My actual score for the book would be more like 3.5-stars. I quite liked it, but I also quite disliked certain portions of it, and so while the whole could be seen as something like a 4-star book, it is only with the admittance that certain of its negative qualities tick upon the back of my mind while thinking about it. Though the book ends up more bonkers than expected, in what way I cannot speak of, at all, without encroaching upon spoiler territory, I find the book manages to wear its bonkers content proudly enough to nearly work, an achievement in itself; for, it is often the bits of the book that do not clearly see themselves through that lets the book down. It is aware of the issues it is stirring, but ultimately brings them to life in a half-living state, and ends up feeling crowded while incomplete. To give some context to my comments, the first third of the book is largely archeological curiosity mixed with "rural village in England and stay off the moors!" horror, dealing with the finding of bog-bodies [look them up, fascinating!] and a weird town full of insular, misshapen folks and sinister gentry. In the second third, we have introduced a few social issues: the wife of the protagonist realizes that she is putting her life on hold, indefinitely, for her family; there are talks of infidelity; we get a hint at child abuse and bullying; what would count as a rape though it is never quite described as such; and a few other bits. Nearly none of these are ever allowed to come to a proper head, so are frustratingly in the way of the final third of the book. The final third is bonkers, and embraces its own kookiness so well that I am obligated to give it a pass and even admit that I enjoyed it.In the end, had the story been more about the wife instead of the husband, I think the middle third would have worked out much better. Imagine, rather than her being the housewife to a well-published expert drug along on another big find, she had been the person behind the dig, maybe on her first big break, and bringing along a reluctant husband who found her career an impediment to his own. Then the second third would have made more sense, and the finale would have been less a "save the dame!" plot and more a "save yourself!" one. With the husband the undisputed main focus and the wife largely discarded as anything more than a shrill mother/wife hybrid in the final third, it seems like it would best to largely skip the middle third because some of the issues brought up need nuance to work and the book barely gives them such.In the end, the horror/action stuff is 4-stars, while the social/thinking stuff is lower, but one can imagine a similar story that better balanced the two and succeeding where this one did not, while also succeeding where this one did.
