A Review of Nicholas Belardes’s The Deading
By Bekah Bahn
Cover design by Christina Mrozik
“We need horror,” Nicholas Belardes says in the acknowledgements to his debut novel, The Deading. “We need the primordial terror in ourselves to show us that we can face fears, imagine ourselves as the heroes, or the ones who get caught, or the monsters that create fear. . . The mirror that horror holds up to us is real. And we are in the reflections. And we’re better for it.” The Deading is an eco-horror novel that charts the downfall of a small California town as its environment succumbs to the mysterious and eponymous “deading.” The fictional town of Baywood, CA, is a microcosm for the highly polarized America we live in. A dark exploration of humanity, The Deading depicts how a single person’s actions can tip the scales between life and death, unity and war, and salvation and the earth’s destruction. With The Deading, Belardes holds the mirror up to the reader, emphasizing the anthropogenic and post-pandemic similarities between the horrifying world of the novel and our own.
Baywood is a peaceful, coastal town known for its bird sanctuary and sprawling oyster farms. The multi-perspective novel shifts between Blas, a teenager bird watcher, Chango, his older brother, Ingram and Kumi, two elderly bird watchers, and Bernard, a self-centered farmer. Everything forever changes for the citizens of Baywood—especially Blas, Chango, and Kumi—when a deadly contagion strikes back (a la The Last of Us, deadly snail edition). The force of nature—born of pollution, toxins, and an alien, otherworldly force—infects every sea creature, animal, and person on Baywood’s shores. Though the author refrains from revealing everything about the actual nature and effects of the contagion, each perspective offers a new layer—a new truth—about this world. As inexplicable and bone-chilling transformations begin to happen to the citizens of Baywood, the experience comes to be known as “the deading.” Those infected drop randomly, sporadically, their soul and consciousness going elsewhere, and their bodies cease to function for seconds to minutes before they rise back up like nothing happened. The elusive and bewildering origins of the contagion, of nature’s vengeful hitman, immerses the reader into the characters’ tangible—and highly relatable—fear of the unknown.
“It’s already in you. And it will spread. You know this. Your world will never be the same. An unexplainable terror begins slowly unraveling around you. The deading is here.”
However, some citizens seem to be immune to this alien, sea-born contagion—including Blas, Kumi, and other aging birdwatchers—who interestingly enough maintain their deep connection to nature and ornithology throughout the novel. It remains mysterious as to why—another obscuring tactic employed by the author. Yet, I theorize a connection between their immunity and the loving, appreciative relationship each has with nature and its creatures. In this way, the deading becomes a terrifying lesson in its own right. As a governmental quarantine is enforced on the town of Baywood, the characters are cut off from the rest of the world and monitored by a swarm of animal-like drones. During this time, a fanatical group called the Risers—people who are willingly infected with the contagion—take over the town, forming a new society built on death and blood and sacrifice. Those that don’t follow the Risers, those who are immune to the alien-like contagion and refuse to pretend to participate in the deading, pay the ultimate price. If the contagion is the lit match, the fanatic citizens of Baywood are the kerosine.
The Deading opens with evocative descriptions of birds, sky, and nature which continue throughout the narrative—especially within the avid bird watchers’ perspectives. Belardes’ exploration of nature and wildlife are nearly pastoral in the harmonious rapture-like language, and yet is distinctly set apart with the presence of foreboding and death: “the sun melting its orange eye into the darkness of Morro Bay’s tidelands, spreading a dust haze into lavender blood” and “the Milky way shoot[ing] its arm along the bowl of the night, loom[ing] like an open wound revealing the scintillating white-and-blue blood of starlight.” The reoccurring visual of blood emphasizes Belardes’ overarching vision of nature’s beautiful violence, and the persistence of the picturesque in the apocalyptic.
The Deading is now available from Erewhon Books.
Bekah Bahn is a Creative Writing master's student at the University of South Dakota. She received her B.A. in English-Creative Writing with a minor in Vocal Music and certifications in both Professional Writing and Digital Marketing. She graduated with a Summa Cum Laude distinction. Her creative interests include dystopian, fantasy, hybrid works, and climate fiction.