, I've seen buttplugs with less subtle self-insertions. (Mom, if you're reading this, don't ask, OK?)
With all that said, you're probably thinking I hated this book.
Nothing could be further from the truth!
Johnstone is one of those authors who gets better the more I read of him. As I've noted in previous reviews, he and I disagree on virtually every aspect of religion and politics you could name. There's no Venn diagram where we overlap unless you count the fact we're both men, and even then I think Johnstone would vehemently disagree.
The guy's so earnest in his Old Testament beliefs, but so willing to devolve a story into outright pornography, that it creates the single most epic shitstorm of cognitive dissonance I've ever seen. Seriously, the care this guy takes in writing about incest, torture, rape, right-wing political discourse and his peculiar brand of fundamentalist Christianity has to be read to be believed. You cannot make this up, and I don't care where you lean on religion, politics, or graphic depictions of anal sex, Johnstone's wordy jabs at libruls, atheists, and pansies are hysterical. You will laugh, even though to Johnstone this was never a joke, and dammit, your soul's at stake here, Flippant Reader!
Ordinarily I give Johnstone grief for his inability to do character development beyond 'evil guy is evil' and 'good guy has enormous wang', but I'm going to break with type for a minute here and do the unthinkable. While Sam Balon's character is so flat it requires a training bra, there is one guy in here who I would dearly love to read an entire book about.
Unfortunately for Johnstone, that character isn't Sam Balon, Miles Lansky (patriarch of the only Jewish family in all of Folk County, but still an OK dude as far as Johnstone/Balon is concerned), Jane Ann, Wade, or any of the other protagonists. No, that character is Black Wilder, the primary antagonist.
Look, I know the idea of a suave, sophisticated, yet totally evil bad guy got beaten into the ground after Alan Rickman put on a good show for would-be terrorists everywhere in Die Hard and Anthony Hopkins donned his prison duds to play Hannibal Lecter for The Silence of the Lambs, but Johnstone beat them both to the punch with Black Wilder back in 1980.
Wilder is, to put it in terms my readers are most likely to understand, "Lawful Evil" in the D&D alignment scale. He's the pure representation of evil within the system. There are certain rules that one must abide by in order to be a successful agent for Satan, and Wilder knows them all. He's been around for countless years, centuries even, and though he's an immor(t)al creature of dubious lineage, and committed countless acts of sadistic perversion, he's getting bored. Human beings no longer interest him. The little game being played between Lucifer and Yahweh provides him amusement, but he's getting jaded. Neither side shows signs of backing down. What interests Wilder now is the idea of a worthy foe, someone with whom he can battle intellectually as well as physically.
He sees that in Balon. He respects that about Balon. More than once, he comments that rather than a big-ass fight, he'd love to simply sit down and engage in a spirited, intelligent debate about philosophy, morality, and the duality of good vs. evil with the preacher. Black Wilder is, ironically, one of the most three-dimensional antagonists Johnstone ever put to paper. He's a smarmy, slimy, vile character, but he's quite a charismatic asshole. It's probably a bad sign when a reader of your book is more interested in spending time with the bad guy than with God's own full-auto-packing champion, but damn it, I'd have read the shit out of a book where Wilder was the main man.
Even his death manages to be epic by virtue of being so extraordinarily mundane:
Black Wilder is, hands down, the most interesting character I've ever encountered in a Johnstone book.
In the meantime, there are a few sequels to get through, so I'm going to get started on The Devil's Heart next. Expect a review up here whenever I finish it.
Four screaming, impaled anuses out of five!
Now, almost four decades later, with several hundred books to his name and a legacy that lives on like a testosterone-poisoned V.C. Andrews, the Johnstone name is still parting good ol' boys from their hard-earned money despite the man behind it being dead since 2004. Having concluded my jaunt through this 450-page tribute to the Republican party, incest, and Jesus Christ, I'm at a loss for words. Not because I'm reeling from what I just read, but because I have no idea how to review this book without repeating myself.
See, this ain't my first Johnstone rodeo. From the 80's on up through the mid-90's, Johnstone utterly ruled the mid-list horror market. The fervor and fury with which this man cranked out manuscripts must have seen him going through typewriters the way I go through toilet paper after a night of too much Long John Silver's. And I've made it my personal mission in life to read and review every last horror novel the guy wrote.
Because of course I have.
I've already worked my way through Bats, Toy Cemetery, and (most recently) Night Mask, but I figured before I got any further, I should probably go back to where it all started and see if Johnstone was always a few degrees short of a protractor, or if this madness developed later in his career.
* * * * *
My wife feels there are better things to spend money on than old horror novels, and despite how wrong she is on this front, one can't deny that collecting Johnstone's back catalog of horror books certainly bends one's wallet over the sawhorse. Nevertheless, finding myself in possession of more money than sense, I sprung for a full run of Johnstone's "The Devil" trilogy quadrilogy series, of which The Devil's Kiss is book one, and started reading.
Folks, let me tell you something: if you thought the "Left Behind" series needed more people shooting their guns instead of their mouths, if you got irritated that LaHaye and Jenkins kept cutting away from all the good parts (the sodomy, rape, and devil worship) then you're in for a treat. Nobody so earnestly, diligently, and hilariously describes mankind's various last stands against the forces of Ol' Scratch like Johnstone, and The Devil's Kiss proves beyond a shadow of a doubt how seriously he took Armageddon.
The Devil's Kiss is the story of Sam Balon, a preacher in the small Great Plains community of Whitfield, Nebraska, circa 1958. The fictional town of Whitfield is located within the equally-fictional Fork County, though based on his description of its size and location, my guess is Johnstone modeled Fork on the real-life Cherry County, Nebraska (which is both large and largely uninhabited). At the start of the story, Balon knows there's something rotten in Whitfield, he just can't figure out what.
People have gone missing, church attendance is dropping all across the board (Whitfield has no shortage of churches despite serving a population in the very, very low four-digits), and there've been queer goings-on ever since Black Wilder and his team of archaeologists started digging around the standing stones searching for who knows what. What's more, the community itself seems to have turned actively hostile against its own members: kids vanish all the time, formerly friendly neighbors now give each other the side-eye, and teenagers openly defy their elders. Even Sam's wife Michelle is stepping out on him, shacking up with other locals on Friday night, and coming home Saturday morning reeking of booze, body odor, and sex.
Sam may not know what's going on, but his Army training is telling him there's a fight a-brewing in Whitfield. Some men might turn tail and run, but not Sam Balon. A rugged, manly man of action, Balon served with the United Nations Partisan Infantry Korea (UNPIK) during the Korean War, a guerrilla commando group which served as a precursor to the modern-day US Special Forces, prior to taking up the business of soul winning. As Johnstone puts it:
"The devil despises the Sam Balon's of the world, and would prefer to stay away from them."
Naturally the devil of this world does nothing of the sort, otherwise this would be a real short story. Instead, the devil sends his agents, warlock Black Wilder and witch Nydia, to Whitfield. Their mission: turn the community away from God to instead service Satan. They do this by first taking over the local radio station so it can broadcast that newfangled Rock 'n Roll and Country music, thus ensuring all the kids turn into rebellious little shits, even more eager to disobey their parents than normal. Then they'll use the time-honored tradition of blood sacrifice, orgies, and promises of eternal power to seduce their flock to the Dark Side. If any of that doesn't work, there's always bestiality, pedophilia, and torture to fall back on.
The only thing they have to worry about are the handful of citizens they can't turn to the dark side. Hell's about to break loose in Nebraska, where a small handful of true believers have to somehow stave off not just their neighbors, but also the risen dead and a force of werewolf-like beasts to keep Satan from prevailing. Sam Balon doesn't realize it, but he's been nominated by God to be His champion. But how can mortal men and women stand against the ultimate, eternal embodiment of everything evil and profane?
Perhaps, you are thinking, the power of righteousness in some form of ritual, song, or exorcism can save the people of Whitfield from the path of damnation?
Or maybe prayer: the right words spoken at the right time to drive the Devil from his conquest?
Maybe you're a Celine Dion fan, and assume the power of love will conquer all? Could it be the ones committing the evil need to be forgiven, as Christ taught in his sermons about turning the other cheek, giving to the poor, and being unconcerned with worldly goods?
Nah, bro. This is William W. Johnstone.
Balon's gonna save the town and its inhabitants by Now that's a plan Jesus could truly get behind, am I right?
If all I just wrote has you itching to pay damn near twenty bucks for your own copy, there's something you should know. The Devil's Kiss is 449 pages long, and around 400 of those pages are devoted to the main characters talking to one another so they can explain what's going on to the reader. Balon talks to one friend about what he's seen, the friend talks back about what they've seen, then Balon drives around town for a little while mulling stuff over in his head before stopping to talk with somebody else he feels he can trust. Black Wilder and Nydia spend pages painstakingly expressing the rules of the game they (and Satan) have to follow, what they're going to do to the people they manage to convert, what they're going to do to the people who won't give up their faith in God, then reiterating those plans a few chapters later.
For a guy made out to be a man's man among men, Sam Balon sure spends a lot of time flapping his gums. Now, I'm sure some of you are thinking, "Wait a minute here, Michael...Sam's a preacher! You don't expect him to just pick up a gun and start killing people, do you?"
Well, eventually, but that's not the point. This is a Johnstone book -- if the guy doesn't turn out to have a belt-fed .50-cal in his nuke-proof basement, everybody's gonna be disappointed. But you gotta admit, all the iteratin' and reiteratin' going on in here makes it feel like he was getting paid by the word. The suspicions and preparations for the eventual siege consume 360 of this book's pages. Now, sure, it's spiced up with the occasional 'parents come home to find their kids having sex' scenes, 'Beasts chewing up corpses' scenes, and "Great Jumpin' Jehoshaphat, that guy's humpin' another guy!" scenes. There's also some fairly awkward lovemaking, your run-of-the-mill blood orgies, and a few references to the fact horses are hung like Sam Balon to make sure the pearls are well and truly clutched. Johnstone's so excited somebody bought his manuscript that he's got to let everybody know how much he knows about armed combat, unarmed combat, explosives, the Bible, and general not-being-a-pussy-ness.
For reference, Michael Crichton's Jurassic Park -- a book about goddamn dinosaurs eating people in Costa Rica, the science behind their creation, and one guy explaining why making them was an awful idea -- runs a mere 400 pages in my paperback copy. In the movie, Ian Malcolm is hilarious because he's played by Jeff Goldblum pretending to be a mathematician. In the book, Malcolm is a groan-inducing drag who underscores why mathematicians never get invited to the cool parties. He's absolutely a Crichton self-insert, but he's hardly the main character.
In The Devil's Kiss, Sam Balon is the Ian Malcolm analog, but not only does he never shut up, he gets more tail than a Vulpix and hundreds more pages of screen time. I've seen Harry Potter fanfic with less subtle self-insertions.
Hell, I've seen buttplugs with less subtle self-insertions. (Mom, if you're reading this, don't ask, OK?)
With all that said, you're probably thinking I hated this book.
Nothing could be further from the truth!
Johnstone is one of those authors who gets better the more I read of him. As I've noted in previous reviews, he and I disagree on virtually every aspect of religion and politics you could name. There's no Venn diagram where we overlap unless you count the fact we're both men, and even then I think Johnstone would vehemently disagree.
The guy's so earnest in his Old Testament beliefs, but so willing to devolve a story into outright pornography, that it creates the single most epic shitstorm of cognitive dissonance I've ever seen. Seriously, the care this guy takes in writing about incest, torture, rape, right-wing political discourse and his peculiar brand of fundamentalist Christianity has to be read to be believed. You cannot make this up, and I don't care where you lean on religion, politics, or graphic depictions of anal sex, Johnstone's wordy jabs at libruls, atheists, and pansies are hysterical. You will laugh, even though to Johnstone this was never a joke, and dammit, your soul's at stake here, Flippant Reader!
Ordinarily I give Johnstone grief for his inability to do character development beyond 'evil guy is evil' and 'good guy has enormous wang', but I'm going to break with type for a minute here and do the unthinkable. While Sam Balon's character is so flat it requires a training bra, there is one guy in here who I would dearly love to read an entire book about.
Unfortunately for Johnstone, that character isn't Sam Balon, Miles Lansky (patriarch of the only Jewish family in all of Folk County, but still an OK dude as far as Johnstone/Balon is concerned), Jane Ann, Wade, or any of the other protagonists. No, that character is Black Wilder, the primary antagonist.
Look, I know the idea of a suave, sophisticated, yet totally evil bad guy got beaten into the ground after Alan Rickman put on a good show for would-be terrorists everywhere in Die Hard and Anthony Hopkins donned his prison duds to play Hannibal Lecter for The Silence of the Lambs, but Johnstone beat them both to the punch with Black Wilder back in 1980.
Wilder is, to put it in terms my readers are most likely to understand, "Lawful Evil" in the D&D alignment scale. He's the pure representation of evil within the system. There are certain rules that one must abide by in order to be a successful agent for Satan, and Wilder knows them all. He's been around for countless years, centuries even, and though he's an immor(t)al creature of dubious lineage, and committed countless acts of sadistic perversion, he's getting bored. Human beings no longer interest him. The little game being played between Lucifer and Yahweh provides him amusement, but he's getting jaded. Neither side shows signs of backing down. What interests Wilder now is the idea of a worthy foe, someone with whom he can battle intellectually as well as physically.
He sees that in Balon. He respects that about Balon. More than once, he comments that rather than a big-ass fight, he'd love to simply sit down and engage in a spirited, intelligent debate about philosophy, morality, and the duality of good vs. evil with the preacher. Black Wilder is, ironically, one of the most three-dimensional antagonists Johnstone ever put to paper. He's a smarmy, slimy, vile character, but he's quite a charismatic asshole. It's probably a bad sign when a reader of your book is more interested in spending time with the bad guy than with God's own full-auto-packing champion, but damn it, I'd have read the shit out of a book where Wilder was the main man.
Even his death manages to be epic by virtue of being so extraordinarily mundane:
Black Wilder is, hands down, the most interesting character I've ever encountered in a Johnstone book.
In the meantime, there are a few sequels to get through, so I'm going to get started on The Devil's Heart next. Expect a review up here whenever I finish it.
Four screaming, impaled anuses out of five!
December 30, 2023
I believe this was the first book by Johnstone published by Zebra back in 1980 and the theme established here permeates his later horror novels-- the ultimate clash between good and evil. It is pretty easy to see why Johnstone has a cult following; his books are way OTT and unintentionally funny. Unfortunately, this one took quite a bit to get moving, but when it finally took off, it did provide a huge body count.
Our main protagonist, Sam Balon, works as a preacher in the small Nebraska town of Whitfield, but like most of Johnstone's protagonist, he has a serious military history, this time as part of a special forces team in Korea. He loves God, however, and after a rough and tumble life, became a minister. For several months, Sam knows something strange has been happening in Whitfield. Attendance in all the churches has been falling and former friends turn their nose at Sam, and the handful of good, God fearing Christians that refuse to be tempted by Satan.
Johnstone had a formula and it was first established in The Devil's Kiss. Basically, the war between God and Satan has been going on for countless years and when the Devil gets a stronghold established, God anoints a chosen warrior to battle him; here it is of course Sam. The devil worshipers are lead by one of Satan's commanders on Earth (Black Wilder), along with a beautiful witch. Black not only leads the devil worshipers, but a host of 'beasts' which serve his bidding, like eating bodies and making women into 'breeders' of more beasts. He also has an army of the undead which must be killed by a stake through the heart (a bit of a mixed trope there, but so be it).
The first 2/3rd of The Devil's Kiss basically recounts Sam's preparations for the upcoming battle. You see, each side must play by the rules and somehow, Sam knows these rules as well. The preparations are punctuated by many side story arcs of rape and torture, along with black masses and orgies. Johnstone delivers morality straight from the Old Testament with a straight face that really is a hoot. You just cannot take this novel seriously! So, how does it hold up after more than four decades? Total fail as a horror story; I laughed too much to be scared. Yet, the straight prose that reads like one liners can be priceless. If this was not such a slog to get to the final showdown, I probably would have giving it an extra star. A preacher armed with machine guns and dynamite facing hordes of the undead and devil worshipers? What more can you ask for 😂 3 solid stars!!
Our main protagonist, Sam Balon, works as a preacher in the small Nebraska town of Whitfield, but like most of Johnstone's protagonist, he has a serious military history, this time as part of a special forces team in Korea. He loves God, however, and after a rough and tumble life, became a minister. For several months, Sam knows something strange has been happening in Whitfield. Attendance in all the churches has been falling and former friends turn their nose at Sam, and the handful of good, God fearing Christians that refuse to be tempted by Satan.
Johnstone had a formula and it was first established in The Devil's Kiss. Basically, the war between God and Satan has been going on for countless years and when the Devil gets a stronghold established, God anoints a chosen warrior to battle him; here it is of course Sam. The devil worshipers are lead by one of Satan's commanders on Earth (Black Wilder), along with a beautiful witch. Black not only leads the devil worshipers, but a host of 'beasts' which serve his bidding, like eating bodies and making women into 'breeders' of more beasts. He also has an army of the undead which must be killed by a stake through the heart (a bit of a mixed trope there, but so be it).
The first 2/3rd of The Devil's Kiss basically recounts Sam's preparations for the upcoming battle. You see, each side must play by the rules and somehow, Sam knows these rules as well. The preparations are punctuated by many side story arcs of rape and torture, along with black masses and orgies. Johnstone delivers morality straight from the Old Testament with a straight face that really is a hoot. You just cannot take this novel seriously! So, how does it hold up after more than four decades? Total fail as a horror story; I laughed too much to be scared. Yet, the straight prose that reads like one liners can be priceless. If this was not such a slog to get to the final showdown, I probably would have giving it an extra star. A preacher armed with machine guns and dynamite facing hordes of the undead and devil worshipers? What more can you ask for 😂 3 solid stars!!
October 28, 2020
Still a Horror Classic after 30 plus years! Not for the squeamish or weak of stomaches! Johnstone was the best at demonic horrors!
So even after 30 plus years, this series still can turn my stomach and scare the shit out of me, all while grossing you out with excrement covered horrors! Just as the book opens, Johnstone was a master at hooking you with a disturbing as hell scene, and then not letting up! This was one of if not his first foray into writing horror.......and he wrote over 35 horror novels! Now granted, his horror was not for eveyone, it dealt with severe scenes of graphic violence, scenes involving SCAT (human excrement fetishes) incest, and scenes of demonic worship and possession. This series includes the books 'The Devils Kiss', The devil's heart, the devils' touch, the devils cat, and the devils laughter.
The book is about a priest; Sam Balon who is in his early 50's, is very handsome, in incredible shape, and has an extremely gorgeous wife, Michelle, who is cheating on him with a satanic cult leader and his minions.
Whitfield Nebraska in the 50's was the site of a large land excavation, and a dig took place where something very dark, and very EVIL was uncovered, turning the citizens of the town into devilish demons, and followers of Satan, making them turn on their own family members with the most horrible outcome. Thinking that they took care of this problem, it is now 1985 and the town is again under attack from Satan himself and his followers. Sam notices that people are not coming to church as they used to, people are acting weird with using vulgar language, dressing provacatively and rape is happening between fathers and daughters, mothers and sons, and brother and sister.
People are not bathing, with the smells of the town being so bad that people gag when approached by people in the public. People are using the toilet and not wiping afterwards, relishing themselves in the filthy smells of their own excrement. Then the violence starts.
Can Sam get this town of his under control, and back on the right track to being a great little town it used to be? Find out in 'The Devils Kiss'
I would give this a 5 star review.....but I prefer the next 2 books in the series more than this first one. At 449 pages, it is a quick, and gross and very thought provoking ride into HELL!
So even after 30 plus years, this series still can turn my stomach and scare the shit out of me, all while grossing you out with excrement covered horrors! Just as the book opens, Johnstone was a master at hooking you with a disturbing as hell scene, and then not letting up! This was one of if not his first foray into writing horror.......and he wrote over 35 horror novels! Now granted, his horror was not for eveyone, it dealt with severe scenes of graphic violence, scenes involving SCAT (human excrement fetishes) incest, and scenes of demonic worship and possession. This series includes the books 'The Devils Kiss', The devil's heart, the devils' touch, the devils cat, and the devils laughter.
The book is about a priest; Sam Balon who is in his early 50's, is very handsome, in incredible shape, and has an extremely gorgeous wife, Michelle, who is cheating on him with a satanic cult leader and his minions.
Whitfield Nebraska in the 50's was the site of a large land excavation, and a dig took place where something very dark, and very EVIL was uncovered, turning the citizens of the town into devilish demons, and followers of Satan, making them turn on their own family members with the most horrible outcome. Thinking that they took care of this problem, it is now 1985 and the town is again under attack from Satan himself and his followers. Sam notices that people are not coming to church as they used to, people are acting weird with using vulgar language, dressing provacatively and rape is happening between fathers and daughters, mothers and sons, and brother and sister.
People are not bathing, with the smells of the town being so bad that people gag when approached by people in the public. People are using the toilet and not wiping afterwards, relishing themselves in the filthy smells of their own excrement. Then the violence starts.
Can Sam get this town of his under control, and back on the right track to being a great little town it used to be? Find out in 'The Devils Kiss'
I would give this a 5 star review.....but I prefer the next 2 books in the series more than this first one. At 449 pages, it is a quick, and gross and very thought provoking ride into HELL!
September 3, 2015
Hard time deciding between one or five stars. It's bad, real bad, but good-bad. It's like Jack Chick--the maker of the sublimely cheezy Christian comic pamphlets--wrote a horror novel. There's no real suspense, it's just fucking over-the-top ridiculous. But there's an energy and fun charge that kept me reading. It holds together because there's no hint of irony or self-awareness. The depiction of Satanists is probably true to what a lot of Real Americans® believe. Check it out if you like novels featuring a small-town preacher/ex-commando who murders everyone in his town after they start worshiping Satan.
March 25, 2021
I mean, it satisfied the "read a terrible book" requirement for my book club? Because this is the worst book I've ever read.
March 20, 2022
The Devil's Kiss
series: The Devil book 1
by: William W. Johnstone
Horror/Occult
Group: For The Love of A Book
Challenge:Discovery Bookshelf Challenge ( R4C1)
Group: Romance Readers Reading Challenges
challenge: 2017 March Monthly Challenge : 10. Reader's Choice: Read any book of your choice
-- silently and unmercifully.
As night falls heavily on the small prairie town, red-rimmed eyes look out from tightly shut windows. An occasional snarl rips from once-human throats. Shadows play on dimly-lit streets, deepening the gloom of the alleys, bringing with the darkness and almost tangible aura of fear.
For the time is now right in Whitfield. The Beasts are hungry, the Undead are awake, the putrid stench of evil hangs in the air---and the inhabitants of Whitfield are about to be touched by...
THE DEVIL'S KISS
my rating : 5 stars
My thoughts:
This is and was a re read for me even though its been years since I've read it, this is the type of story that once you start to read it , your hooked and won't want to stop , if you like books that are about God vs evil then this series is for you .
November 23, 2009
This is the first in a series of novel's about Satanic covens and their supernatural exploits in the United States and Canada. It comes down to being an interesting blend of pulp fiction and the supernatural.
An unusual preacher named Sam Bolan begins to find things a bit odd in his small Nebraska hometown. Church attendance is almost nonexistent. The town's denizens are acting strangely. People are disappearing. All in all, something evil is in the air.
Sam eventually finds that the majority of the townsfolk are in league with the devil and bands with a small group to fight them off as they make their final play to control the town and all within it.
Johnstone demonstrates some old-fashioned beliefs in his writing such as the evils of rock & roll and a woman's place being in the kitchen. I had to chuckle at the number of times women were sent to the kitchen to make sandwhiches while the men discussed survival.
Aside from the out of date thinking, this is an entertaining and original read.
An unusual preacher named Sam Bolan begins to find things a bit odd in his small Nebraska hometown. Church attendance is almost nonexistent. The town's denizens are acting strangely. People are disappearing. All in all, something evil is in the air.
Sam eventually finds that the majority of the townsfolk are in league with the devil and bands with a small group to fight them off as they make their final play to control the town and all within it.
Johnstone demonstrates some old-fashioned beliefs in his writing such as the evils of rock & roll and a woman's place being in the kitchen. I had to chuckle at the number of times women were sent to the kitchen to make sandwhiches while the men discussed survival.
Aside from the out of date thinking, this is an entertaining and original read.
October 7, 2019
Oof. This one was a doozy. It felt like it was written by a 12 year old Catholic boy with, at best, a cursory understanding 0f sex.........and honestly, I LOVED it.
SEX, SATAN, BEASTS, ROCK 'n' ROLL, GUNS, RAMBO-style shit. Yeah, this one's got it all.
I wish this had been made into a movie in the '80s. If you are looking for a horror movie experience, here it is. It's poorly written, full of typos, grammar and punctuation errors, BUT SO WHAT?!? Basically a B-Movie in novel form, it's great if you know what to expect. There's nothing literary here, but it's 100% F-U-N!........oh, and apparently, it's part of a trilogy.
Highly recommend if you are in the right mood. If you're highbrow and looking for "literary" horror - look elsewhere.
SEX, SATAN, BEASTS, ROCK 'n' ROLL, GUNS, RAMBO-style shit. Yeah, this one's got it all.
I wish this had been made into a movie in the '80s. If you are looking for a horror movie experience, here it is. It's poorly written, full of typos, grammar and punctuation errors, BUT SO WHAT?!? Basically a B-Movie in novel form, it's great if you know what to expect. There's nothing literary here, but it's 100% F-U-N!........oh, and apparently, it's part of a trilogy.
Highly recommend if you are in the right mood. If you're highbrow and looking for "literary" horror - look elsewhere.
July 14, 2024
It's, as you can imagine from the title, a story about the age-old battle between good and evil. It's a story that makes you think about the way you treat your neighbor, your co-workers, or that person who always stops you to talk even when you may have something else to do. It might not make much of a difference now but someday it will.
I found this to be a fast-paced enjoyable story with a lot of truths embedded between the lines. The main character is an ex-marine turned preacher who has no second thoughts or regrets about shooting a coven member.... staking a vampire... or blowing up a werewolf. Add in the "dark prince" and some witches and you have a war you will have no trouble remembering.
If sex orgies, swearing and lots of violence offends you, you might want to stay away from this one. If you are a fan of this author's westerns, just be advised that this series is a "horse of an entirely different color".
I found this to be a fast-paced enjoyable story with a lot of truths embedded between the lines. The main character is an ex-marine turned preacher who has no second thoughts or regrets about shooting a coven member.... staking a vampire... or blowing up a werewolf. Add in the "dark prince" and some witches and you have a war you will have no trouble remembering.
If sex orgies, swearing and lots of violence offends you, you might want to stay away from this one. If you are a fan of this author's westerns, just be advised that this series is a "horse of an entirely different color".
May 3, 2015
This book was actually quite good. I would give it more stars and less stars. Less because of the anti Christian stuff in it, but being a Christian I know some of this stuff its all to true. More stuff because it was just plain good. So I will leave it at a very strong three. I will finish this series out I must find out what happens to the survivors and the town.
Read
April 22, 2023That was...remarkably preachy and remarkably rape-y.
February 1, 2021
When Joe Kenny's excellent "Glorious Trash" blog opened his review of this book with "Apparently William W. Johnstone devoted himself to writing for ten years before he finally got published, but reading The Devil’s Kiss you’d think it was more like ten minutes, and that’s with frequent breaks." I thought he was joking, but it's the most accurate thing I've read about this novel, as the book itself completely incompetent.
Something weird is happening in the small town Whitfield, church attendance is down all over the county, particularly for Reverend Sam Balon, who decides to investigate.
Let me start off here by stating what I liked. When Johnstone shows you what Satan is doing in Whitfield, it works. Johnstone, despite being a right-wing christian who believes that sex and violence shouldn't be shown in movies, TV, or books, seems to have no issue with filling this book up with sex and violence. The Satanists as Johnstone sees them are inhumanely cruel, hating everything godly, and basically raping and murdering whenever they can. But there's more to this book than Satanists, as Johnstone adds a lot of different and interesting monster variation to be shot or staked by our handful of heroes.
The book seems to be a slow burn, with a lot of detail put on the slow infection of Whitfield, with finally a conclusion seemingly out of a Avengelical equivalent of "Commando" with our heroes blowing away anything that moves for easily 100 pages.
Now I come to my problems with the book. When I called this book a slow-burn, what I really meant is that most of this book is just characters repeating information that the reader already knows. This is especially true when it comes to the church attendance, which has a lot of dedicated time in this book, rather than the two murders and one rape that start the novel. Sam Balon doesn't really do too much for most of the novel, rather just asks redundant questions so that other characters can fill in with an answer that is already clear to the reader. Which is a real shame, because there are so many things in this book that could've been explored more! We hear a little bit of the funeral home and why they aren't embalming bodies. I would've loved a chapter devoted to Balon exploring this area, and seeing why the bodies aren't embalmed. Or the radio station that's been brainwashing the minds of everyone in Whitfield, why not a chapter with Balon Going through the burnt wreckage, or even finding out what messages are in the radio, and how they affect the population. But no, instead we just get passing mentions of each of these areas, with a quick explanation, and are swiftly ignored in favor of talking about how church attendance is down.
Now my second problem with the book. Johnstone is clearly a very religious and conservative person. There is nothing wrong with this. I even came to the book with this in mind when I start to read it, the same I would do if I was going to read a book that was about psychics, or anything supernatural. But this book is packed with so much sermonizing about completely irrelevant subjects that it hurts the novel. The more space that is spent showing the worldview of the christians (and also Johnstone, I'm assuming) makes it even more clear how screwed up the christian's perspective is. The vast majority of the satanists aren't even in control of themselves, either they've been brainwashed, or just turned into mindless zombies by one of the higher-ups, yet our group of christians don't think saving them is what should be done, rather just blow them all away! We also learn that despite these people not being in control of themselves, God will still judge them based on these actions, and send them to hell.
But, at the end of the day, I still enjoyed the Devil's Kiss, for the completely over the top sex and violence that pokes it's head up in some of the chapters. I definitely will check out another Johnstone book, and hope that he's worked past the mistakes present in this here.
Something weird is happening in the small town Whitfield, church attendance is down all over the county, particularly for Reverend Sam Balon, who decides to investigate.
Let me start off here by stating what I liked. When Johnstone shows you what Satan is doing in Whitfield, it works. Johnstone, despite being a right-wing christian who believes that sex and violence shouldn't be shown in movies, TV, or books, seems to have no issue with filling this book up with sex and violence. The Satanists as Johnstone sees them are inhumanely cruel, hating everything godly, and basically raping and murdering whenever they can. But there's more to this book than Satanists, as Johnstone adds a lot of different and interesting monster variation to be shot or staked by our handful of heroes.
The book seems to be a slow burn, with a lot of detail put on the slow infection of Whitfield, with finally a conclusion seemingly out of a Avengelical equivalent of "Commando" with our heroes blowing away anything that moves for easily 100 pages.
Now I come to my problems with the book. When I called this book a slow-burn, what I really meant is that most of this book is just characters repeating information that the reader already knows. This is especially true when it comes to the church attendance, which has a lot of dedicated time in this book, rather than the two murders and one rape that start the novel. Sam Balon doesn't really do too much for most of the novel, rather just asks redundant questions so that other characters can fill in with an answer that is already clear to the reader. Which is a real shame, because there are so many things in this book that could've been explored more! We hear a little bit of the funeral home and why they aren't embalming bodies. I would've loved a chapter devoted to Balon exploring this area, and seeing why the bodies aren't embalmed. Or the radio station that's been brainwashing the minds of everyone in Whitfield, why not a chapter with Balon Going through the burnt wreckage, or even finding out what messages are in the radio, and how they affect the population. But no, instead we just get passing mentions of each of these areas, with a quick explanation, and are swiftly ignored in favor of talking about how church attendance is down.
Now my second problem with the book. Johnstone is clearly a very religious and conservative person. There is nothing wrong with this. I even came to the book with this in mind when I start to read it, the same I would do if I was going to read a book that was about psychics, or anything supernatural. But this book is packed with so much sermonizing about completely irrelevant subjects that it hurts the novel. The more space that is spent showing the worldview of the christians (and also Johnstone, I'm assuming) makes it even more clear how screwed up the christian's perspective is. The vast majority of the satanists aren't even in control of themselves, either they've been brainwashed, or just turned into mindless zombies by one of the higher-ups, yet our group of christians don't think saving them is what should be done, rather just blow them all away! We also learn that despite these people not being in control of themselves, God will still judge them based on these actions, and send them to hell.
But, at the end of the day, I still enjoyed the Devil's Kiss, for the completely over the top sex and violence that pokes it's head up in some of the chapters. I definitely will check out another Johnstone book, and hope that he's worked past the mistakes present in this here.
June 11, 2019
This book is terrible. I am upset that I wasted a whole $.99 on it! I tried to get through it, I truly did, but I just eventually had to give up. I'm not sure what the author was trying to get across, but he definitely mentioned rock music multiple times in regard to why people were into devil worship. Maybe this was meant to be humorous?! I just have no idea. But I can assure you that when I listen to rock n roll, I don't want to go dance naked for Satan in the backwoods.
At times, it seemed like this was supposed to be a book written by a Christian author, but as I got about 60% of the way through it, I just couldn't agree -- Johnstone is no Ted Dekker, that's for sure. He seemed like an overly sexual old man getting his jollies through writing disturbing scenes that didn't add to the story. The pastor who is meant to be the hero of the book decides to sleep with a member of his church and then performs a wedding ceremony afterwards, whist going on about how he is sinning. There's mentions of incest, bestiality and a slew of other nastiness. He mentioned gross smells so often, I actually had to go clean my house just because I needed to smell something better than what I was imagining.
SOOOOOOOO... If you want to read a repressed individual's overly active sexual imagination, here's the book for you! If you want to read a book about God-fearing people fighting against Satan's influence, I suggest you check out something more along the lines of This Present Darkness.
At times, it seemed like this was supposed to be a book written by a Christian author, but as I got about 60% of the way through it, I just couldn't agree -- Johnstone is no Ted Dekker, that's for sure. He seemed like an overly sexual old man getting his jollies through writing disturbing scenes that didn't add to the story. The pastor who is meant to be the hero of the book decides to sleep with a member of his church and then performs a wedding ceremony afterwards, whist going on about how he is sinning. There's mentions of incest, bestiality and a slew of other nastiness. He mentioned gross smells so often, I actually had to go clean my house just because I needed to smell something better than what I was imagining.
SOOOOOOOO... If you want to read a repressed individual's overly active sexual imagination, here's the book for you! If you want to read a book about God-fearing people fighting against Satan's influence, I suggest you check out something more along the lines of This Present Darkness.
October 7, 2008
Another good one. If you read the Devil's heart you will know that it is first in a sequeal of three books.
November 8, 2020
Read this from a review from a friend and boy was it good. You have everything in it. Great horror and good vs evil. awesome read and more to come. loved it
Want to read
April 10, 2024One of the things I love about Goodreads is being able to post what book I'm reading, and then never follow up on because at some point I just stopped reading (apparently some time last year, which is honestly more recent than I kind of expected). Anyway, I'm not really reading this anymore, so I'm going to take it off this and now try putting in books I am reading. Kind of.
January 17, 2025
Absolutely terrifying!
So incredibly gory and disturbing and I loved every single second I read this.
One of those books that gives you complete and total night terrors.
So incredibly gory and disturbing and I loved every single second I read this.
One of those books that gives you complete and total night terrors.
October 1, 2023
God and Satan Both Cringe Over This
This is the age old story of good versus evil. Minister Sam Balon is out to kill evil newcomer Black Wilder and his army of Satan worshipers. This novel is a chauvinistic journey through Smutsville with some very dated ideas on Satan worshiping littering the path. I had great hopes for this book, however, I found it very predictable at times. I was also less than impressed with the lack of real character development and the broad brushstrokes of Christianity.
This is the age old story of good versus evil. Minister Sam Balon is out to kill evil newcomer Black Wilder and his army of Satan worshipers. This novel is a chauvinistic journey through Smutsville with some very dated ideas on Satan worshiping littering the path. I had great hopes for this book, however, I found it very predictable at times. I was also less than impressed with the lack of real character development and the broad brushstrokes of Christianity.
June 18, 2021
I'm not sure where to start with this one, so I'll just say SATANIC COWS! Yep, there's one in here.
This is firmly in the vein of 1980's PAPERBACKS FROM HELL horror novels, which, let's admit, are usually AWESOME!
To me Johnstone and Richard Laymon have several similarities in their styles. Maybe not so much writing styles, but the content of their stories. They both have a lot of sex, usually creepy sex. They both use incest and underage fornication as a theme. And they also love to write about sex with monsters, mostly beasts breeding human women. This novel has all of that.
I read Sweet Dreams by Johnstone back when I was in middle school, and that was nuts. It was practically pornographic with plenty of rape and incest going on, and was something that middle schoolers probably shouldn't be reading. It was sold right in Kmart, however, so who knew? Probably not Kmart! And it's not like at that age I was going to stop reading it! But anyway, this was very much like Sweet Dreams. You had a town taken over by evil, in this case literally the Devil, and then things devolve into sex with kids and incest and torture and murder and the like. Oh, another thing about Laymon and Johnstone. The good guys tend to have sex at the oddest times. "We're surrounded by monsters. Evil is around every corner. We have to be really careful or at any time we can die a horrible death. Sooo..let's have sex!" I realize that's a basic horror trope, but Laymon and Johnstone take it to another level at times.
Johnstone also has a habit of throwing things in at odd times, almost like he's halfway done writing the book and thinks of something new and just shoehorns it in. For example, there's a subplot about an asylum in this one that should have been mentioned fairly early, and instead you're nearly 3/4 through the book before it's mentioned. It wasn't the kind of thing people would forget about.
This one took the religious theme to a deep level with God and Satan actually speaking to the characters. Some of the devil worship was almost laughable with the dialogue, but then again some of that was in The Exorcist as well and most of us weren't laughing. We also have what are basically werewolves and vampires both in the service of the Devil, which was actually kind of cool.
The ending left things open as this is a five book series, but I didn't care for how it ended. it made the title character seem a little weak, but it's obvious what the ending is building to in later volumes of the series.
For all my criticism of Laymon and Johnstone, they have another thing in common: you just cannot put their books down! You have to see what happens next, and just hot nutty things will get. I consider both of them a guilty pleasure and still enjoy the stories.
This is firmly in the vein of 1980's PAPERBACKS FROM HELL horror novels, which, let's admit, are usually AWESOME!
To me Johnstone and Richard Laymon have several similarities in their styles. Maybe not so much writing styles, but the content of their stories. They both have a lot of sex, usually creepy sex. They both use incest and underage fornication as a theme. And they also love to write about sex with monsters, mostly beasts breeding human women. This novel has all of that.
I read Sweet Dreams by Johnstone back when I was in middle school, and that was nuts. It was practically pornographic with plenty of rape and incest going on, and was something that middle schoolers probably shouldn't be reading. It was sold right in Kmart, however, so who knew? Probably not Kmart! And it's not like at that age I was going to stop reading it! But anyway, this was very much like Sweet Dreams. You had a town taken over by evil, in this case literally the Devil, and then things devolve into sex with kids and incest and torture and murder and the like. Oh, another thing about Laymon and Johnstone. The good guys tend to have sex at the oddest times. "We're surrounded by monsters. Evil is around every corner. We have to be really careful or at any time we can die a horrible death. Sooo..let's have sex!" I realize that's a basic horror trope, but Laymon and Johnstone take it to another level at times.
Johnstone also has a habit of throwing things in at odd times, almost like he's halfway done writing the book and thinks of something new and just shoehorns it in. For example, there's a subplot about an asylum in this one that should have been mentioned fairly early, and instead you're nearly 3/4 through the book before it's mentioned. It wasn't the kind of thing people would forget about.
This one took the religious theme to a deep level with God and Satan actually speaking to the characters. Some of the devil worship was almost laughable with the dialogue, but then again some of that was in The Exorcist as well and most of us weren't laughing. We also have what are basically werewolves and vampires both in the service of the Devil, which was actually kind of cool.
The ending left things open as this is a five book series, but I didn't care for how it ended. it made the title character seem a little weak, but it's obvious what the ending is building to in later volumes of the series.
For all my criticism of Laymon and Johnstone, they have another thing in common: you just cannot put their books down! You have to see what happens next, and just hot nutty things will get. I consider both of them a guilty pleasure and still enjoy the stories.
November 28, 2013
The Devil's Kiss is the first in the Devil's series by William W Johnstone. Johnstone is a noted Western author and sometimes people forget he actual wrote a lot of horror novels. Johnstone's style of writing has been highly criticized as being amateurish and poorly written. He seems to favor page after page of dialog instead of paragraphs of detailed description. Does that make his books less enjoyable to read then others? Certainly not.
I must confess to having a strange fondness for The Devil's Kiss. This is one of those books that was passed around junior high by myself and classmates because we were "shocked" and infatuated with the content. Johnstone's books are infamous for being full of gore and sex. Descriptive sex and to a young mind certainly there are passages in here that would shock even the most liberal reader. Having read the book when I was in junior high and reading it now it certainly isn't as scandalous as I had imagined it to be. Is it scary? Sure. To the right mind the idea of a devil worshiping coven taking over almost an entire town as a stepping stone for Satan ruling the earth would be. Generally speaking though you know when you're reading this your reading a book with a very action, adventure, pulp style that is a lightening fast read.
It is interesting that this book became the first of a series. You wonder if Johnstone wrote it with that in mind. The book is solid for the first three quarters of the way, then it is almost as if Johnstone realized he couldn't complete his story the way he wanted to and decided to add plot that could pave the wave for a sequel. Also of note is the setting of the year 1958 in rural Nebraska. Lots of mention of the Korean War, the Russians and the Cold War, the idea of an isolated town where all the action can take place away from the rest of the world. Overall, I think the setting works and feels accurate, it's only because the later quarter of the book runs out of steam a little bit that I can only give it 4 stars. Johnstone's characters get criticzed highly as does his politics. Lots of gun toting conservative devote Christians and everyone else being sinners and worshipers of Satan. I choose to ignore it and take the Devil's Kiss at what it is. A highly original novel about a warrior of God battling the forces of evil in a very movie style novel. Think the Rambo of the Lord and you've got your main character. It's a fun read that is not meant to be taken too seriously. And I for one am thankful for it.
I must confess to having a strange fondness for The Devil's Kiss. This is one of those books that was passed around junior high by myself and classmates because we were "shocked" and infatuated with the content. Johnstone's books are infamous for being full of gore and sex. Descriptive sex and to a young mind certainly there are passages in here that would shock even the most liberal reader. Having read the book when I was in junior high and reading it now it certainly isn't as scandalous as I had imagined it to be. Is it scary? Sure. To the right mind the idea of a devil worshiping coven taking over almost an entire town as a stepping stone for Satan ruling the earth would be. Generally speaking though you know when you're reading this your reading a book with a very action, adventure, pulp style that is a lightening fast read.
It is interesting that this book became the first of a series. You wonder if Johnstone wrote it with that in mind. The book is solid for the first three quarters of the way, then it is almost as if Johnstone realized he couldn't complete his story the way he wanted to and decided to add plot that could pave the wave for a sequel. Also of note is the setting of the year 1958 in rural Nebraska. Lots of mention of the Korean War, the Russians and the Cold War, the idea of an isolated town where all the action can take place away from the rest of the world. Overall, I think the setting works and feels accurate, it's only because the later quarter of the book runs out of steam a little bit that I can only give it 4 stars. Johnstone's characters get criticzed highly as does his politics. Lots of gun toting conservative devote Christians and everyone else being sinners and worshipers of Satan. I choose to ignore it and take the Devil's Kiss at what it is. A highly original novel about a warrior of God battling the forces of evil in a very movie style novel. Think the Rambo of the Lord and you've got your main character. It's a fun read that is not meant to be taken too seriously. And I for one am thankful for it.
February 24, 2012
Terrible. There really is no other word to describe this mess of a novel. Flat characters, a stupid plot, and not all the subtlety of a jackhammer outside your bedroom window at 3 in the morning. It's also not very scary, unless you find horrid prose frightening; in which case, it would be the king of horror novels.
December 29, 2019
One of the Best Horror Series I've ever Read
This book & series has everything. I actually bought this series in the 80's and found again when sorting books to donate. I bought them again on Amazon and am rereading. These series still scares me & reading now in 2019 Johnston is a genius in writing a book that aged well. I am keeping my old paperbacks.
This book & series has everything. I actually bought this series in the 80's and found again when sorting books to donate. I bought them again on Amazon and am rereading. These series still scares me & reading now in 2019 Johnston is a genius in writing a book that aged well. I am keeping my old paperbacks.
April 18, 2016
Awful. Writing is elementary school, there's no character development, the story seems to start in mid-thought. I hope Johnstone is a better writer of westerns. If I could give this a less than 1 rating, I would.
December 9, 2019
Intense Read!
Huge fan of your books in this genre...and this one definitely didn't disappoint me! Great writing, the character development is awesome and how the story reveals its self is astounding!!
Huge fan of your books in this genre...and this one definitely didn't disappoint me! Great writing, the character development is awesome and how the story reveals its self is astounding!!
February 26, 2020
i gotta say I absolutely love love love this book, this is the first book I read by this author and I definitely enjoyed it. The characters had interesting roles and it starts off with insane, I love it a lot definitely plan on giving it another read soon.
May 25, 2021
I dont know if it was going to get better
So far it was a chapter on awkward teenage boners, and now it’s town incest...I skipped to the end but decided I didn’t want to shift through the incest to get there. It wasn’t for me.
So far it was a chapter on awkward teenage boners, and now it’s town incest...I skipped to the end but decided I didn’t want to shift through the incest to get there. It wasn’t for me.
September 17, 2014
I loved reading this book
January 21, 2021
Absorbing!!
Read it in 2 sittings...great plot, great characters....intense. Pace like a freight train! Highly recommend it to Stephen King fans!
Read it in 2 sittings...great plot, great characters....intense. Pace like a freight train! Highly recommend it to Stephen King fans!
December 10, 2022
Have read many books by Thor author. All very good with no exception. All were western and frontier novels. Didn’t know he did anything else. Well I have to say this book is great. Nothing like I have read of his work or anyone else. A story of a small town in 1958. Devil worship and possession. A small group of Christian people stand against them. One their leader. It is amazing. The evil the torture the killing the sex incest rape sodomy the hatred for God and one man who stood against the demon leader and the town he possessed. The entire book is great. It leads up to an ending that is not expected. It’s all something you can’t get out of your mind. Nothing like I’ve ever read by mr Johnstone. Or any one else for that matter. Well worth reading if you like horror.
September 16, 2024
I like to rate books by my enjoyment of them, not necessarily how 'good' they are, if you catch my drift. If you get a kick out of something full of Satanic Panic, lurid details of what fleshy sins committed by sinners, and writing that takes itself so seriously it'll make you shake with the giggles, get yourself a copy of this book and dig in (eBook will be the easiest way). If you're looking for well written prose, fleshed out characters, and interesting, morally gray debates, skip this and any of William W. Johnstone's works. I, however, love my trashy, 70-80's pulp horror novels, and this one was hilarious.
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