The Catcher's Trap by Ricardo Henriquez
An okay horror tale with a dash of dark fantasy.
The Catcher’s Trap starts brilliantly. The reader is instantly thrown into the dark pulsing heaving nightclub scene where bodies thrash against each other, conversations are lost to deafening music and exit doors lay at the end of a turbulent maze of sweat. It’s familiar and has been used to great effect in countless movies and books and in this case is written fantastically as I felt as lost as the protagonist Andres. My heart was racing and I was really anticipating what was to come, hoping it would tickle the dark part of my imagination.
We then take, in my opinion, a totally unnecessary pause to look at the back story of Andres where we discover he is very damaged, very unhappy and not actually the sort of person that’s fun or interesting to read about. This may have been an attempt to give him an anchor to the real world or a way for us the reader to quickly empathise with him before the torture begins but I found it distracting and thought it really choked up the story.
What follows is the only other real piece of horror in the entire book as Andres is beaten, tortured and broken and then sent to live with other slaves who tend fields. It shifts more in dark fantasy at this point as we learn of a flower the offers everlasting life, a mysterious race that come and go through dimensional space and time and a nice old prophecy that speaks of a “walker of worlds”.
The rest is pretty predictable I’m afraid to say and the pace drops off as Andres has the same conversation regarding the risks and rewards of escape and defiance with 1. a love interest and 2. the guy stuck in her friendzone who resents the new guy. This conversation happens again and again and again. Despite all this plodding along the ending somehow felt rushed and set up an opening for the next book in the series rather than provided a real conclusion for the readers.
I read this over two sittings within 12hrs, which I consider a big plus as despite it’s problems it held my attention and was easy enough to read that I always knew I would finish. I do wish there was more horror and that later scenes conjured up the same sense of dread that earlier scenes did but this is a skill that will undoubtedly grow as Ricardo Henriquez perfects his art.
I was provided a copy by the publishers in exchange for an honest review
3/5
